Volunteer at Casa Codibugnolo 🐦

Welcome to our hospitality and volunteer project! We are Milena (30, from Germany) and Simon (39, from Italy), and last year, we fulfilled a dream of buying a cosy house with a garden in the northwest of Italy, close to nature and a stunning lakes district.

Since moving here last winter, we’ve begun renovating the house. A few years ago, we were both involved in volunteering for ecological projects and organic farms. Now, we’re excited to develop our own small gardening and farming project and would love to invite enthusiastic volunteers to help us grow!

We’re animal lovers and gladly welcome travellers with dogs. We also host Via Francigena pilgrims or those travelling with a bicycle, or a van.

– Emma and Lily, our first two volunteers from NY and Auckland – you can see more photos of our hospitality project here casa codibugnolo pics🏠🐦

What category best describes your hosting arrangement? 🏡

• Nomad base
• Eco-project
• Community

Location – Where is your volunteer project located?🌏

• We are in a peaceful green valley about 5km from Ivrea city, in the north-west of Italy.

What are you looking for help with?

• Farming/Gardening 🌿🐄
  • seeding
  • watering
  • weeding
  • wood stacking
  • fence building
  • path building + maintenance
  • staple cleaning
  • rainwater collection
• Welcoming guests (Via Francigena pilgrims, cyclists, etc.)
• Cleaning + cooking 🧹
• Building 🛠

And other eco-projects & events.

What’s the mission of your community? 🎯

Over the next few months, we’ll be focusing on renovating a small cottage, creating an organic vegetable garden, and carrying out other clearing and maintenance projects. Everything we do is a learning experience, but our main goal is to live as close to nature as possible while sharing our space with international guests, family, and friends.

We are not a business. We do not sell produce from our garden, and we are not a hotel or hostel. By helping us, you are contributing to the improvement of our home and shared space, not to a commercial project.

Other keywords that relate to what we are or what we are interested in:

• #permaculture
• #vegetarian & #vegan
• #ecovillages #intentionalcommunities (we’re not a community, but we’re interested in the ecovillage ideas)
• #biodiversity
• #greenroof
• #beekeeping
• #cob oven
• #astronomy
• #science
• #music
• #hitchhiking
• #green building
• #yurt (we would like to build one at some point)
• #alternative lifestyles
• #downshifting/degrowth
• #francigen’s way / via francigena
• #birdwatching
• #botany
• #digitalnomads

Volunteers with disabilities ♿✅

Volunteers with disabilities are welcome, but please note that our location features varied landscapes, including sloping terrains, staircases, and uneven surfaces, which may present challenges for individuals with mobility difficulties. Nevertheless, we invite you to contact us and share how we can make this work.

How many volunteers could you host? 🎎

• Max 2 couples (or 4 single volunteers) at the same time. Possibly more if the voluntourers are willing to share rooms or sleep in a tent.

When do you usually need volunteers? 📅

• We need volunteers from spring to autumn, not so much in winter. We avoid hosting helpers in July-August. It’s too hot.

Note about the volunteer work and other expectations 📝

As former volunteers ourselves, we’ve always valued kindness, respect, and politeness towards fellow volunteers and hosts. Now, as hosts, we expect the same from our helpers: to treat the property and its inhabitants with respect, be friendly, and keep both themselves and the environment clean and tidy.

• We offer flexible volunteering hours based on the needs and preferences of our helpers.
• We prefer to host non-smokers 🚭

Our house is currently undergoing renovation, so it’s not always pristine and tidy. Additionally, being located in the countryside means we share our surroundings with a variety of animals.

Are accommodation and food included? 🏠🍜

Yes, we offer food and accommodation

Our house consists of two little apartments, one (upstairs), it’s where we are living, and the other one will be available to the travelling guests (each guest will get their own room, but the bathroom and kitchen have to be shared among the volunteers and us).

We also have space for tents or even vans.

