The exploitative world of working holidays (aupairing, wwoofing, volunteering)

These programs make me mad. There is great variation between hosts, some can be fair and kind, but many do take advantage. I did a WWOOF that involved 30+ hours of hard manual labor each week in exchange for nothing but a wooden palette to sleep on, and two meals of eggs, cheese, and beans. That amount of work would typically pay $750/week. Sleeping on the ground a can of beans is worth about $10. And if you didn't keep up with the work, you were told to leave.

I was an Au Pair in the US and I had a terrible experience that really afected me emotionally. Because I am from Africa they thought I was their slave and they were making me a favor by hosting me and giving me food so I was suppused to be grateful and do whatever they wanted me to do. I was feeling very vulnerable because I was away from my country, family, in a different country, culture and language. I stll carry a lot of trauma from that experience and I pray that no one goes through the same.

Seems like boundaries and expectations should be more clearly laid out for the programs to work without resulting in unfair treatment cuz I think they can. You might get one where the exchange is genuinely mutual, one party gets a place to stay & food while getting the experience of staying in a different culture & the other party gets some work done while meeting someone from another culture but theres of course a chance either party could take more than they give (seems most common in a pair situations) , but I feel like thats due to people being people and not what the concept of these programs was meant to be. Don't get me wrong I have heard absolute horror stories of these programs!!! But I have absolutely heard of really great experiences where u get to live in a new place for free & get a good deal.

Trabajando en vacaciones, suena lindo en ingles. El chiste se cuenta por si mismo.

Some volunteer work can be actually quite hard. I have a friend that went to India to work with the sons and daughters of prostitutes, and the ones they've managed to rescued from it; and it was mentally scarring for her. To me the main difference between humane volunteering and auparing or workaway; is that when you do humanitarian volunteer work, you are allways helping people that have it worse than you. The other way around, you most likely are beign exploited in some way or the other; even by virtue of lending credit and power to third part services like hosting pages. And even so, a whole debate can be had on the long term usefulness of humanitarian work when totally dettached from an activism that is combatient about solving the issues they aim to patch-up.

On pourrait aussi parler de l'aspect condescendant du volontourisme ou de la façon dont des pays comme la Nouvelle-Zélande ou l'Australie emploient ces jeunes travailleurs sous-payés tout en ayant des politiques migratoires ultra strictes vis-à-vis des travailleurs indonésiens ou papous.

I had a poor experience with Workaway. My friend and I agreed to work 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Upon our arrival the host mother told us we would be working 8 hours a day 5 days a week saying they didn’t have as much help as the normally did. We tried to help them out by working those hours but after two weeks we couldn’t do it anymore. I finally stood up to them and simply told them we were only going to work our agreed upon hours, I was yelled at, treated poorly and ostracized from the family for the remaining part of the trip. Not to mention we’re only provided one meal a day and our accommodation didn’t have AC like we were told it did, this wouldn’t generally be a problem however there was a heat wave our entire trip and it was an average of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I know that there are good families and opportunities out there so I hope people aren’t scared off but I wish I saw this video before I went. If you do work exchange you must be able to speak up for yourself and have an emergency plan for if you need to remove yourself from the area. Stay safe!

The book on communes at the end literally has red flags on the cover. Alice, are you colour-blind that you dont see red flags? You sometimes have interesting content, but that margins-communism-crap is such a turn off.

Woofing requires 20 hours a week.
What is the whining about?

you truly said it best. So much that I’ve been thinking about, especially with volunteering and how off I feel towards it without knowing how to express why. It’s so true, why do all these young people go to a different country, taking amazing jobs to the local young people there that might be in desperate need for the opportunities that are offered!

I was an au pair and it was mostly a good experience for me. I liked the family and the kids and we are still in touch.

