In 1971, a London, England secretary named Sue Coppard had the idea of inviting herself and others to stay and volunteer on an organic farm as a way of getting out into the country. That small idea led to the founding of WWOOF, a not-for-profit organization created to support and arrange these farm visits. The organization would grow until it had a few employees, at which point Sue decided she needed a break and went travelling to Southeast Asia. Eventually, she ended up in New Zealand where she visited a farm and was surprised to find that there were folks WWOOFing. Somehow, WWOOF had spread over 18,000 kilometres from where she had founded WWOOF in the UK. Sue learned that the hosts had WWOOFed in the UK and thought it was such a good idea that they brought it back to New Zealand with them.
It is in this way that WWOOF has spread throughout the world. This includes Canada where, in 1985, John Van den Heuvel learned about WWOOF through travellers and decided to found his own organization. This grassroots nature is one of WWOOF’s greatest strengths, as it has led to a diversity of structures and approaches. However, it has also meant that WWOOF organizations have not always been aligned in the way that they operate.
Over time, it became evident to WWOOF coordinators worldwide that for WWOOF to survive in the face of technological advances and increasing ‘competition’, they had to work together in order to take care of WWOOF’s reputation and improve services to their members. These discussions began in 2000 in the UK, at the first-ever WWOOF international meeting. The conversations became more serious at the second International meeting, hosted by WWOOF USA in 2012, leading to the founding of the Federation of WWOOF Organisations (FoWO). Since then, FoWO has acted as a democratic organization helping national WWOOF groups to work together worldwide. FoWO’s mission is to unite, promote, protect and support the WWOOF movement around the world.
Every year since its founding, FoWO member organizations have sought to cooperate more closely in order to strengthen the community and to protect the core values of this movement. Committees, such as the public relations committee, finance committee, and information technology (IT) committee, have worked together to benefit WWOOF as a whole. The organization has also worked on a number of special projects and initiatives, such as a unified and universal WWOOF brand.
But no project is more important to WWOOF’s global vision than the Common WWOOF Platform. Version 1 of the platform (CWP1) was launched in 2017 and standardized the look and functionality of participating WWOOF websites. This allowed WWOOF to unify its branding and many of its processes. However, this was only a stepping stone for the Common WWOOF Platform Version 2 (CWP2) which launched in 2022 and moved all WWOOF groups to the same codebase and database. This allowed many exciting new features such as a single universal WWOOFer profile (which can be used to go WWOOFing in all participating countries), and the ability for members to both host and go WWOOFing using the same account. This also enabled FoWO to manage the website internally, improving time and cost efficiency.
WWOOF Canada has been heavily involved in FoWO since the very beginning. Becky Young, WWOOF Canada’s former owner and Executive Director, took on many volunteer roles from the inception of FoWO, including Board Director and Treasurer. WWOOF Canada played an especially important role in the development of CWP1, contributing thousands of dollars and volunteer hours to the project.
FoWO is the future of WWOOF and has many exciting projects on the horizon that WWOOF Canada will benefit from. FoWO is developing the first ever WWOOF app, which will make setting up new visit requests and managing messages easier than ever before. FoWO also recently joined IFOAM – Organics International, and intends to become more heavily involved in the community of organizations promoting and advocating for organic food worldwide.
In 2025, WWOOF Canada’s team will attend the 5th WWOOF International Meeting, where our staff will connect with WWOOF Coordinators from around the world to learn from one another and discuss and plan the future of WWOOF internationally.
WWOOF is an international movement and WWOOF Canada is proud to be a part of the team guiding FoWO into the future.