Sadhana Forest is both a reforestation and water conservation project, and a sustainable living community in southeastern India. It was founded 11 years ago and has since planted 30,000 trees! Interns will immerse themselves in the community and learn how to reduce their ecological footprint and demand for energy. Interns will also experience and work with indigenous tree planting and contour bunding for water conservation, which will help regrow the almost-extinct Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF). This is our mission: to bring back the TDEF and prevent it from extinction.

Interns gain hands on experience not only in reforestation and water conservation techniques but also in community building and development. Come prepared to wake early, work hard, live simply and learn a lot!

Features of our community:

- We are vegan! For 400 rupees per day you get 3 vegan, organic meals. We ask that you eat only vegan food inside the community and do not bring any packaged or processed food into the community.

- We use compost toilets! We keep our pee and poo separate so we can use them again!

• Our pee goes into the garden because the high nitrogen contents acts as a fertilizer, and the phosphorous and potassium replenish soil minerals.
• Our poo gets mixed with sawdust, which enables aerobic processing and makes it virtually odorless, and then we put it back into the forest as a soil conditioner and preventer of soil degradation.

- We practice gift economy! Volunteers offer us their gifts of labor, knowledge, and talent, and we offer our volunteers our knowledge of planting trees in arid lands, accommodations, and our community.

- We are substance free! We ask that volunteers abstain from tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, both inside and outside of the community, for their entire duration of volunteering.

- We live in open-air huts, made in the traditional style of Tamil Nadu. Volunteers live next to lizards and chipmunks, and are prepared for monsoon conditions (dry bags) and communal living.

- We are a community of people with similar interests and values, from all over the world, and from all different backgrounds. You will be exposed to new ideas and new ways of living. We don’t just grow trees; we grow people.

http://sadhanaforest.org