There need to be more regulations and more money for au pairs. The problem is that I was working 45 hours a week and getting paid too little money (less than minimum wage because they call it pocket money and that’s BS, why am I getting pocket money if I’m working a FULL TIME job)

❤

Yea, this pretty much all happened to me. An awful experience on a farm in France (like overworked, no freedom, only one day off but on their terms, and then the kicked me out after a week cause?) and "au pair" even worse for a family I knew, and same with being completely overworked, underpaid, stuck at the house, abusive father. I feel like that I'm "educated" and know my rights and spoke the languages in both countries. We weren't even following au pair rules because it was a 1.5 year old who needed constant supervision. It's awful what these people can get away with and how much worse it can be for people who don't know their rights etc

Can you help me? I want to enroll in a program on the farm

Damn I trip on Acid once a month with a 10 dollar ticket and 0 carbon footprint .... I've experienced plenty of non human cultures and forms of arts
I did not think it was that complicated, t hough I won't talk about it in my CV lol and I have no pics to take for Instagram

I feel like Wwoof and Workaway are getting a bad rap here. I’ve heard some bad stories but at worst my experience has been awkward or just no fun. I lived as a woofer for 2 years, it was the happiest I have ever been. Just have your wits about you and be very discerning about where you stay.

I know that exploitation exists in these schemes but I’m gonna push back against all the negativity that I’m seeing here. A vast number of paid working people work long hours in jobs they hate, for bosses who treat them badly, for crap money. They may commute for long periods in a car they can’t rely on, and live in an area they don’t feel safe in with a landlord who doesn’t care about them. At the end of the month they’ll have no disposable income or just be getting in to debt. This is a reality for a huge number of people.

As a wwoofer I lived in a beautiful place, did work that I enjoyed with people I loved. My host treated me like family, fed me well, and even slipped me some cash as I was so keen. It put me on a path to being a carpenter which I have been for 10 years now. It was the total opposite of slavery, it was utter liberation from the cruel, uncaring world of work that so many people in the western world live in.

I do feel like being a native English speaker is an advantage, and I can see why solo female travellers might be wary. Have your wits about you, vet your hosts, and if it’s no good, just leave. There are some awesome opportunities out there.

Thank you for the video. I wwoofed in Sweden, Spain, Italy and in my country (Czechia). I decided to share some of my experiences, and maybe someone would find it useful or interesting. In total, I was on six farms when I was 18 to 23 years old. (So the last stay was about six years ago, just to be accurate, some things may changed.)

I was a girl strongly motivated to volunteer on a farm.
My grandparents lived in the countryside and I always loved to work on our small field and with animals. To be honest, at that age I also struggled with my own life, I didn't know what to do with it, and I wanted to see if the real farmer's life is for me and, in general learn how a human could arrange a living.
So I felt very fortunate when I found out that the wwoof existed, and I was excited to do it - travelling, farming, learning - that sounds amazing!
Every year, I found a part-time job where I made money (not only) to buy tickets and stuff so I could travel to farms and volunteer there.
And I learned a lot, really, but it was hard paid. (And that is a life. It is ok, but maybe my experiences help some people avoid mistakes I made and see some things I did not see earlier.)
I met wonderful people from all around the world, but I was also abused and mistreated.

Some of the stories are also/almost funny. For example I went to Sweden and after 18 hours in a bus and more 3 hours in a train, when I finally got to my host's village, they weren't there, but just another volunteer, who had to pick me up.
We arrived at the farm, and I instantly started to work with her, hosts nowhere, house locked (we volunteers stayed in a barn), so what else to do? I was grateful for the fresh air, so that was ok for me.
But when they returned, I found myself begging them for a bath because they refused to let me in the house.
They were too exhausted after visiting a friend's house. (Yeah, really, I could'nt believe my after-a-day-journey-and-hours-digging-in-the-soil-dirty ears.) Finally, I convinced them, and I could take a shower... fuh.
The rest of the stay was surprisingly fine, but that was my first crush with the reality of my status as a volunteer.

