The variety of tasks offered at Sólheimar is such that the volunteer will choose (after an initial period of time necessary to explore the various possibilities offered), his/her main tasks, to be done under the supervision of the staff responsible for the running of the project.

Sólheimar is a small village with around 100 inhabitants, the first one of its kind in the world, where grown-up mentally handicapped people plus staff live. It has been described as a "microworld" where many activities are run and all the inhabitants take full part in them. The project runs and owns its own local store, greenhouses and other biological gardening during the summer months. Weaving and carpentry workshops are also managed by the community. An own theatre group is also active and some volunteers are interested to help and participate in those activities. The project strongly interacts with the local and national community and this offers a great opportunity for the volunteer to be part of the project, whose members understand themselves as part of an enlarged family. Sólheimar has hosted many foreign volunteers in the past and the experiences have always proved to be very positive, on both sides.

Transportation from Sólheimar to Reykjavík (the capital) is not frequent. The volunteer will be responsible for arranging his/her fares out of the village if he/she wishes to travel during weekends and days off. The people who live in Sólheimar often go into the city and are willing to give the volunteers a lift. Sólheimar is approximately 100 km distance from Reykjavík city.

Sólheimar is an isolated place, particularly at the beginning of the stay when you have just arrived from a very different lifestyle. But it can also be very isolated during the winter, when the days are cold and dark. But at the same time, Sólheimar is a very good place to learn Icelandic very well, more than in the cities where almost everybody can and prefers to speak english.

The summer time is busier than the winter time and during the winter most of the activities are indoor. The volunteer will rotate between different tasks and work in the Greenhouse, the Guesthouse, the Kitchen, the Coffee House, and the Forestry Station (which includes physical work, repairing things and growing trees). The volunteer will also work in the different workshops, which include:

• A weavery that produces rugs, tablecloths, bags and other hand-woven products. The main source of the raw material used in production is discarded fabric, such as used hotel linen, unwanted or out of style clothes (especially jeans) donated by shops, companies and the general public, as well as left over wool from woollen mills. Cotton, wool and linen are either donated or purchased.

• The art workshop, which is the only workplace in Sólheimar that also has a day care function. The focus here is painting and the creation of art, for example from paper maché, made from recycled paper, wool and silk.

• The wood workshop, where children's toys, musical instruments and other artistic items handcrafted from wood are made. A part of the wood used is found or reclaimed.

• The candle factory, which has a thirty-year history as a sheltered workplace, and mainly reuses recycled wax. It works in cooperation with a national petrol station chain and the Reykjavík waste authority, which collect candle waste from all over Iceland on behalf of Sólheimar. (Ten percent of the candles are made from biodynamic bees wax).

The volunteer will always be a helper of the person in charge of each workplace and the volunteer will be expected to work where it is most needed in each moment.