Sustainable project
Cultural exchange
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Workaway Giving Back: Three incredible projects making a difference
We asked, you nominated...
Despite the last couple of challenging years through the pandemic, with most countries’ borders slowly opening back up, we are glad to finally see our hosts and workawayers resuming their travels or unfinished projects. So we want to take the opportunity to catch up and say THANK YOU to everyone!
Through our
Workaway Giving Back project, we launched a small campaign where we took nominations from you for
hosts who’ve done incredible work to make a positive change in their local communities with the help of workawayers. After some deliberation, we have selected three incredible hosts from three different parts of the world that we feel deserve a round of applause, and more importantly, an extra bit of financial support to help move their projects along:
ECUADOR: Expanding the library and building an outdoor learning workshop
Our two weeks stay at the library with our children 10 and 12 years, has been awesome, great, fantastic... Children at the library are very kind and open minded to test new books, new sports, new games, and always with a smile. There is an incredible atmosphere. Rut and Esteban are amazing people. You will have the freedom to make your own project and to develop the library. During your free time, you can go easily to the beach to run, swim, play football. I would definitely recommend to my children (when they will be older) to be volunteers for several months at the library.
Our first host runs
a children’s library at the coast of Manabí, Ecuador, with a special focus to promote gender equality for girls who have less access to education opportunities.
Rut’s library is not just a place for children and especially girls aged 10-12 to read and study, but also a cultural exchange centre filled with interactive workshops, arts and sports activities!
This is a wonderful place for students and workawayers to learn from each other, participate in fun group activities, enjoy some time on the beach (which the library is right next to) and even learn to use a machete or fishing with traditional methods.
With the extra funding, Rut hopes to expand the scope of their library by building a workshop area with bamboo, wood and other local materials, as well as more lodging space to host volunteers. This way they’ll be able to welcome more workawayers to their project, and there’ll be more opportunities for us to teach, learn and give back!
What wonderful news you send! Thank you so much, it is extremely gratifying to hear this from workaway. We always are in awe of the amazing volunteers we are able to pick from your plattform. All we have been able to accomplish is greatly due to the positive energy, the youthful altruism and professional commitment of our workawayers. We love them, we become friends and sometimes family, and in return they pour their heart to this project. It's such a happy interaction.
KENYA: Bringing accessible drinking water to the community
The experience with Hella's family at Rusinga island was every bit what we expected and much more. The conditions are basic with no running water and no electricity in the compound but the warmth the family receives you with more than makes up for it. As for the work, the community is open to new ideas and help is surely needed. You will surely have a lot of free time on your hands so it will allow you to proactively offer ideas on how to support the community. All in all a memorable experience which we cherish having and one which we thank the entire family for.
Language exchange
Our next project is a
community organisation in Kenya’s Rusinga Island, which aims to bring the community together and improve their welfare through the help of volunteers. If you want to visit a special place where you can really immerse into an authentic Kenyan experience, and have a second family to spend time with – Hella’s project is perfect for you.
Here you can initiate different ideas to support and bond with locals, from new farming methods and empowering activities for women, to exchanging your culture with students and practising football!
With providing clean drinking water as one of the organisation’s top priority, Hella hopes the funding can help them build 2 fully equipped water kiosks, so that locals can collect water more easily. Bringing drinking water closer to the community will save locals loads of time from needing to walk over 1.5 kilometres to their water source. We certainly hope these kiosks can make a positive lasting impact in the community too!
Thank you for the nomination. I'm really happy about it and I'm looking forward to improving more in my community. I'm also going to share with you more pictures of our project and also our upcoming project.
SPAIN: Inspiring the others to help protect our planet through sustainable, conscious eco living
Volunteering here has been one of the most amazing and transformative experiences of my life so far - Barney and Emma are probably the coolest people I've ever met, and working alongside them on the project was inspiring. The work was rewarding, the location was jaw-droppingly beautiful, but most importantly the company was brilliant. I'll forever remember my time here with love and hope to return one day to finally beat them at Tichu! I wholeheartedly recommend volunteering here if you are equipped with good intentions and an interest in bettering our planet, which the inhabitants of the eco village have been doing for years. Bettering the planet, bettering lives.
Last but not least is
Emma and Barney’s rewilding project and sustainable living initiative, through which they aim to rewild the Spanish Galicia region by sharing a self-sustainable way of life…
One of the biggest environmental problems in Galicia is plantations of eucalyptus which burn very easily. This significantly increases the risk of forest fires that destroy the natural habitat of the local wildlife on a large scale. By collaborating with Workawayers and neighbours through their eco village, Emma and Barney hope to raise environmental awareness among the community. From daily habits of how they grow their food and heat their home, to protecting the wildlife and allowing the native woodland to recover, Emma and Barney have shown workawayers a different way to discover Spain, and more importantly how fulfilling it is to lead a more sustainable way of life! With the funding, they hope to build a new compost toilet to continue welcoming more people into their incredible eco village and to spread the message.
Have you also heard that
Workaway’s recently turned 20? We’ve heard of so many amazing people who’ve made an amazing difference via the website to other people’s lives. 20 years is a long journey, but it’s the countless positive stories from you guys that kept us going.
We can’t wait to see how these incredible projects continue to grow and make a change with Workaway! There’s so many more hosts that are doing amazing things in their community and beyond, and we hope that we can
keep volunteering, chipping into meaningful causes, and giving back in our own ways! ❤️
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