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Lova Lava Land Eco-Resort’s Green Living Retreat & Workshop
5 days/4 nights: Includes accommodation, 2 healthy meals daily, & daily workshops
Early Bird Special: Reserve by June 15th for $200 off!
Reserve Now!
July 17-21, 2009
Come join us in paradise for a fun hands-on all-inclusive retreat on the Big Island of Hawaii! You will choose between our creative & eco-friendly budget accommodations and have two healthy, organic meals per day along with a daily green living workshop theme & interactive learning.
Whether you are already immersed in green ideas and want to share/discuss/learn more or if you are truly ‘green’ to the ideas behind living more eco-friendly, you are sure to get your creative juices flowing and walk away with some real, do-able ways to live better. Each day will include an eco-theme where we will do an interactive workshop, including some fun hands-on projects. Goals of the workshops include: building confidence in do-it-yourself home projects, showing that people on a budget can easily change habits and live more green, and giving participants a forum to share and creatively express ideas for making their own world and life more eco-friendly. You will go home with a written plan for your own life changes and a realistic way to make those changes on a budget.
This will be a fun, interactive, & customizable retreat. By customizable, we mean that you will have a say in not only the topics we cover, but also the food served! After you reserve, we will send a survey to get a more in-depth idea of what you are excited to learn about, what you suggest we add to the workshop schedule, where your knowledge level is on topics we will discuss, and also get to vote on food menu items! *Read more about our menu here.
Tentative Workshop Schedule:
*Subject to change as we will survey participants about interests and knowledge level and adjust accordingly. Since this will be a small group retreat, everyone will have a say in what they want to learn and take from this. We welcome all knowledge levels.
Day 1: Recycling, Composting, & Reusing
- The aim of this day is to demonstrate how to reduce waste in our daily lives and how we can prevent that waste from filling up landfills and polluting the earth. We will start a 5 day exercise where each person will have to take care of any waste they produce during the week. Then we will have a fun project to build something of use from waste/reused items.
Day 2: Alternative Energy: Wind & Solar
- Starting with a tour of LLL’s alternative energy system, we will then work through a worksheet to analyze your home energy use and then plan out a possible alternative energy system for your own home.
Day 3: Eating Green: Organic Gardening/Buying & Cooking with Local & Organic Ingredients
- Beginning with a discussion of why eating green affects life expectancy (not to mention mother earth), we solve realistic ways to make this happen in our daily lives. Sharing recipes and blind taste tests will be part of the fun!
Day 4: DIY (Do-it-Yourself) Solar Hot Water System
- We are going to build and install a budget solar hot water system at LLL. This will be a hands-on project that anyone will be able to take home and incorporate in their home. For those with no DIY/construction experience, you will gain confidence and excitement about taking on projects like this in your life!
Day 5: Living & Buying Green
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A product review of which products are really green, how you acquire them on a budget, and what this means for you & your families’ health. (Ex’s: cleaning products, soaps, shampoos, bags, home improvement products)
- Confused about all the new green products coming out and if they are worth the price? We will review all types of green products and what they mean for you and the earth. A focus will be on finding affordable solutions that work.
Each day will include breakfast, lunch, and free time in the afternoon. We will provide a suggested off-site activity for the afternoon that relates to the topic of the day. Examples include a visit to an organic farm and farmer’s market on “Greening your Diet” day and a tour of local windmills/geothermal plants on “Alternative Energy” day. There will also be a movie showing in the evening relating to our topic of the day. Dinners are on your own but we are suggesting that each person or couple offer to cook for the group one evening and share your own special healthy recipes in practice!
Price:
Early Bird Special: Book by June 15th for $200 off!!
$900 FOR TWO in our VW Bus Accommodation (2 rentals available)
$1100 FOR TWO in our Yurt Accommodation (only 1 rental available)
*Availability will be updated here on this page - we've blocked our normal availability calendar so that only retreat participants will be onsite from July 17-21st.
*We can also accommodate parties of 1 or parties of 3-4. Please contact us for more details as the price will change. Children with responsible parents welcome (yurt accommodation not available for children).
PROCEEDS from this retreat will be used to purchase and install a wind turbine at Lova Lava Land, which will expand our current off-grid alternative energy system. You know where your money is going and will even be able to visit next year and make use of it! :)
Work Exchange: If you are unable to pay the normal price, we will be offering a few spots at a slight discount, in exchange for help with washing dishes and other misc. duties during the retreat. Contact us for more details.
