📝 Detailed information
🏢 About the local organisation
The project is hosted by Melikhovo Estate Museum of Anton Chekhov, located 60 km from Moscow. It is in Melikhovo that Chekhov, famous playwright and master of short story, wrote more than 40 of his masterpieces, including “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya”. He was not only a prolific writer but also a practicing doctor and a philanthropist, and besides the manor house, the museum includes the schools that he built for local peasants, the post office that he opened and the medical station imitating the one where he consulted the locals. Thus, the visitors can get a glimpse of the life in the estate at the end of the 19th century.
http://en.chekhovmuseum.com
💼 What the programme involves
Melikhovo Estate Museum has been welcoming local volunteers for many years but this summer the estate will host an international volunteering workcamp for the first time. The volunteers will mostly work in the garden and their tasks will include planting, watering, weeding, pruning, cleaning.
🏠 Accommodation on site
Volunteers will stay in a local hotel with beds and common showers. Participants will cook for themselves.
📍 About the location
Birds singing, sweet smells in the air and incredible quietness all around – in the estate you are certain to feel that you’ve gone back in time and you are Anton Chekhov’s guest. The museum employees will be glad to teach the volunteers to play croquet and other games popular in Chekhov’s time. But it is not going to be too quiet! The volunteers will have a common room and an outdoor space near the house to spend time together, and the meadows and forests around to go hiking and have picnics. On Saturdays, local theatre stages Chekhov’s short stories and plays. The volunteers will have an opportunity to visit all the branches of the museum both in the estate and in Chekhov (town named after Chekhov), and other local sights including the famous 16th century monastery Davidova Pustyn.