This year is a special milestone for our organization. 2025 marks 40 years of existence for WWOOF Canada. That’s a long life for any organization, let alone one as small and modest as our own. We’re elder statement compared to many entrenched organizations such as Google (27 years old) and Facebook (21 years old). Heck, Chat GPT is barely two and a half years old!
And WWOOF Canada has a few ideas for how to celebrate. Along with the stories we are telling about the origin of WWOOF, we are running a small contest where you can get your hands on an exclusive WWOOF Canada T-shirt. Find more details on our Instagram page, HERE
As John Vanden Heuvel (Canada’s first Director) writes in his story about our founding, WWOOF Canada operated before the internet became widely available. That’s strange to think about because the web lends itself so well to WWOOFing but the original host directory was a physical booklet. To sign up, interested WWOOFers would mail their membership fee to the organization and they would receive A host booklet in return. This booklet contained all the information they needed about WWOOF Canada’s hosts, including their mailing address and phone number.
Thanks to the hard work of Becky (Canada’s second Director) in the 2010s, these days, WWOOFers contact hosts online! In fact, this year WWOOF Canada will be launching it’s first ever phone app! No, we may not be on the bleeding edge (we haven’t even thought about building our own WWOOFing AI yet – haha), but we can still look back proudly on the progress that we’ve made in the past 40 years.
But progress has not only been made in how we use technology. Over the years, WWOOF has done more and more to improve the lives of its members and to achieve it’s mission. A quick way to see the impact we have made is by reviewing the “Experiences” section on the WWOOF Canada home page where you’ll find countless positive reviews from our WWOOFers.
But WWOOF is about more than just a good time, it’s about teaching skills in ecological growing and sustainable living and in this way growing the next generation of ecological farmers. Through our internal tracking, WWOOF Canada found that out of the hosts who purchased a membership in the past year 17% were a WWOOFer at some point in the past. In others words, 17% of the hosts who are now sharing knowledge with a new generation about organic growing and sustainable, started their own journey with us. That’s a huge deal, and demonstrates that WWOOF really does play an important role in growing more ecological farmers.
We so proud of everything that we’ve accomplished in the past 40 years and so appreciative of all of our members who have made it possible!