Overview
We have successfully purchased a beautiful piece of land in Portugal. We now have a fund for building a registered house on the land, but several things need to be done before that project can get underway. We will be making several site visits in the coming year and we’d like to take a team of volunteers along to help with the work. It helps us tremendously if the cost of these visits is supported by our community.
About the Project
IHOP Portugal is a project to replicate the things we’ve managed to achieve in a warehouse in London, but on beautiful rural land which is our own. It’s important to be one’s own landlord as it means we have the freedom to create anything we want and can plan for the longer term.
The project in Portugal involves purchasing some land (now complete), building a house to live in and building subsidiary other things, guided by the passions of those who want to get involved. These things can range from gardens to saunas, tree-houses to lakes, hermit cottages to zip lines.
Our vision for the project is to have a place to be, feeling calm and free from worry. It’s also a place to create and build. We envision creating a venue for possible events from small retreats to summer festivals. The house will be a residence, a place to visit and a possible venue. The gardens and other projects will be for the enrichment of those taking part.
We believe in the restorative properties of being able to live closer to nature, we want to foster creativity and physical action, we believe in integrating with the local community and giving back to the people and economy of Portugal, we believe in the joy of safe community spaces and we believe in the calm of a safe place to live.
What is a site visit?
During a site visit we will be preparing the land for the surveyor so that the architect can begin work on the house design. The land is very overgrown and needs a large amount of clearing. We have to clear the boundary and the location that we want the house to be built. This needs to be done as soon as we can to get the ball rolling to build the house. We also have to clear the land to comply with Portugal’s forest fire regulations. We will also be setting up a more elaborate base camp than the one that is already present so that people can visit and enjoy the land even before the house is ready. Typical duties on the trip will include digging up weeds, clearing brambles, clearing the water sources, chopping firewood and helping to build toilets and kitchen facilities.
What qualifies us for this project?
At the IHOP we have a good record of Getting Shit Done. This phrase simplifies a whole host of essential qualities. Those qualities are not obvious, but they are involved in essential things: working well together and working well apart. Our strength lies more in our commitment to emotional growth than to our practical experience, although we now have plenty of that too. Many people will appreciate how hard it is to take action in the world, and indeed we wouldn’t be able to do that without each other, but making things happen is something we are good at now. We’ve always tried to reach out to include as many people as we can in our learning and our journeys and we think IHOP Portugal will be an extension of that ability.
Where your funding goes
Your donations go directly to support individuals from our community coming along with us on site visits to make IHOP Portugal a reality. Much of the work could be carried out by labourers and there would be no need to visit the land at all, however we believe there is a great joy in interacting with the land ourselves. According to our research, it is more costly to bring people over to the land than to directly hire labourers, and that gap in funding is what your donations will go towards.