Your Retreat Host:
Anitra Pickett is owner, creator, and builder of Lova Lava Land Eco-Resort. She is also the Hawaii Green Living Examiner (see her articles here). Anitra comes with a Yale Ivy League education and HPU MBA, and used to live a big city corporate life. She has abandoned that lifestyle for a kinder, gentler, greener way of living in paradise and hasn’t looked back since! Anitra offers a unique perspective on green living because this is a fairly new concept for her life and she’s figured out the power and confidence gained with a do-it-yourself attitude and by independently educating herself on off-grid, budget, and eco-friendly concepts. Although not a fan of labels, she considers herself more of a “realistic” green proponent and student of mother earth versus a 'treehugger' or extreme environmentalist. Rather than judging those that ‘don’t,’ she prefers to praise those that ‘do’ – and gets personal motivation from seeing those that ‘try’!
Special Guest Host:
Lova Lava Land has been honored to have Sadie DeSimone spend the summer as our official onsite Camp Host and now co-host of this retreat. Sadie's past experiences and current adventurous lifestyle is without a doubt, book-worthy. She is a retired substitute teacher (sometimes working with special needs kids) and technical writer and has even applied to join the Peace Corps later this year. Her two daughters miss her when she goes off on adventures, but the world is a better place because she gives back so much. Sadie enjoys meeting new people
and has that special magic that makes you feel comfortable and eager to be around her. She has a love for all things green (particularly gardening and cooking) and an ability to inspire others to share her environmental concern. Sadie expresses her life philosophy as: "I try to live as green as possible, since everything I consume will eventually have an effect on someone else. I try to instill a love of travel and nature in my daughters and grandchildren, and above all I believe in doing what's right. It's not always easy knowing what that is, but being open to new ideas, new people, new experiences, and having empathy for everyone, no matter how different, is important to me."
Extra Special Guests:
 Pudding |
 Bongo |
 Jabba |
More guest speakers likely to be added at a later date...will depend on participant input for additional topics.
Food will be a major part of this retreat and will be an educational experience all in itself! Have you tried eating all organic and healthy for 5 days in a row before? Even 1-2 days of doing this and you will feel a change in your body - higher energy levels, better sleeping, more alert brain activity, and so much more!
Our goal is to provide you meals that will not only be healthy, detoxifying, & organic but that will be delicious and persuade even the worst fast-food junkie that eating healthy can mean truly enjoying a meal. We have researched ingredients to include some things you may have never heard of before - and looked especially for high nutrient/detoxifying items. We will be teaching you about different ingredients so you can go home knowing how to buy and cook them in your own home. A recipe book will be provided at the end of the retreat! To make it even more fun, we will also let you vote on possible menu items.
A short list of possible menu items include:
(Vegetarian & Non-Vegetarian menu available)
Warning: Your mouth may start watering!
- Wake up to a fresh cup of Kona or Kau coffee, grown and purchased straight from the farmer!
- Enjoy macadamia nut pancakes, made from nuts grown at a neighboring farm.
- BBQ/Grilling day will offer grass fed Big Island beef burgers or tofu burgers, complete with toppings grown organically on the island and guacamole made fresh from avocado trees in the area.
- To cool down in the midday heat we'll have fresh fruit smoothies with organic yogurt and mangos/guavas/pineapple/coconut grown in Hawaii.
- If our local fisherman has fresh catch, we'll grill up a big fresh ahi - caught in the very waters you can see from the property!
- Fresh organic salads and soups, like: Kale Zuppa Toscana Soup; Cannellini Bean, Red Onion, & Arugula Salad; Greek Quinoa Salad, and more!
- Huevos rancheros with island eggs and veggies from the Farmer's Market.
- Organic whole wheat pasta with homemade pesto sauce - topped with cherry tomatoes and cheese.
- Watch us open a coconut picked from the beach below the town and make coconut crusted organic chicken and coconut fruit salad.
- Melt in your mouth eggplant parmesan with garlic bread.
Q & A:
Q: How soon do I need to reserve/pay?
A:
We cannot stress this enough (and consider yourself warned), but we would like to think that available spots for this retreat will be filled within a few weeks and definitely well before the start date (of course we could be wrong too). We want this to be a small nice group of 8-10; so there are limited spaces to begin with. Please reserve as soon as you are able so that there is still space for you. The first to reserve will also have the first choice of accommodation. Additionally, the earlier you reserve flights the more likely you are to get more options and better prices.
Q: What kind of food will you provide?
A: We will provide a fresh, healthy breakfast, lunch, and some misc. yummy & healthy snacks. It is our personal goal to attempt to use all local and/or organic ingredients. There will be a vegetarian or non-vegetarian option. Some examples of meals include macadamia nut pancakes, fresh local fruit salad, BBQ with Big Island grass fed beef or tofu burgers, pesto pasta, coconut chicken, fresh fruit smoothies, & much more. We are making all the meals onsite for you to see and even help with if you want to learn how to make them yourself!
