About WWOOF and the Help Exchange

On this page you'll find:

A short history of WWOOF and the Help Exchange what they are
My experiences with WWOOF and the Help Exchange, as a guest and host
Helping
at our place, how to get there, what to expect ...
A word of warning!

A short history of WWOOF and the Help Exchange and what they are

Willing Workers on Organic Farms (of WWOOF) started in 1971 in England as a venture to help city slickers experience something of the country and organic farming. The idea was simple and took off rapidly, that an organic farmer would host some city slickers, in exchange for some help around the farm.

It grew rapidly and has in the decades since become both an international organisation with national bodies in many countries and a wonderful form of hospitality club in which guests are empowered through formal expectation to contribute meaningfully to their hosts lifestyles. That seriously empowers the guest to stay on past the typical 2 or 3 night maximum stay enforced by most hospitality clubs and can provide an enriching cross cultural experience.

You'll find plenty to read about WWOOF at http://www.wwoof.org/ (the international umbrella organisation) or at http://www.wwoof.com.au/ (the Australian organisation).

The Help Exchange started 30 years later in 2001 when a motivated Englishman with some apparent experiene WWOOFing or otherwise helping out started a web service to connect hosts and helpers, abandoning WWOOF's organic and farming contexts for a fully general help out. You'll find a more complete history by Rob, the one man show who built and runs the site, at http://helpx.net.

My experiences with WWOOF and the Help Exchange, as a guest and host

I grew to value WWOOF as traveller for the very reason that it empowered me as a guest to contribute meaningfully and aprticipate in the lifestyles of my hosts. As a host in Australia now, helpers (our guests) are almost exclusively international backpackers seeking the same.

Moreover, we're city slickers now (hosts) and it's not entirely unusual to have country folk come and visit, which is a turning of the tables of sorts (given the origin of WWOOF lies in city slickers staying with country folk). We're not organic farmers either, just a suburban middle class household subscribing to organic principles and maintaining to some degree an organic garden. All the same WWOOF Australia is an organisation that welcomed us as hosts and many WWOOFers clearly value and enjoy the experience of passing through a suburban garden setting.

Given we're not an organic farm per se, and WWOOF was lingerig int eh technology of a printed directory, we left WWOOF and moved to teh Help Exchange at some point. So now we're fully fledged Help Exchange hosts. See our profile here: https://www.helpx.net/host.asp?hostid=2713.

I know of few organisations more enriching and empowering in the modern world. It exposes my small family to people of other cultures, ensures we often have vibrant dinner guests, get a helping hand around the house, garden and various renovation and landscaping projects seemingly always underway and lends our guests a chance to live in a small suburban family environment in Hobart for a while generally welcomed as family members (with all of the responsibilities and benefits of that).

This inevitably involves others in our community, from family to friends and their friends as they take an interest in this very phenomenon and the many projects we have running at home. WWOOFers in turn gain exposure to a some elements of Hobart's culture through these people and occasionally build relationships and find work or volunteering opportunities in that way.

Helping at our place, how to get there, what to expect ...

If you're keen to help and get in touch we'll typically direct you here. Here's a summary of what's useful to know:

And here is a list of work and projects currently underway:

And because we get a lot of applications over summer, and have had a few too many really bad experiences in amongst the many good, we'd be really grateful if you complete this application form and look very highly upon those who bother:

A word of warning!

To all of those who are interested in WWOOFing of HelpXing either as a guest or host I'll share a message that all hospitality clubs (and WWOOF and HelpX in particular) like to repeatedly underscore because it is at the root of many of the few inevitably bad experiences that hosts and guests will share.

A host is not just a place to stay and get a feed for free (for guests) nor is a guest a source of cheap labour (for hosts) when funds are low.

To be sure there are guests and hosts with that mind-set and when they meet they are happy. But most hosts and most guests in my experience (including myself) find it an opportunity to share a part of our lives for a while in a balanced way without leeching off of one another, without burdening one another. When the reality of sharing lifestyle and living space is eclipsed by the utilitarian view of saving money, as often as not, there are frictions. Simply because you are sharing some lifestyle and living space and it is prudent to consider just how much you value this as a guest and how much of this the host offers or imposes upon your stay as a qualifying question before deciding to visit.

We offer this experience explicitly. Helpers live in our house and eat meals with us. They join in the the famly life as it is, warts and all.