Earlier this year we posed a question to you all. What did you think of the idea of a new type of membership – for a group of people (say five or more) who wanted to WWOOF together? Typical users might be a scout group or agricultural students. It was prompted by a series of requests from the public.
A few of you took the time to send us some considered responses – thank you! But it was only a few of you! We are therefore led to assume that this is a minority sport – and not something that is causing members undue concern (i.e. you’re not all flooded with inappropriate requests for large group bookings). Given that a new type of membership creates an additional layer of admin for us we have decided not to initiate it right now. But we have changed the website so that hosts can indicate they are interested in group WWOOFing and WWOOFers can search for them.
We have also assembled some guidelines to assist those who may take groups and added them to our WWOOF UK’s guide to hosting. Hosts can access this pdf from their My Tools menu on our website.
Our key recommendation is that if you take on a group of WWOOFers ensure every adult is a member of WWOOF UK, even if you only liaise with one of them to plan their visit. We hope the guidance will be helpful – should any of you have further advice based on your individual experiences we’d love to hear it, please leave a comment below or use info@wwoof.org.uk.