VOLUNTOURISM AT KIBBUTZ LOTAN
An increasingly prevalent trend with travelers, voluntourism offers the opportunity to get away and give back. A popular vacation with voluntourists is a trip to the Kibbutz Lotan in southern Israel’s Arava Valley.
At Lotan, visitors are exposed to the challenges and rewards involved with the design, building and running of sustainable communities. Through hands-on work, tourists learn about organic gardens; alternative/natural building with mud, straw, tires, and junk; creative recycling, creating art and usable objects from junk; the expansions, maintenance and running of the Center for Creative Ecology; the setting up of workshops for educational tour groups; the upkeep of nature trails; and the Lotan migratory bird reserve.
Volunteers live in the EcoCampus, a prototype model for sustainable living that is made of super-insulated straw-bale and mud geodesic domes. The daily lessons learned through living together as a micro-community in this low-impact environment are absolutely unique to Lotan and Israel.
