About Me
Contact information
The easiest way to contact me is through email: sustainablebudget@gmail.com. I will respond just as soon as I can.I live in Vancouver, WA and my workshops are held in and around the Portland metro area. (If you live outside the Portland area (even out of state) and would like to host a workshop let me know.)
A bit about me
I grew up on a farm two miles up a dirt road near Astoria, Oregon, our only neighbors were the cougars and critters in the forest. We had solar electricity and gravity fed water, which meant if there wasn’t enough sun we couldn’t use the toaster and if it was a dry summer we took very short showers. As a child I raised pigs, cattle, chickens, one dear horse and many other small animals. To many, this way of life is heaven but as a child I couldn’t stand it. I felt trapped so far away from people and couldn’t wait to get out. Little did I know that this experience would become my passion later in life.
I had always been interested in other cultures especially those extremely different than my own, but I never traveled as a child; going to Portland was a big ordeal for my family. So I traveled inside stories, I always had my nose in a book, reading about foreign countries and cultures from a young age. When I moved to Portland to go to college; it was such a relief finally to live in a city.
After a while, though, my craving for travel overcame me and I packed my bags and left to voyage around Europe by myself. This is what changed my life. I mastered the French language and fell in love with languages, dabbling in Spanish, German and Swahili. I also became enthralled with other cultures and was more excited than ever about my major, which was Socio-Cultural Anthropology, I wanted to immerse myself in other cultures and study everything I could about how others lived especially those cultures vastly different than my own.
Through my classes at PSU I developed an interest in ecology. I loved that so many cultures all over the world successfully live off the land as they have for centuries. Cultures that are currently said to be lacking in technology and so far behind, were to me, way ahead of most technologically advanced countries. What made me sad, though, is when I learned at what a fast rate these cultures are becoming extinct. I wanted to help preserve, or in some cases re-instate, native agricultural practices and traditions. At this point I had not yet thought about ever applying locally what I was learning at the university.
While in France, I met my husband and we now have two children. When my first daughter was born, I was blessed with amazing midwives at a local water birth center. The midwives made me question what I was eating and where it came from. I started doing research on organic vs conventional food and was shocked at what I learned. When she was born, my world changed and I realized how important it was to me that she learned where her food comes from, about plants and animals, and the natural environment around her.
Everything I disliked as a child growing up on a farm suddenly became very important to me. I not only wanted to study about people that lived sustainable lives, in tune with the environment, but I wanted to live more that way myself.I found I really enjoyed researching and reading about gardening, environmental issues, reducing our footprint on the earth, sustainably produced foods and much more. I also became eager to share what I knew and apply it in a way that benefits people locally.
In the summer of 2007, six years after I first started on this journey, I succeeded in eliminating going to the grocery store altogether, buying organic and locally produced foods direct from the source, I posted this on a local chat group I am on, and people started asking me how I did it. They said they could never do it, they were on a budget. It was then that I decided to offer workshops to show people IT IS possible to live a very sustainable lifestyle while being on a tight budget.
These workshops have introduced me to the most wonderful people and I am having so much fun doing something I both love and am fully committed to doing. I love hearing back from people telling me how their life changed after taking the workshop. As for myself I continue to learn something new everyday. I feel so in tune with the seasons, so connected with the natural world. I feel like I am living as I was meant to, with reverence and respect for the beauty our maker has created. I am humbled and blessed to be able to share this knowledge with others. Monique Dupre