New Mayapur Vedic Village (France)
This organization is located in the heart of France, 3 hours south of Paris, surrounded by lush green forests. Château d’Oublaise is a historic monumental building and a home for spiritual and cultural seekers. The land of the organization is over 80 hectare, a lot of fields and forest which is great for anyone who is interested in nature and its various aspects.
Visitors often come as it is in the Centre of France where one can easily visit well-known places, rich with its patrimony. The visitors and guests love to surcharge their energy through forest walks. We encourage cultural seekers to come and experience the more ecological lifestyle led here, as it is also a lot inspired by the eastern part of the world.
The community life revolves around simple living, high thinking. Eco farming is the essence of our traditional way of growing fruits, vegetables and flowers for the community.Cows and pets are also part of our community and are treated as a family and are looked after with care and love.
As we are an international community, this adds the flavor to unity and diversity.
We host several festivals every year, and summer is the time where most guests from all over the world will come, often over a hundred. There have also been two Summer Camps in the past two years, where over 30 participants -from all parts of Europe- took part in, all organized by the youths of the community.
In the youth department: we have different classes available to everyone, such as yoga, cooking, Ayurveda, playing instruments, pottery, archery, learning about ecological farming.
We strive to be able to offer European youth various opportunities to learn and gain experience in the most affordable way possible. The organization has already been welcoming volunteers to participate and learn more about the ecological farming for over 4 years now. We genuinely desire that the youths gain more cultural experience by the different workshops and lectures.
The youths of the community have been organizing events for two years in a row, an 8 to 10 days summer camp. They have successfully coordinated over 25 to 30 youths from different age groups -between 13 and 25-, and workshops such as yoga, gardening, pottery, archery, art and so on, all by qualified teachers. There were also seminars and lectures. The participants were also from all over Europe, as well as as other parts of the world.
Anne-Laure Loison
Vice-president
Anne-Laure Loison has completed her studies of psychology in the university of Paris. She is a psychologist that had been helping children in governmental schools, and so has gained quite a lot of experience in understanding the youths. She is now the Vice President of the community and is helping on a daily basis with management, solving issues, showing great patience in any situation, and organizing various events and festivals, all this for several years.
Revati Porte is a youth leader who takes care of informing /contacting/ updating the potential participants and other key staff on everything that is going on. She is good at management and is on the way to learn and acquire more knowledge and experience.
Other youths of the community who contribute a lot: Lalita Mongendre is in social studies as well as English language, she does a lot of the written works as well as helping in the organizing schedules. Filip Hus has shown great leadership skills, he is patient, emphatical, and is great at managing everyone, he is in a university for languages and is fluent in French, English, and Polish, as well as some Spanish.
Ishani Ramessur is a great spokesperson that always comes up with brand new ideas and initiatives, she has a determination to accomplish projects that is rare to find, as well as leadership skills. These youths were the organizers of the two summer camps, and know the community and it's area very well.