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• Fellowship for Intentional Community

La Poudrière is a French-speaking, income-sharing community of about 55 people living in three locations in Belgium: Brussels, Péruwelz and Rummen, and is a member of the Emmaus International network. We were founded in 1958. The five aims we gradually came to defining for ourselves are: 1. presence among people not sharing our lifestyle (we refuse to cut ourselves off from society), 2. friendship, 3. justice and equity among us and in the world, 4. utopia: hope to help building a new world, and 5. ascesis and personal growth. To realize these aims, we rely on four tools: 1. work; 2. sharing, especially incomes; 3. a simple lifestyle; 4. fidelity to the people and aims of the community.
Members work every working day from 8 am to 5.15 pm in the community business (collecting and reselling old furniture, clothes, etc.), in the various tasks involved by community life (maintenance of our equipments and buildings, office work...), or running our farm in Rummen. A few members have a job outside the community and give their salary to the community; as are given, as a rule, all regular incomes. Every member receives € 30,00 a week, but basic needs are provided by the community, including transportation inside the country. Vehicles are shared (to use them, one must be accepted as a community driver by our Monthly Meeting, see below) and fuel is payed by the community.
Assistance to meals on working days, to meetings, and to organized feasts is required. A core group holds a meeting once a month (the Monthly Meeting) to discuss more delicate matters and takes decisions by consensus only. These decisions are submitted to the approval of the whole community at our Spaghetti Meeting, also hold once a month. Some important decisions may be taken directly by the head of the community, Vanni Mocutti, who has been in charge since the death of the foundator, Father Léon Van Hoorde, in 1996.

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