Q: I have certain food restraints (allergies, no meat, etc.). Can this be accommodated?
A: Yes! After your reservation is complete we will survey the group for any food restrictions, requests, and ideas.
Q: I see dinners are not included. What are our options for dinner?
A: Our idea is to have each individual or couple volunteer to make a special meal for the whole group one evening. It’s a great way to share and find out new healthy recipes (and will give you hands-on about purchasing healthy ingredients and then cooking them in an off-grid kitchen). This is not mandatory though and guests are free to get dinner offsite (there are several restaurants within walking distance).
Q: How will the schedule work?
A: We want this to be a relaxing time in paradise for you but also one where you are learning a lot and each day is exciting. Thus, we will start each day at a relaxed time (not painfully early) and go through the workshop at a pace comfortable for everyone. On most days we will finish up the workshop either around lunch or a little after. You then will have free time to pursue our recommended outings related to our daily theme or any other attractions you’d like to see on the island. We do not wear watches at Lova Lava Land and use the sun to tell time – and nature to help direct what will be the most appropriate activities for that day.
Q: Do I need a rental car/is there airport pickup?
A: As of now, we have no formal plans for airport pickup but will try to accommodate, if needed. Please contact us with your needs – we won’t let transportation get in the way of you attending the retreat. You will not need your own transportation to attend the retreat, although may like to have it if you want to explore a lot of the island’s beautiful attractions. We plan to arrange for optional carpooled activities on some afternoons.
Q: I want to arrive earlier or stay later than the exact retreat dates. Is this possible?
A: YES, dependent upon availability of course! Please book that online through our normal online reservation system.
Q: Are your normal cleaning fees & Hawaii taxes included in the retreat price?
A: Yes, everything is already included in the price. We will NOT be offering the normal “LLL Cleaning Fee Program” during the retreat and will provide all linens. Although, please feel free to bring your own linens if you wish.
Q: Are there any discounts?
A: We will offer a small work exchange discount for 1-2 people as a way of making it more affordable for someone that normally could not afford it. If you can afford it, please save these spots for someone that truly needs it since the spots are limited. Contact us for more details if you want to apply for the work exchange. The work exchange duties will include washing dishes and possibly a few other minor tasks that arise during the retreat. You will not miss out on any workshops as a result of these duties (but will have to give up some of the free time during the retreat). There are no other discounts available.
Q: I will be traveling alone – can I participate and what is the price?
A: We will work with you to find the best solution for accommodation and a reduced price (since our price includes two people, you of course would pay less). Please contact us for more details.
Q: I have a group of 3-4 – can we participate and what is the price?
A: Depending on the makeup of your group (adults/children/couples), we can either split you into 2 rentals or open up the possibility for more than 2 to be accommodated in a VW bus. Several VW rentals have 2 full sized beds so could sleep 2 adults + one child or even 3 adults (a little cramped, but it can work). Please contact us with details of your group make-up and we’ll work out the appropriate solution and price.
Q: I’m worried I have too little or too much knowledge for the planned workshops.
A: Our goal is to accommodate ALL knowledge levels. To do that, after you reserve, we will send a brief survey to better know where your knowledge level is and make every effort to accommodate your needs and goals for the retreat. The retreat will be a small group and we do hope there will be a lot of sharing of ideas, questions, and discussions about each topic.
Q: What kind of people would this retreat be best for?
A: We welcome people of all ages and backgrounds. The more variety, the more we can all learn from each other! All we ask is that everyone come with a positive attitude, good spirit, and abide by the golden rule and good karma while here!
Some examples:
- People that live in the big city and don’t quite know how to put green in their lives – but want to!
- Someone that is interested in a greener lifestyle but needs encouragement, ideas, and an affordable way to do so.
- A family that is considering moving off-grid and wants to test the waters a bit and get a feeling for if it’d really be right for them.
- Someone with a green business or experience in a particular eco-field that enjoys discussing and getting creative ideas (and maybe needs some positive motivation for continuing the cause).
- A family that wants their child or children to be exposed to green concepts.
- Someone that wants to add a fun learning experience to their already-planned Hawaii vacation.
- Someone concerned that daily life and our modern products/lifestyle is affecting their health – and wants real world solutions and information.
- Individuals that are beginning to build off-grid or even on-grid and want to cut their research time plus gain ideas and motivation.
- A newlywed couple wanting to start their lives together in an eco-friendly way (we get lots of honeymooners at LLL and would love to have them involved in this retreat).
- And much more!
Q: I cannot attend on these dates but really want to participate in this retreat at some point in the future. What are my options?
A: As of now, these dates are the only ones planned for this retreat. That said, please contact us with your interest so we can keep you informed. Depending on interest, we may try to do it again in the near or far future.
