The summer has proved as busy for the WWOOF UK team as any other season and we’ve been endeavouring to respond to your feedback and requests for help. It’s been really encouraging over the last year to see how much both WWOOFers and hosts have welcomed, and come to rely on, the WWOOFer profiles we made available to WWOOFers with online membership. When we originally set the profiles up it was with the assumption that WWOOFers who had opted to have a book membership probably wouldn’t want to use the website so wouldn’t need a profile, but as it’s turned out, as our hosts have got used to seeing WWOOFer details on their profiles, we’ve had some enquiries from hosts about why they can’t find book member details.
So, after a bit of pondering, we have worked out a way for book members to have a profile and for hosts to leave feedback about them. This was made available in early August and we hope it will be helpful. And just to remind you – joint membership is a single, reduce-priced membership for two people who want to WWOOF at the same place at the same time. That means there’s just one profile for those memberships but it is possible for photos and details of both people to be included in it.
Every year there seems to be one or two issues that trouble hosts and WWOOFers. This year a good number of hosts have contacted us about WWOOFers who haven’t turned up. We mentioned this in the last newsletter and it continues to be an issue. Mike Hammer, who looks after member relations for us, has started to keep records of those WWOOFers who don’t turn up that we hear about so that we can monitor the situation. So please get in touch if you are let down without notice by a WWOOFer using info@wwoof.org.uk.
The difficulty that WWOOFers are reporting to us most this year is of hosts not replying to their initial enquiries. There may be all sorts of reasons why hosts don’t reply but we would like to remind you that we ask that every contact from WWOOFers should be acknowledged within two weeks. Maybe now is a good time to draw everyone’s attention to the ethos and mission page on our website (www.wwoof.org.uk/content/wwoof-uks-ethos-and-mission). This is quite a new page that tries to manage both hosts and WWOOFers’ expectations of each other. Hope it helps.
a WWOOF UK wedding!
In early July, on the first anniver-sary of their first meeting, WWOOF UK’s co-ordinator, Scarlett Penn married Philip Stapley in what must have been one of the WWOOFiest, lowest-impact, completely sustainable and enjoyable celebrations of a union in history!
The whole WWOOF UK team was invited, and attended, along with some of our directors – not to mention family, friends, some fabulous musicians and a couple of friendly and vocal dogs. It was a delight and privilege to be a part of such a heartfelt and generous occasion and their commitment not only to each other but to the ideals that are at the very heart of WWOOF shone through the day. Scarlett and Phil grew much of the food we were served, they helped to cut the hay from the field their wedding was held in and Phil even went so far as to build some compost toilets for our ‘convenience’. Thank you both from all of us for sharing your day, and WWOOF UK wishes you the greatest happiness, always.
