Camille Chaudron is a speaker, advisor, director, but above all a convinced environmental activist. You probably know her better under the nickname girl go green on social networks. A few months ago, Camille left town to settle in the farm of Peuton, a permaculture farm in southern Mayenne. The result of a long journey, it bears witness to his journey.
Can you explain your transition?
You have to understand that this is the result of a long process. Before this change, I was already an activist eco-friendly city dweller but that didn’t go far enough. I felt the need to stop being so off the ground. I started with a first immersive course, four years ago, entitled “yoga and permaculture”. Subsequently, I visited several schoolboy inspiring, made woofings that gave me a lot of hope. Naturally, after several years of spending a large part of my time in these places that made me feel good, I left my Parisian apartment to join the farm of Peuton, I finally felt ready.
Why did you choose the farm of Peuton?
I got along very well with the owners. We were consistent on our values. I found there a precious balance between development of theoutdoor ecology with the preservation of biodiversity, and interior ecology with wellness activities. Here, we take care of people and the planet.
What advice would you give to people looking to transition?
The advice I can give is that you have to try: test by visiting schoolboy, explore by making woofings, discovering the experience by carrying out immersion workshops. Next July, we will host a traineeship to “explore your path towards transition”, at the farm of Peuton. The goal is for everyone to find the transition that suits them because there are a multitude of them. I also advise the Fertiles organization where I spent two months training in shared governance. It is a concrete formation to make a network and to develop its training towards the resilience.
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Sylvère is a former web developer who decided to leave the world of advertising five years ago. He recounts the stages (meetings and readings) that led him to knock on the door of the light farma collective eco-place in Béarn.
Can you explain your journey?
I worked in advertising, a fairly offline. By living with a roommate abroad, I got out of this privileged bubble and I met people with whom I shared the same values. I liked the technical aspect of the work, but I detected an inconsistency. On the one hand, I pushed people to consume through my activity, on the other I unrolled my common thread towards resilience. I was uncomfortable contributing to a system I didn’t buy into.
On the one hand, I pushed people to consume through my activity, on the other I unrolled my common thread towards resilience.
It is through the prism of food that I returned to ecology. I started to no longer consume processed foods, then I took care to buy local and seasonal and I went to meet the producers. At the same time, I read the book how everything can fall apart, by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, in early 2016. It opened my eyes to the emergency situation. It was a moment of uncertainty in my career where I had freedoms. My savings could allow me to think about this change of life and very few things prevented me from taking this turn. I left myself a year to do woofings and continue some projects to operate a transition. Through encouraging encounters, I broke away from competition and the appearance of capitalism, which I found harmful to finding meaning in a sober lifestyle. Humanly, I progressed by taking care of the living and of others.
What qualities did you find at the light farm?
I was looking for a collective living space consistent with my values, which was both open to transmission and focused on experimentation. The projects that inspired me in those I visited went far into detail. The light farm presented itself as the most successful project (self-sufficiency, energy autonomy, pooling, collective life, spirituality). I found car sharing interesting, to break this dependence on fossil fuels. I was looking for a balance between the peasant way of life (outdoor work with plants and animals) and a reflection on the live together in the management of emotions, which I found at FL.
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David Lerebours is one of the first members of the ecovillage of Pourguessince 2016. He talks about the motivations that led him to leave Paris to join this collective located on the borders of Ariège.
What were your motivations for successfully leaving the city?
This change was motivated by the desire to leave Paris and by the idea of offering our children a life close to nature in an environment of freedom. We didn’t want to raise them in concrete. We wanted to put an end to this vicious circle of producer-consumer, with the conviction that this scheme would lead us straight into the wall. For a long time, with my companion, we had been considering a rural life but we hadn’t had the courage to do so. Ramïn Farhangi and Marjorie Bautista, the two founders of the dynamic school of Paris, in which I worked, proposed the project to us and we followed them.