Our community places an emphasis on open and direct communication, an abundance of food, an excitement to host guests, cooperative child rearing, and peer education. We are mostly queer and/or genderqueer, and we aspire to be a safer space for marginalized people of many backgrounds. We place a high value on consent. Regular topics of conversation include queer and trans issues, relationship anarchy, sex, and radical approaches to child rearing.
We have several small, cooperative business and individual ventures that operate out of the community: a midwifery practice, a business management and bookkeeping service, an illustration and design service, a foam weaponsmith (for live action role playing and similar), and a general contracting firm.
As a commune, we provide for all of the needs and expenses of our members. As an intern, you will be expected to provide your own shoes, underwear, and health insurance. Other than that, all living expenses are included: housing, food, transportation, clothing, mobile phone service, health and hygiene supplies, access to a computer, $100/month personal spending money, coffee, and other miscellaneous expenses.
Depending on your personal financial situation, we can assist you in applying for state subsidized health insurance.
Our community is a clothing optional environment. You are never required to be naked, but you must be comfortable with other people choosing to be naked in common areas.
Assist in building 2 to 5 exterior bedrooms and participate in day to day life at the Mothership- An Egalitarian Commune and member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. Community tasks may include cooking, cleaning, food preservation, childcare, gardening, bicycle maintenance, home renovations, and participation in group decision making. With the exception of the construction work, there are no particular tasks that are mandatory.
We will teach you how to build an exterior bedroom, from foundation to roof, using standard construction techniques. Construction, woodworking, or other trades experience is helpful but not required. Comfort with handling power tools and the ability to work in a loud environment are required.
We will provide an opportunity to live in an intentional community, and provide opportunities to learn and participate in and learn about many aspects of community life including income sharing and alternative economics, community building, crafting policy, consensus building and cooking for large groups.
Upon completion of this internship you will have learned to use various power tools construction materials and techniques, and be able to manage building small, livable, exterior structures under 200 square feet.
You will develop your direct communication skills, learning to make use of techniques described in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty, while taking a critical eye to the limitations of those systems and the ways in which they can be misused.
You will have opportunities to learn about what we’ve done to build and maintain a vibrant and successful intentional community. You may choose to learn about different income sharing models, how to develop proposals that build consensus, when and when not to use consensus decision making, bookkeeping, personal financial planning, household maintenance, and many other hard and soft skills.