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Travel and Volunteer with World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

by Katy Purviance on 01/07/10 @ 11:29:50 am
Categories: Field Trips | 126 words | 489 views

Ever dream of harvesting grapes in Italy, baking bread in France, or tending sheep in Australia?

An international network called World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) helps travelers arrange free room and board on an organic farm in exchange for five or six hours of (mostly manual) work a day.

The WWOOF program links volunteer workers with farmers in about fifty countries throughout Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Asia. The goal is to promote organic farm subsistence and give workers farm experience while allowing them to visit a foreign country on a budget.

Volunteers might pull brambles, milk cows, build fences, and sow or harvest crops. In return for their toil, they gain insight into rural life and help farmers pursue a sustainable lifestyle.

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Building Global Villages: Volunteer and Travel With Builders Without Borders

by Katy Purviance on 01/07/10 @ 11:28:16 am
Categories: Field Trips, Vernacular | 248 words | 618 views

I just read about Builders Without Builders and it stired both my nomadism and my desire to build something with my hands instead of with AutoCAD. I had to tell you about it.

Builders Without Borders (BWB) is an international network of ecological builders who create affordable housing from local materials. These hands-on humanitarians believe the solution for homelessness lies in training local populations to provide housing for themselves. A nonprofit organization, BWB has accomplished impressive feats since its 1999 inception under the leadership of author and teacher Joseph Kennedy, architect Alfred von Bachmayr, video producer and author Catherine Wanek, and other natural builders.

BWB has undertaken the following projects:

Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico: Partnered with the National Indian Youth Leadership Project to build a straw bale hogan.

Ciudad Juarez, New Mexico: Earth-plaster workshop; volunteers built a straw bale house for a family who lost their home in a fire, using wooden shipping pallets as roof trusses.

El Paso, Texas: Straw bale wall-raising at the Tierra Madre development.

Northern China: Donated teaching materials to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency for a straw bale housing project.

Ethiopia: Donated teaching materials to Voluntary Services Overseas for a straw research project.

Future projects:

Afghanistan: Train Afghanis in natural building techniques.

Gallup, New Mexico: Develop a coalition of housing organizations to address Navajo reservation housing shortages.

Wadi Na’am, Israel: Provide technical support for the construction of a straw bale medical clinic to serve Israel’s Bedouin population.

Learn more…Get Involved

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places where you could probably learn more about designing and building in just a few days than I did after a year of grad school

YesterMorrow [Vermont]
The Solar Living Institute [California]
Cal Earth Institute [California]
Arcosanti [Arizona]
The Canelo Project [Arizona]
The Shelter Institute [Maine]
Cob Cottage Company [Oregon]
Real Architecture Workshop [South Dakota]
Vertical Clay [California]
Earth Hands and Houses [Poland]
Earthen Hand [Oregon]
Earthwood Building School [New York]
Quail Springs [California]
VERB [everywhere]

Know of some others I can add here? Let me know. Have you already visited some of these places...or planning on it? Let me know and I will feature your story and your photos here!

I am starting a new kind of architecture school. Unlike most architecture schools, you wouldn't have to submit GRE scores or good grades or letters of recommendation. You wouldn't have to put the rest of your life on hold for 3 to 5 years. You wouldn't have to accrue tens of thousands of dollars in debt. At my architecture school, anyone could come for a few weeks and learn how to build a house with their own two hands. My teachers would take skills and concepts from some of these other workshops I've listed above... except classes would be held year-round to make it easy to fit into your schedule. I would have a number of different campuses around the country that would teach building designs appropriate to the local climate. And I need your help. Can you donate land for a campus? Can you dotate books for a library? Can you teach a workshop? Can you provide start-up capital? Let me know.

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