Or my Swedish Amish farm experience - where we worked all day really hard, starting at 6 in the morning, and after one really long day (not all were like this), at 9 PM, we were sitting by the table hungry as hell, but not allowed to eat before one neighbour came so we could pray properly. Although it was a really nice host-lady-farmer there and, for example, I learned how to milk a cow, which was awesome, in those situations, I was just desperate.
I asked her finally if I could eat because it was torture for me, all the dishes in front of me, and she allowed me to do so (I was 19 then, I was hungry really badly and she saw that), but anyway it is just not nice situation when I am looking back at it.

My hosts in Spain were very nice to me, but you are also always in danger to become a part of a family drama at the farm (or of course anywhere else where you are a part of the daily life of a family).
In Spain, it was 'just' a marital arguing, an unhappy woman left alone for the most of the hard farm work. - That was surprisingly a scheme I experienced on 5 of 6 farms I lived in. And at the sixth, it was a man living alone, the rest of the family staying in the city. Another interesting theme to think of.

But in Italy.. wohooo, more difficult for me specifically.
My host got seriously sick and went to the hospital, and I was left with the whole farm alone, deeply worried about him for a night and the whole day. Thank god for the animals (hens, two dogs, sheep) they kept me sane and busy.
His wife, daughter and son (as mentioned, not living on the farm, but in the city) wrote down my phone number wrongly, so I did not receive their message about what is going on in the hospital, and when I texted them to ask how is he, they did not answer or called me...
Finally, it was all good, but damn I was so worried.
Wow, and there are lots of stories like that I have... Insane.

To sum it up - I had to prove myself so many times, and this is good because now I trust myself, I know that I can handle a lot of situations. But on the other hand - there were so many border situations and things I have to carry or process, even after years.

The thing with taking jobs from the locals is also tricky - I totally hear your point.
But for example, in Italy - I met a women from Ukraine and guys from Ghana and Bulgaria doing the job I did (various helping on farms) for money, never it was an Italian. (I was in the south of Italy.)
And yes, they were surprised that I did it for free. And for them, that was not a good thing that someone did the same, but without a salary, I know it, and I see it now. And trust me, that is something I am really not proud of.

But it is important to say that I was there for a month, they were living in Italy for years trying to find better lifes and supporting their families back home. (All did that.) And that is also part of another whole complex problem.

In conclusion, I am very glad that you pointed at this whole theme. You are totally right that we need to talk about it more and re-think it all.
And thanks to your videos, I personally have a lot of material to think about. Thank you very much again!

I completely agree, being a WWOOFER myself. I've met those who have been exploited, and it's disgusting.

My own experience was absolutely amazing. The hosts were passionate about teaching us about farming, and were very flexible. Hosts in general need to understand that it's a cultural exchange, not a job. I personally had enough time on my hands to hold down a part time remote job while working a few hours a day on the farm. I traveled around the area, and did my fair share of work to accommodate a room and a few meals a day.

Hi, I am thankful to have come across this perspective because I felt a bit toxically optimistic, but I felt unsettled adopting this perspective. I cannot speak for au pairs or even previous wwoofers, but I’ve been debating wwoofing, and I see it as these farmers cannot pay workers so no jobs are taken, and for those of us looking to wwoof to gain knowledge, meet people from other cultures and countries, and attain skills related to a life goal- these are all things we would not otherwise be able to afford to do, so to believe that is being underpaid is actually capitalism whispering in your ear. Those experiences have no monetary value, and in comparison to working a 9-5, a very hustle based lifestyle to afford to live and eat because most of us are underpaid and exploited at the benefit of a corporation, supporting an individual raising awareness of self sustainability, eco friendly living, and the benefit of community seems so much more rewarding and valuable regardless of money...very lengthy comment but I feel as though in regards to what can we do about capitalism, recognizing that the most valuable things cannot be monetized and don’t need to be. Sadly money is still necessary but not a lot and it can definitely be more fulfilling if you are genuinely in alignment with the mission and with your values, but because of capitalism this can be seen as negative and at times I could see how if the host are ill intended it would absolutely be negative but with the right amount of research and commitment to alignment i feel it could be very progressive and radical- this is all clearly just my opinion and I would love maybe some controversial feedback if anyone sees this :)