Extending our community: the impact of service volunteering

As an intentional community, Camphill Kimberton is home to more than 100 people, including adults with disabilities, long-term volunteers and their children, and one to three-year service volunteers and apprentices.

Service volunteers and apprentices, from across America and around the world, become part of our community for a short time, but the impact we have on each other is felt much longer. “I have gotten to know that I am able to not just work with people with disabilities,” said a former volunteer, “but have fun with them, laugh with them and help them wherever I can. There is not a single day I do not look back or think about my time at Camphill Kimberton. Sometimes I think, how can I ever give back to them what they gave me?”

Each year, 20-25 service volunteers choose to come to Camphill Kimberton and practice “life sharing in community,” living and working side by side with villagers. Approximately half of the service volunteers are from the U.S., mostly through the AmeriCorps program, and many come from all over the world, including Germany, Egypt, South Korea, Lativa and Italy.

Weekdays are structured with morning and afternoon work sessions and three family-style meals are shared in each of the houses. Service volunteers usually work half of the day helping take care of a household. The other half of the work day is spent in a workshop such as the garden, dairy, or weavery, where they continue to work side by side with villagers. In the evening, everyone returns to the homes that they share, where relationships and caring continue. Service volunteers attend weekly meetings with their assigned mentor and other peers. Once a week, there are two hours of Orientation training, focused on a specific topic led by an outside expert or by a long-term coworker. During Orientation, they become certified in Red Cross First Aid, CPR and AED training, and they are educated on other topics such as sexuality policy and issues, cooperative living, Camphill values, artistic expression, and personal care. In the fall of 2011, we created a formalized Social Therapy Seminar available to all resident volunteers in their second year and beyond, which provides a deeper understanding of the Camphill values that they practice and allows them transferable college credit.

Service volunteers gain an invaluable and unique experience that they most likely could not gain anywhere else due to the Camphill approach to community life. Life sharing allows them to develop healthy, respectful relationships with people, no matter what their differences might be. “Camphill Kimberton is a wonderful community,” said one volunteer. “While it certainly taught me strength - giving me challenges I never thought I could master - it also taught me to soften. I am softer towards myself and others, being more open and forgiving of whatever unique abilities and disabilities we may have. “ It is our hope that volunteers who leave Camphill Kimberton take the special skills they have learned and integrate them into the next phases of their lives, making a difference in the world around them. As another volunteer put it: “The taste of service I got at Camphill Kimberton made me want to serve others.”