Maki 1

CODE: NICE-25V-0114A

Work:

The volunteers will mainly clear the snow on the roofs and the surroundings of the old, traditional houses. They will also carry the things from the town to Maki and join the house work such as cooking, washing, clearing, etc. Be ready to work for quite a long time (05:30-18:00 with some brakes) and hard! It'd be surely good exercise to make your body more healthy!

Accomodation and food

Volunteers will sleep in a few rooms of the house that is a very beautiful cultural heritage and equips the basic facilities such as water, electricity and a bath room! They will have meals, meetings and social life with Kyodo Gakusha members in the main building (just 30 meters far). Meals will be cooked by volunteers together with the members by turns. Sleeping bag is not necessary.

Location and leisure

It is located in the beautiful places near “Japanese Northern Alps”. Maki is in about 900 meters asl. and there is something remained here that most of Japanese areas have lost in modernization. Other activities - Exchange program, Excursion on a free day (possibly to Hakuba, a famous tourism spot), etc.

Project hosted by

This project is actively working for SDGs 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDGs 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), organized together with Kyodo Gakusha since 2000, a cooperative community where people with various backgrounds such as mentally disadvantaged, people who are tired of city life, who want to learn farming, who want to live in the nature, etc. They have 5 communities in Japan incl. Maki and grow animals and vegetables in ecological, organic way. Maki is located in a very isolated area (not accessible for cars and we have to walk 4 km in the mountains!), so it once became an abandon village in 1970s and then, was revived by Kyodo Gakusha. The life is very hard with deep snow during the winter, so the members usually live in the other farm at the foot of the mountain and only sometimes come to Maki to clear the snow in these years. However, the water mill hut, that had been constructed just several years ago by a lot of work and donations, was destroyed in 2022 due to too much snow, they feel the needs to clear the snow more regularly, that's why the winter workcamp here has been revived since 15 years ago!
*Outcome of this workcamp: In 2024, 2 vols. worked together with the community people and greatly contributed to protect the houses from the heavy snow. One of them (from Czech) joined this also in 2023 Jan. and her return has also mentally empowered the commuynity!

Directions to meeting point

Additional comments

Study theme - Similar type of communities in each country and their networking Participation fee - 9,000 JPY (54 EUR by the rate on 2024 Nov. 2nd) of "NICE Volunteers" fee need to be paid in advance either by Card or PayPal. This is used for the project preparation/ coordination such as the transportation of the camp leaders while the meals and the accommodation are provided by the local host by free. Other - The popular documentary film for this place was broadcasted in 2015 at arayashiki-movie.jp/en/.