Grain & Sens is a multicultural eco-community in Ardèche, France consisting of four families who all believe there could be more people living together and sharing resources. Where there once was a single family, now there are 14 people living in community. They all live in simple tiny houses each with their own gardens to grow food. Sharing resources and responsibilities helps them to live more sustainably, saves them a lot of time and money and creates a greater sense of freedom so that they can pursue their passion and strive for a higher quality of life. It shouldn’t be so foreign to want to support each other and recreate this connection to people that has been lost in this separate society. At Grain & Sens, they host visitors and share this experience with others. They offer workshops and classes as well as volunteer opportunities. They believe that if people can come there and see what they do, then people can heal themselves too. Get involved with Grain & Sens: Website: https://www.grainandsens.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grainandsens Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grainandsens @grainandsens
Find an Intentional Community: https://www.ic.org Find a volunteering and learning opportunity on an organic farm: https://wwoof.net Special thanks to Guerrilla Foundation for funding this video of solutions! https://guerrillafoundation.org Produced by Rob Greenfield, Jameson Johnson and Ed Carr Filmed by Ed Carr Edited by Jameson Johnson
Rob Greenfield’s work is Creative Commons and this content is free to be republished and redistributed, following the terms of the creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license. Learn about Creative Commons and see the guidelines here: http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
— Rob Greenfield is an activist and humanitarian dedicated to leading the way to a more sustainable and just world. He embarks on extreme projects to bring attention to important global issues and inspire positive change. 100% of his media income is donated to grassroots nonprofits. His YouTube channel is a source to educate, inspire and help others to live more sustainable, equal and just lives. Videos frequently cover sustainable living, simple living, growing your own food, gardening, self-sufficiency, minimalism, off the grid living, zero waste, living in a tiny house and permaculture.
This is the Grain and Scents eco-community.
We're a collective of 11 adults and 4 kids
that came together with a common goal.
We bought a property together, Lavanon.
It's 20 hectares, 15 of forest and 5 of prairie.
What we're trying to do here
is to live more connected with ourselves,
with others and with the environment
and doing all of that with big open doors
for whoever wants to come in and share that experience with us.
In the shared house, a community kitchen
where we have all of the food that we buy together.
There's the dining room and the living room.
And then the other shared spaces include a library
where we've put all of our books together,
a wood workshop where we've put all of our tools together
and an office where we've put all of our office junk together.
Here in our community,
each family has a small private space.
So Roma, Seva and I, we live in a yurt.
Araf, Kim and Jonah, they live in a gulot,
which is like a tiny house on wheels.
Astrid, Ed, Will and Elio are living in a small house
that was on the property.
Because we have so many shared spaces,
we're very comfortable living in our small spaces
and they actually become like small cocoons and family units.
So already we're able to put four families onto a property
where there was just one family living.
So instead of two people,
now you have 14 people living on the same land.
When there's something to get done,
you can call the community to come and help you
and you're gonna make a garden bed in an hour
with something that would have taken you
three or four hours,
just because you have many hands
and people can come and help.
The shared responsibility I think is really liberating.
We work so well together and it's so complimentary
that somebody is going to do the thing
that you don't really want to do
because chances are they do want to do it.
So each person is doing their part, which makes it work.
Each role is really, really important.
I think we have a lot of trust
that when it's somebody's turn to do the finances part,
that they're going to stay on it
and then they're gonna keep us informed
and we're gonna have meetings to know where we're at
to try and make everybody feel at peace.
Living in community is having a huge support network.
I know that I have people around me
that I can go to and ask for help.
A lot of support for the kids here
because there's so many adults
and luckily also adults that don't have kids yet.
So they also take the pleasure to spend time
with the kids that live in the community
and as a parent, it's really appreciated
and it's really a rich experience, I think, for the kids.
They have so many adults around them to learn all the time.
My daughter, she appreciates that
and she'll come back and tell me about what she's done
or what she's learned with somebody else.
It feels nice.
There's a lot of things that we see ourselves learning now,
living in community, that our kids are learning
at the same time.
So it's reassuring to think that they might grow up
with a better concept of how to communicate
than we started off with.
Big advantage in our community
is the way that we organize cooking.
Pretty much you sign up to cook once a week.
You have to cook for anywhere between 15 and 20 people
because we have a lot of visitors here also,
but then that's it for the week.
And what's really good about that
is everybody gives it their all when they cook once a week.
So we eat really good all the time.
When we created this project,
we defined in the beginning
that it wasn't just going to be a place for us to live.
It was really important for us to be able to host people
and to share this experience with other people,
which is why our reason of being
is un lieu de vie et de partage.
That means a place of living and sharing.
The reason that it's important to us to share the project
is just to give the idea, to say like,
oh, it is possible.
That's another way of living.
And if people can come here and see that we can do it,
then maybe they can heal themselves too.
When we started the project,
we started with visiting other communities.
We needed to see what they were doing.
How did they get there?
We realized there's actually quite a lot
and no two communities are the same.
And that's what's really beautiful about it.
I think there's a lot of beautiful projects
based on sharing all around the world
and taking it to the level of living together
is just the next step.
