Energy Efficient Life Center (EELC)
Nowadays a major problem of urban population is that even the individual is working hard, often its family is poor, seek and unhappy because of the polluted air, water, food and the lack of time, normal family and community relations.
Trough free training courses and periods of common life in our demonstration center, we share with the willing people practical solutions and experience about Energy Efficiency in personal, social, environmental and economic aspects.
Since 2005 Trinoga association is developing as a small, family-sized NGO in the mountain village of Zhelen. The model we are applying was brought by Filip Kirilov, the co-founder of Trinoga, who lived in Trinoga’s mother association: “Association des Trois Salazes” on La Reunion Island- France in the period 2003-2005.
Our existence and activities inspired people to move from city to the countryside and now in Zhelen 3 more NGO and 7 more families are living and collaborating. Similar movement of young people to the Bulgarian countryside is observed in all parts of the country and our association is considered as an example of lifestyle in harmony between invidious, society and environment.
Since 2007 we collaborate with who is a specialist of Natural medicine and adept of the Integral approach (by Ken Wilber).
In Zhelen we are taking care of 1000 sq. m. of vegetable garden, 20 000 sq. m. of arid hill, transforming it in to a food forest, helping different countryside projects in Bulgaria and France, making free workshops for children in a school in Sofia (Professional School of Fashion), receiving trainee from France in stage (“Ecole de Mondy”), working with volunteers, creating .
Through the grant we want to renovate the houses, optimize the land and reorganize our trainings. We work with people in bigger, than smaller groups. The main goal is to learn how to begin and hold a project of energy efficient family life in nature with microeconomics, or just better perform your actual life.
We exchange on how to:
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have a balanced daily regime- sleep, then drink water or herbal tea, keep doing morning exercises to help the brain for syntheses of the neuro-hormones, how grow and prepare our food and what to eat, how to organize a balance between physical and intellectual work, contact with nature, creative art time, how to relax etc.;
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have and transmit a value system, based on: truth, respect for the others and the environment, honor (protect the weaker than you and make the stronger to respect you) and vocation;
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connect the people with knowledge and be able to learn from them;
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take care of the environment: combat the erosion, collect and store snow and rain water trough landscaping, create soil, establish a food forest, manage the forest as an recoverable source of energy, take care of the spring zones and the water axes;
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gather and transmit traditional crafts, knowledge and recipes, transform the raw matter from the gardens and the nature in to authentic and healthy products and guarantee the quality yourself;
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grow and educate children;
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have a non-dogmatic spirituality.
We are applying to this Competition because trough practical education (our family lives together with the learning family) we are aiming both of the thematic priorities. The tasks we want to fulfill with the grant will stabilize and optimize Trinoga’s example of life, as result more families and groups of people will add sense and value to them activities.
Filip is the only legal owner of the 4 small clay houses and 11 000 sq. m. of the land around. With contract he wants to give the property to Trinoga association for long period (20 years) for free. Now our center is accessible only for rustic persons (outdoor WC & shower etc.) The association needs adapted conditions for hosting people, and the land needs more hours of excavator machine to achieve the water retention landscaping. The grant can pay the renovation of the old clay houses making them energy and water efficient, using natural materials and innovative low technologies, can help with the landscaping as well.
The model of energy and water efficiency for house and garden will be a demonstration to share and reproduce elsewhere. If troughs your help we build an energy and water efficient system making the houses, the green houses and the gardens warmer, nicer and enlightened, an abundant and creative environment will appear. Our family will be more energy efficient and our center will be accessible in 4 seasons for diverse groups of people. The Bulgarian legislation aloud privet homeschooling and this is an integral part of our plan.
The organization’s experience of working in settings
Our work has to valorize the similarities between the multiple participants with different culture. We discovered that the family is a universal value for all humans. It is why being host or guest, Trinoga is creating a family environment where people with different origin can feel and act together as nephews, uncles, grandmothers, brothers and sisters. Our experience shows that for acquisition of know-how, conscious presence, proper environment, common aims and time are needed. Nowadays we are working on amelioration of the life conditions and proper selection of the right people to live with in Trinoga. This Competition can help us to improve our environment, our life- conditions and choose the right persons to share it. Organize trainings in Bulgaria and cross borders. We want to have an optimal associative structure to create a strong core team of our association by the synergy of different cultures and generations.
The houses we have, the land we look after and the associative activities allow having the following structure:
1. One permanent living host family (us);
2.Two more families (better with kids and grandparents) from other countries, who wants to have an energy efficient lifestyle, living with us for months (an year, or two), participating with affordable donation for the food and accommodation, learning by helping in the associative activities;
3. Two trainees;
4. Two motivated short time free volunteers.
This structure promotes intercultural and intergenerational exchange, all the associative activities and values are accomplished, all participants will benefit and we can do privet homeschooling.