What type of accommodation can you provide? 🏕

• Private Room 🔑
• Private home 🏠
• Dormitory
• Private room for a couple 🎎
• Tent

Volunteers should enjoy sharing a small flat with occasional travellers and visitors, such as Via Francigena pilgrims and cyclists who sometimes ask for our hospitality. Since we are not a business or a Bed and Breakfast, our hospitality relies on voluntary donations.

Part of the volunteers’ job is helping us welcome slow travellers.

Our animals

We have two sweet Maremmano-Retriever mixed dogs. 👇❤️

–We just adopted them from a shelter  @Casa Codibugnolo volunteer project

We’re planning to get chickens soon

Other than that, we’re surrounded by a diverse range of wildlife, from mice to mosquitoes, dormice to green lizards, and numerous species of bugs.

So, please, keep this in mind, you must enjoy nature in all of its shades 🙂

Diet – nutrition information 🥗🥤

• We are both vegetarians, but we are also open to hosting meat eaters as long as they buy meat and prepare it themselves.
• We’re very happy to accommodate vegans and to adopt a vegan diet while you’re staying with us.

Fee transparency 🆓🔍

No fees.

You’re also welcome to work fewer hours or days, or simply stay with us as a visitor or digital nomad. In that case, we would ask for a small contribution to help cover shared costs such as laundry, hot showers, electricity, and food.

VISA SUPPORT – Are you able to assist with visa support, and information, or provide invitation letters? 🛂

• No, we cannot help with a visa or provide invitation letters.

Volunteers’ benefits 🏆🏅

• As we are an international couple, we can offer cultural exchange – for example, language teaching (Italian/German as they are our native languages, English as a second language) and we can share some typical Italian and/or German recipes.
• There will be other travellers here, especially in the summertime, so you’ll get to learn about other cultures as well.
• You are welcome to use our musical instruments or do a jam session with us (we have two guitars, drums, a ukulele, and hopefully a piano soon).
• We can lend you a bicycle and an inflatable kayak, but we can also make some time to drop you off at some nearby points of interest or do a hike together.
• If you are an artistic person, we have lots of different types of colours and materials that we are happy to share with you.

What are the available activities during free time? 🚴🚣🦒

• In our village, there is a delicious pastry shop and two coffee bars to hang out at.
• There is a bus going to Ivrea, the nearest city, where you can find everything that a small city has to offer. In Ivrea, there is also a train station that can take you to bigger cities like Torino or Milano, or further into the Alps towards Aosta.

In general, our area is particularly adapted to nature lovers, because there is a great diversity of landscapes: flat area perfect for cycling, mountains perfect for hiking, forests, a river, and two beautiful lake areas that we can also drive you to.

Ivrea is famous for its orange battle carnival in February!

Of course, you can also simply relax here on our property, perhaps enjoying a good book in the hammock.

As we may not always have time to join volunteers in their free-time activities, we aim to host at least two volunteers at the same time to ensure no one feels lonely. During the summertime, we typically have many guests, including volunteers, hikers, cyclists, and Via Francigena pilgrims!

– Wine tastings with our helpers and guests @Casa Codibugnolo volunteer project

Language 🗣🇬🇧

We speak mostly English, but are fluent in German and Italian, and have a basic Spanish and French.

How to get to your site ✈ 🗺

Even though you can reach our village by bus (about a 10-minute walk from our house), we can pick you up at the train station in Ivrea.

Is there internet access? 🌐

Yes!

“Paying guests” Option. Could you accommodate visitors, couchsurfers, bikers, etc. etc.? 🎎

Yes. Let’s discuss the details via e-mail!  💁

CONTACT DETAILS 🔍📧

If you’re interested in our hospitality offer, please send us a message or email with a brief introduction about yourself, your expectations for the volunteering experience, some links to your social profiles or websites, or alternatively, a CV with a few photos. Also, let us know how long you ideally intend to stay and during which period. Please note that we may not respond to illegitimate requests (such as invitation letters), incomplete or anonymous profiles, insincere messages, AI written introductions, or those resembling spam or copy-paste. Thank you for your understanding!

Host Email ✉ cascina.codibugnolo@gmail DOT com

Hostname 📛 Simone&Milena

@Casa Codibugnolo volunteer project