[strawbale] cost of the gathering

[simon <pieman66@yahoo...>]

Hello everyone,

To me, the price of this year's gathering in Slovenia seems phenomenally
expensive.

400 DEM is completely unaffordable for nearly everyone I know. For
example:

-Activists who rely on grants for their 'salaries', on average they earn
about 200-300 DEM per week.
-An unemployed person from the UK gets about 155 DEM per week.
-Eastern Europeans - surely this amount of money is way out of the range
of them?

I can't understand why it's this expensive? Does food cost so much in
Slovenia? Or does the fee pay for the building costs too?

Many strawbale homeowners are lucky enough to be professional people who
were able to afford a 'lifestyle-change': selling their home, buying some
land and building their 'dream' strawbale house. For these people, the
gathering is affordable.

But all those people who I think strawbale would benefit the most - poor,
homeless, from areas affected by war, ecological disasters, etc. - simply
will not be able to afford this gathering.

For me it's really important that a truly sustainable community is both
ecologically AND socially sustainable, which means making knowledge and
information available for people of all different backgrounds and skills.

Cheers,
Simon







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