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We here at Lost Valley are excited for the upcoming busy season and for the opportunity to teach a new crop of students all about Permaculture and Ecovillage Life! Our guests seem to continually bless our community with their diverse backgrounds and new ideas as they come and go on their paths of learning and growth.  We'd love to host you! For more information, visit our website at www.lostvalley.org. We hope to see you there!

Early Registration for the Summer and Fall Ecovillage and Permaculture Certificate Programs is Now Open!

Summer EPCP Dates: June 16 - August 8, 2008 (Early Registration discount of $250 ends April 1st)

Fall EPCP Dates: September 29 - October 24, 2008 (Early Registration discount of $200 ends August 15th)

These outstanding living and learning courses are growing in popularity every year. We limit the number of participants in order to provide a tight-knit and engaging learning environment. Registration is on a first come, first serve basis, so we encourage people who know they want to attend to register early and reserve a place. For details and information about our permaculture programs, visit www.lostvalley.org/epcp or call (541)937-3351 x112.

Stay tuned for the dates of our 2-week Winter Permaculture Design Certification Course.

New this year!

Sustainable Homes: An Introduction to Eco-Building and Appropriate Technology

From owner builder to eco-builder, this three-week intensive offers a broad overview of the elements of home building and design with a focus on Permaculture principles. Learn about the basics of building from foundations to roofing. Become familiar with natural building and sustainable techniques. Participants will have direct involvement in hands-on practice sessions and ongoing building projects in various stages of construction. Find out more about appropriate technologies you could be using in your home today. We will run this first-time course in the last three weeks of August 2008 if there is enough show of interest. So please call (541)937-3351 x112 if you are interested and spread the word to friends and neighbors.

Employment Opportunities at Lost Valley!

If you are interested in residing here in our intentional community on 87 acres of beautiful forest, meadows, and gardens and are qualified for any of the open positions listed below, we'd love to hear from you!
   * Senior Accountant
   * Bookkeeper and/or Financial Manager
   * Natural Building Specialist
   * Kitchen Coordinator
   * Events Coordinator
   * Development Coordinator
For more information about these employment opportunities, please visit our employment page at www.lostvalley.org/jobs and click on the job listed in the expanded menu on the left.

Internships at Lost Valley!

If you or someone you know would like to intern here at Lost Valley, please check out the open internships listed below. We'd love to help teach you valuable skills and demonstrate the many facets of life in an intentional community as you learn and grow here with us.
   * Tech Support
   * Outreach
   * Vegetarian Cooking and Kitchen Management
   * Hospitality, Service, and Sacred Space
   * Ecovillage and Permaculture Program
If you'd like to learn more about these internships, see our intern page at www.lostvalley.org/intern and click on the list of Lost Valley internships in the left menu.

Sponsorship Opportunities

We are now offering opportunities for those who value our work to sponsor specific projects financially. Help us keep Lost Valley moving forward in fulfilling its educational mission! (Please see http://www.lostvalley.org/sponsorshipopportunities for more details.) Here are some of our ongoing projects that can benefit from your support:

Lost Valley Sustainability Tour:
We are creating a series of more than thirty engraved interpretive signs to educate visitors about sustainability features of our developing ecovillage. These signs will explore such topics as bike/pedestrian-friendly design, local food, reusing/recycling, and the ecological benefits of cooperative living, and will explain features such as the cob welcome kiosk, cob phone booth, solar water heaters and showers, solar wood-drying sheds, sustainably harvested wood floors, solar cooker, hayboxes, photovoltaic system, cordwood sauna, papercrete pumphouse, forest gardens, energy-saving retrofits of existing buildings, and more.

Ecovillage and Permaculture Design Program Scholarships:

Help those who cannot afford to pay full price for our Ecovillage and Permaculture Design courses to be able to attend. We are especially interested in reaching diverse and disadvantaged populations with these courses, which provide essential information and skills that empower individuals and communities to design their lives more sustainably and live more cooperatively.

Nature Center Handbook and Trail Guide Development:
Work on a Nature Center informational handbook has been partially completed, but has stalled due to time and funding limitations. A Nature Center Handbook and Trail Guide would complement the already-existing trail signs and plant identification
signs to make our trail system much more educational for visitors.

Native Plants and Permaculture May 2007 Conference Proceedings:
We recorded every session at May's Native Plants and Permaculture conference--all that remains is to finish transcribing the presentations and discussions, edit the transcripts into readable form, and publish. It's not a minor undertaking, but with your help we can bring it to completion.

Shrub and Tree Planting, Carbon Emissions Offset:
One of the most effective ways to offset personal carbon emissions is through the planting of trees and shrubs to sequester carbon. Our permaculture designs and ecological restoration efforts depend on our ability to acquire plants, including nursery stock of species and varieties that we cannot grow ourselves. Your contribution will help us establish edible, useful, and ecologically beneficial plantings here at Lost Valley, increasing both our long-term sustainability and our ability to educate others.

Lost Valley Internships:
Some of our most essential work is done by interns--those who come to us for periods of three to twelve months to assist us in our various project areas (kitchen, garden, land, outreach, technical support, etc.) while acquiring valuable skills and learning about community. Hosting, housing, and feeding interns entails expenses to us (approximately $200 per intern per month). Your support in this area will allow us to accept more interns, which in turn will enable us to accomplish more work, more effectively.

Please make checks payable to Lost Valley Educational Center, and mail to LVEC, attn.: Nature Center/Sponsorships, PO Box 55, Dexter, OR 97431, or contact Chris Roth at chris AT talkingleaves.org, 541-937-2567 ext. 116.