Since its creation, the main goal of Trinoga association is the transmission of knowledge by doing together. We organized and participated in cross-border exchange events in La Reunion Island (2004, 2005, 2008), UK (2006), Germany (2010), France (2005, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2015), Swiss (2013, 2015), and Bulgaria (2005-2015). In 2008 and 2009 we host 4 long-term volunteers with the EU program called European Voluntary Service. Over 1000 free volunteers and trainees took part of the associative activities in Zhelen over the years- changing blend of people with multicultural background, coming from all around the world and at all ages. Trinoga is in permanent contact and human resource exchange with her sister-association: Trepieds sur Terre, developing similar activities in Freney d’Oisans, in the French Alps.
The Energy Efficient Life Center is a result of long years of work of many people but the idea to find direct financial solutions was born from the synergy during our last training in Swiss from 9th to 16th of March 2015, resulting with the creation of the between associations from 9 countries.
Cross – regional approach
The Energy Efficient Life Center in Zhelen is an environment for practical exchange of good forms and know-how. Developing the synergy of our international core team, we will use the existing Trinoga national and international network to travel and participate in different exchange events and activities. The border cross-regional cooperation will open our field of impact and enriches our network with practices from other cultures.
Our family is specialized in creating enabling environment and conduct practical workshops on how to:
1. Take care of our environment: Permaculture and Permafamily
2. Growing plants with Biodynamic.
3. Have a healthy lifestyle beginning with the balanced daily regime.
4. Create & sell healthy products.
5. Paneurhythmy dance.
For example, being guests, we ask the host to aloud us to design and realize on a piece of his land and there, during 2- 10 days we are creating an integral garden including all components (anti-erosion, water, soil, plants, forest etc.) Simultaneously we organize a dragon-dreaming brainstorming process about the cultural an economical potential of this new garden and the whole site. Or- we walk on the land, learn how to recognize and properly gather the medicinal herbs (good to invite an old local person for that part), then we prepare together a healing balm (it cooks 3 hours) and share knowledge about healthy recipes, useful natural preservatives, important minerals, micro elements…and we exchange on how you can create a network of distribution of your products. Or- we wake up early in the morning and do a mixture of morning practices from different cultures- ancient India, China and Egypt, modern Europe, Bulgaria…
We are aiming to work with sustainable families, NGO and communities living in the countryside or just having a piece of land or even a terrace in the city. We prefer Europe and Central Asia because of our knowledge about growing plants in moderate latitudes. For the moment we are implementing our activities in Bulgaria, France and Swiss. We want to begin regular exchange with Macedonia and the other Balkan countries because we understand each other’s language (with privet homeschooling in Bulgaria the children learns at home, but pass exams and have diploma for the year from an official Bulgarian school). We have friends with similar ecologic projects in Portugal, Swiss, Italia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Lebanon, Jordan, but we did not visit them yet. We like the idea of using a boat and work with the countries of Black, Aegean and Adriatic seas. Ian Winkless is the founder of “Association des Trois Salazes” and first trainer of Filip Kirilov. Nowadays he is running a sustainable project in Madagascar and we would like to reestablish our regular exchange. We are open to exchange with all countries and cultures, if the people are honest and industrious. We need more experts and NGO support in the following fields: major water issues, energy efficient architecture design for our houses and green houses, water retention landscape design for our lands, pedagogy, positive psychology, music, fine arts and aikido.
Impact at the community level
Once we open the renovated hall for practices (under the future new roof) and the new workshop area of our EELC on free disposition for sustainable practices and workshops, a wave of new workshop activities will arise. That will give opportunities for positive exchange and new relations between the local people from Zhelen (population: 150 inhabitants, distance: 3km from EELC), the people from Svoge (pop: 10 000, dist.: 8km), from Sofia (pop: 1, 5 million, dist.: 60 km.) the people from the Bulgarian eco- networks (Alive places, Permaculture, The Green Team of Bulgaria, The Green Piovra…) our international Myceliane, Permafamily, Wild Kairos networks and the networks from the border-cross regional cooperation. From the local people mainly the few left families with traditional lifestyle and intergenerational exchange will participate, from the next town the group of the yoga course and many interested young people can regularly join and from the capital and the world every workshop leader and network will bring his “family” and “fans”. For us disadvantaged groups must have advantage: we always do simultaneous translation so everybody can participate to the action; we bring with the car and on hands the old and the disadvantaged persons and take personal special care of them, we consider both man and women worth trust and respect- in healthy family environment such a behavior is normalized.
If our project is competitive, we can present an architectural renovation project, permaculture design plan and annual program of free education exchange in Zhelen for 2 families and 2-5 trainees and volunteers. We do need help to optimize all parts of our plan.
The place of our center in the Balkan mountains:
