Freedom Lifestyle

Volunteer Based Travel: My First Workaway Experience (VIDEO)

• Sam Laliberte • Season 7 • Episode 102

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We fed goats, picked hazelnuts and volunteered in paradise. Here's the story of our time living and volunteering at a yoga retreat + animal sanctuary in New Zealand. Plus what we learned about impact-driven travel. 

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Takeaways:

  • The freedom paradox: what happens after you “make it” and still want more
  • How to find legit international volunteer opportunities (not the shady ones)
  • What Workaway and WWOOFing are — and how to get started
  • Behind the scenes of our daily life on the farm (food, accommodations and duties)
  • Why I think giving back while traveling is the future of the freedom lifestyle

About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom

Speaker 1:

Hello freedom seekers, I am back in your ears after three amazing months in New Zealand. I have so many stories to share about our first experience living in a van for that long. I also learned so much about my marriage with Jared after spending so much time together in such a close and confined space. I have a lot of feedback on what it's like to travel to New Zealand. Whether you're a digital nomad or just adventurer, there is so much to know about those two islands that make up this amazing country. We also spent a week at Kiwi Burn, so there is lots to unpack. I feel like I'm going to have content now for months and I'm really keen to capture it all before I lose it. So definitely watch out for more episodes that are going to be dropping soon about my time in New Zealand. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments or send me a DM on Instagram. I am so happy to chat and give an honest review of what we thought about those three months away, but today I wanted to talk about a major shift that's been happening for me that really started on the trip, as it relates to travel, as it relates to seeing the world as it relates to truly leveraging the freedom that I've worked so hard to earn.

Speaker 1:

If you've been following my journey for a while now, you know that I have been chasing and living a freedom lifestyle for close to a decade. The kind of lifestyle where, yeah, I get to choose where I work, when I work, who I work with and sometimes if I work at all. You know I have said no to the nine to five life, I've said yes to one way tickets and I've built a life where my days often feels like a choose your own adventure novel. But here's the thing that they don't always tell you about freedom Once you have it like, truly have it, there's a moment that you start asking what now? What is all of this freedom for? But now, what is all of this freedom for? Yes, having the option to do back-to-back summers, like we just did for the sixth winter in a row, is so sick.

Speaker 1:

Something has started to shift for me. I no longer feel like I just want freedom from work or freedom from structure or freedom from other people's rules, but I'm really craving a freedom to contribute, a freedom to give back for my life, to have more meaning With the life that I live. Now I have capacity to give back. For years I've been trying to do so through donating a percentage of my income. I think once I achieved financial freedom and had excess, that was kind of the first step for me donating to various charities, partaking in campaigns like Giving Tuesday. Every year I've been looking back on all of the flights that I have gone on and offsetting all of them through really cool carbon capture projects that you can find on lessca. But more and more I've been feeling like I want to have more of an impact and I want to take more of a hands-on approach to how I give back. Not only do I want to have more of an impact and I want to take more of a hands-on approach to how I give back. Not only do I want to donate my money, but now I kind of want to donate my time and really I feel like I want my life to have some sort of legacy that I leave behind, like I'm really craving a very long-term project that I can spend my lifetime building and contributing towards. That really makes a difference. That really lives past me, and so that is something that has been on my mind, and on the trip very early on I realized that Jared was kind of having these feelings too.

Speaker 1:

When you go on many eight hour, 10 hour day hikes or road trips in the van, you have a lot of time to talk. And Jared and I that is probably our core strength in our relationship is communication. We're the type of couple that if we're in a fight we will stay up literally all night hashing it out until we both come out on the other end of it Clear, aligned. It all makes sense, the lessons are uncovered, we have a path forward and we are down to put in that time. So we love to chit chat, we love to introspect, we love to reflect, we love to strategize and we love to do it together.

Speaker 1:

So, naturally, on these trips, on these walks, on these hikes that we were doing in New Zealand, within the first month we already started to really think about okay, what do we want this year to look like? We started the trip on I think our flight was December 26th. So we really kicked off the new year with this adventure, and one of the resources that we used to help plan our year was Year Compass. If you haven't heard of it, please search it on the internet. It's so cool. It's a free resource. I can't believe it was free, but we both went through the Year Compass structure step by step, and learned so much about what is going to make this year a win for each of us, and one of the big themes was that giving back was becoming more and more important to each of us and feeling like it was an era of our life where we weren't really hitting the mark. We weren't satisfied by what we were already contributing, and so, like a month into the trip in New Zealand, we were already starting to get crystal clear on our dreams, on our vision.

Speaker 1:

We joke that we are coming home with a 10 year plan for our lives and we kind of are, and without revealing too much because all still very early stage, there's definitely some things that we know we want to double down on. If you follow us, you know we've launched the brand conscious kitties and we've been running retreats under that brand, and so that is definitely something that we really want to double down on. We definitely want to build something that honors our love for animals more than just the vegan diet that we're so proud to live by. We're thinking of maybe having some type of animal sanctuary, some type of retreat center, so that's like generally where we're headed, I'll just say that. But of course we don't have the space for that. We're not teed up for that. So how can we start to make an impact now? We know we want to be more philanthropic, we know that we have excess, we know that we live this very privileged life that we've worked hard towards to get to this point. So what can we start doing now? We're about a third into the trip and we figured what can we do in New Zealand to start stepping into that philanthropic identity.

Speaker 1:

Which brings me to today's episode, and I'm going to bring you behind the scenes of our very first Workaway experience. If you are not familiar with Workaway, this is a global platform that connects travelers with hosts who have farms, eco projects, nonprofits who will typically offer food, accommodation and hands-on learning experiences about sustainable agriculture and farm life in exchange for you volunteering X amount of hours per day. If you're not familiar with Workaway, you might be familiar with the term WOOFing, which stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. That is also something we discovered was very popular in New Zealand. That people were doing, and it really gives you a chance to live like the day-to-day life of what a small scale farmer would be like. So most woofing hosts. They actually require no prior experience, just a willingness for you to get your hands dirtyingness, to Learn. And, like I said, it was very popular among New Zealand travelers of all ages, and that is how we discovered the Workaway site.

Speaker 1:

So we were thinking about what could we do here. We were meeting other people who were woofing around the country. We thought that sounded really interesting. Of course, we don't have any contacts for organic eco farms in New Zealand, despite loving the idea of meeting someone that has that type of space. So we went on the website and we found a posting that literally felt like it was made for us. It was an animal sanctuary and yoga retreat center that was looking for volunteers. As soon as we saw that posting, we thought, okay, this would be such an incredible opportunity for us to learn from someone who is truly living our dream life, while also stepping into that identity.

Speaker 1:

Now, giving back to New Zealand, let's do this. We immediately signed up for work away memberships. It is a fee that you pay, so an annual membership for one person is 59 US dollars, and then you can sign up as a couple, which is what we did, and that was 69 US dollars. I have since signed up for the referral program because I'm like I'm going to be telling everybody about this now. So if you click the link in the show notes, that actually gives you three free additional months if you decide you want to sign up yourself. And really, other than having a minimum age of being 18 years old to volunteer, in most countries they really welcome all global travelers who genuinely want to see the world while also contributing and also giving back to the places that they visit. So it felt like it was checking a lot of box for us giving back to New Zealand, a country that we were already obsessed with, to learning from people who are essentially living our dream life animal sanctuary and retreat center, check, check and three, really stepping into that philanthropic identity being able to leverage our freedom lifestyle for good.

Speaker 1:

So we found the listing, we created accounts and now they had to select us. We found out that they actually get hundreds of applications every single month. What they said, what really stood out about us, was one we put as a subject line you are living our dream life. I thought that would really get their attention. But then also we talked to them about some of the skills that we had outside of, like hands-on farming, because, well, we didn't really have any experience. I have a few potted plants in my house, one privileged cat, but that's really our experience with this, other than the fact that we've been running retreats. We've been using the internet to market our retreats, building a brand, social media, building businesses as digital nomads, and so it turns out that those business and digital skills we mentioned were actually what captured their attention, because they, coincidentally, were thinking about hosting their very first conference, and so they thought that, in addition to us helping out on the farm, we could also volunteer by doing a trade with our digital skills, for some of the things that they were thinking to market and promote their new conference. So they I think they took like 24 hours or 48 hours for them to reply to us.

Speaker 1:

We'd actually applied to three different farms. One told us, no, they were totally booked. The other completely ghosted us, and this one, which was our first choice, said, hey, yeah, we can take you on the dates that you need. You know, let's move forward. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, I have so many questions, I don't even know how this works. And, coincidentally, we were only one hour away from the location of this farm.

Speaker 1:

We were on the north side of the South Island, we were in Nelson. We thought we were going to be spending weeks wing surfing and there was no wind. So we were actually just like stuck in this town. Every day we would get a message saying, oh no, the wind's not good enough for you to go out today. And we were just getting increasingly more disappointed. We joined a Pilates studio, we joined a coworking space. We were trying to make the most of this dead week and in this time is when we were like, okay, let's get started with our work away application. So that's kind of where we were physically and mentally.

Speaker 1:

And then the location of this farm was an hour away, in an area called Motueka, specifically the Motueka Valley. I'm definitely butchering that name, like I butcher a lot of the New Zealand cities and names and yeah, slang that they have, which, yeah, they have so much fun slang. I will be talking about all of that in an episode coming out soon and just how cool the local Kiwis are. But yeah, we were an hour or so away, so we just said, hey, we're pretty close. Can we actually come by and just have a conversation in person, make sure we're a good fit right? If we're going to be now rearranging our trip to spend almost a month there, I kind of just wanted to make sure this was legit right. So they agreed to meet us and from that very first visit we connected immediately. We shared lots of laughs. We loved hearing about their mission and their vision for the space that they had created. The land that they were on it had previously been used as a cigarette farm for cigarette production, so it was a very unique building and use of the space that, of course, they had transformed to an animal sanctuary retreat center. It was so beautiful huge orchards of fruit and various vegetable gardens. It was amazing. And so we had that very first visit. We got a good feeling about the experience. They got a good feeling and a good read on us, so we agreed that we would come back in a few weeks and start our volunteering.

Speaker 1:

This particular place had a few other requirements for us. That apparently isn't standard, but I thought I would just be up front For them. They required us to be vegetarian, which was easy. We were vegan. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they were an animal sanctuary. They did not have the animals to exploit them. Their chickens were laying eggs, but they weren't even eating them. One of my duties was to go collect the eggs each day and put them in a fridge that they would then just donate to different people people they would go visit. They would bring a carton of eggs. So they wereists.

Speaker 1:

They really were walking the talk and they expected us not to be bringing any animal products or meat products in their house, which was no problem. They also followed a very strict yogi diet. They requested no onions, no mushrooms and no garlic be brought into the house as well. That was was interesting. I hadn't heard about that before, but it's like one of those things once you know, you kind of see it everywhere. I've been noticing all these items in grocery stores that'll say up front oh, no garlic or no onion. So I guess this is a thing also. We were up for that. And then they said no drugs or alcohol was permitted on the site, so none of these were issues for that. And then they said no drugs or alcohol was permitted on the site, so none of these were issues for us.

Speaker 1:

They also expected us to volunteer for five hours a day and then, every five days we volunteered, we would get two days off. They were very flexible in terms of which hours we worked. They had certain tasks that had to be done at a certain time each day, like the goats had to be fed at a certain time, certain vegetables in the garden had to be watered at certain times, certain plants had to be watered at a certain time. They had a weekly yoga class we helped them prepare for. So of course there was some fixed hours, but for the most part they were very chill.

Speaker 1:

I did not feel micromanaged. I didn't feel like they were very chill. I did not feel micromanaged. I didn't feel like they were tracking me. But again, being fully transparent, we heard that that is not necessarily the norm. We met other work away woofers, volunteers who had volunteered at true farms where they were producing product for commercial activity, and they would say it's very common for you to be up at 5am working quite hard, and they were really farms that were relying on volunteers for their operations. This place you just felt like you were a bonus resource and support, like they were fine without us, but with us there they could do more things than they could usually do, so that felt really good. We were provided accommodations and food for volunteering, so it was more of an exchange than a true just volunteering of our time, and the accommodations were amazing. So they had their own home.

Speaker 1:

But then on the property they had what they called the barn, which was a large barn with an upstairs loft, which is where our bedroom was. The bedroom wasn't anything fancy, honestly, just a couple mattresses on the floor with some fans on the floor and a small desk in the space, and that was kind of it. But the rest of the barn was gorgeous. We had our own little kitchen. It was also the space where the yoga studio was, so there was a full yoga room in there where the woman who hosted us hosted her weekly yoga class. The barn was just surrounded by luscious potted plants, hanging vines, cozy floor, cushions, crystals, statues. They had uplifting mantras painted all over the walls and tons of sunlight, large windows, a very serene place, I will say. There was not a proper toilet, so we got very familiar with composting toilets while we were there and one of our jobs was, every couple of days, to actually clean out the composting toilet, and when I say our job, it was Jared's job. I said I'm going to water the plants and you take that one, babe, and he obliged. So that was cool. Those were kind of the accommodations that they put us in. Very much had our own separate space.

Speaker 1:

The next would be the food, and so we often get questions is how does the meals work? If they are providing meals, is it fancy? Breakfast was super simple. They essentially provided us with a huge bag of quick dry oats and then we could have unlimited fruit from their orchard. So I'll talk a little bit about what types of food they were producing. But every morning I had fresh apples and fresh plums and some blueberries available to me as much as I wanted, which was so yummy. And she also taught us how to make our own oat milk, which we had never done before.

Speaker 1:

So every morning we would start the day in the barn, just Jared and I. We would have our simple breakfast with some peanut butter in our oatmeal and some simple coffee with some oat milk, and that was the start of the day. Before we would meet up with them and really start to do our chores, we would break together for lunch and we would have one shared meal with them over lunch. Jared actually took on making the lunch for everyone most days. It was one of his hours that he used each day, which was pretty cool, and then pretty much we did dinner on our own. Again, feel free to take anything you want from the garden and they would have a ton of like dried lentils and beans and some spices that we could use and we could just make food in our barn, which was super simple and easy. We were the only volunteers there for most of our stay, but then at the very end we overlapped for one weekend with the incoming volunteers and we actually got to train the next volunteers who are coming in. So that was kind of fun and it was a really nice social way to end, where we were all in the barn together making meals. The four volunteers the other two who came in were also Canadian, which was a fun coincidence. They didn't know each other, they were both just also volunteering. So we had a lot of things in common. We got to talk about life in Canada and we were actually all from British Columbia. So special, very, very special, and we still follow each other on social media to this day. So that was how the food worked.

Speaker 1:

And now our chores. So what were we actually doing? My favorite chore that I looked forward to every day was feeding the animals. They had six goats, three sheep, three chickens, two cats and four fish the goats in particular. They were such characters and they were very pampered. I legitimately had a 12-step protocol that I had to follow every night while making them their dinner. It was a ritual I looked forward to at 5 PM every single day, and I even posted the graphic of the protocol that they had given me on my Instagram, which is still there on my feed, because you just have to see it to believe it. These goats are really living the VIP life and get in some special treatment, and I was so here for it. I loved to do that.

Speaker 1:

Jared was doing a lot more projects in their garden, a lot of like weeding, clearing areas that they could do, more planting. She had a lot of big projects that required manual labor, so Jared was a lot of like moving around stones and going down to the river and getting more stones and just doing manly things, if you know. You know we both did a lot of fruit picking. Like I said, they had an orchard with apples and plums and kiwi trees, blueberry bushes, grape vines. Everywhere they had hazelnut trees, a full vegetable garden. They had so much food that they were producing. It was incredible they had been in that property for at least 20 years. I think I got that right. So lots of food, lots of fruit picking, lots of cleaning of the space, various special projects, and then once a week she hosted a yoga class. So we were helping clean the space, welcome the guests, doing some customer service. We got to attend the weekly yoga class, which was really nice.

Speaker 1:

And then, of course, there was the conference, which was why we were hired, where they really wanted us to help them get ready to put on this conference and market it. I helped him build his LinkedIn page for the first time, create a bunch of content for his Facebook page. I was interacting with the guest speakers. He had dozens of amazing speakers from around the world. I was sending out mass emails to reporters, reaching out to local universities to get students to attend, updating the website, coding various things. So I was doing quite a bit. The conference was called the Post-Capitalist New Zealand Conference. It actually took place just a couple of days ago, which is fun. I had a virtual ticket and got to watch it all come to life and we were texting and saying good luck, you got this so cool to finally see it.

Speaker 1:

So I played a big role in that and, to be honest, it was probably my least favorite part of my work. That really felt more like a job versus an exchange, where I was really learning new skills that I got to take into my life. I was more just doing work I should probably get paid for is how it felt. So I kind of resented those hours of the day where I had to be on my laptop. I mean, their outside was just so fabulous and amazing and it was summer in New Zealand. All I wanted to do was be outside with the animals, but that was really what they needed me to do and so, yeah, I was also very efficient at my tasks. So I'm like I can't do this for five hours a day. If you give me what you want to get done, I can do this in an hour.

Speaker 1:

To put it in perspective, our hosts the man he was in his eighties putting on the conference. She was a bit younger. She was originally from Israel. He was born and raised in New Zealand. They were a couple running the place, so I was a little bit more efficient on my computer than him, let's just say that. And so you know we found our flow. They were very nice with us, but I did have to put in like some slight boundaries and awkward conversations here and there to be like, no, I can't just sit in your office with you for five hours and that be my entire shift, because I will literally go crazy but give me all the tasks and watch how quickly I can get stuff done. So he got it and he understood it and we had an amazing relationship. I think these people will be in our lives for, hopefully, our life, and I intend to go back to New Zealand and volunteer with them again and I can imagine a future where they come to Canada and are part of our retreats and some of the work that she's doing and the mission that she has in her message. So, amazing relationship. They're very generous with us. She taught me how to bake bread, which became one of the weekly tasks that I had to do, and it was such a great fit.

Speaker 1:

We extended our time, I think five extra nights, because we weren't totally ready to leave when we were supposed to and there was just still more to be done. And having this opportunity to help train the next volunteers worked out really well, so it was fabulous. I think we got very lucky with our first experience. There was also a lot of free time. The farm was a five minute walk to the river, so in between our shifts we would take breaks, if it was really hot, go down to the river, have a quick dip.

Speaker 1:

They had bikes so we would go for bike rides. They were in a very remote area. That was a 30 minute drive to any grocery store and we didn't have a car for this. We didn't have our van, so we would actually bike around to all the neighbor's farms who would have different offerings. It was amazing. I've never seen this before, but just imagine people just at the end of their driveway having a fruit stand and a vegetable stand promoting what they sell, and a lot of it was by donation or just by the honor system. They would have a cash box and say, you know, $2 for a pepper and just hope that you put the money in there, or I would say by koha, which who knows if I'm pronouncing that right but that means donation in the Maori language, which was very prevalent in New Zealand, something I was super impressed by. So we would do that on our free time bike around. We were in rolling valleys with beautiful mountains. We did some hikes in the area.

Speaker 1:

We would go and use the yoga space and just stretch. She had really high-end yoga props that we would enjoy every single night or just chill and read their cat. One of them, simba, slept with me every single night, including the first night we arrived. He just came right into the bed and was like this is a cat lady. I can sense this from her and I'm going to be her cat for this period. A cat lady I can sense this from her and I'm going to be her cat for this period. And I slept with him every single night. I miss him. He's so cute. So yeah, a lot of relaxing time. I had amazing sleeps, the best sleeps not only of the trip, but literally of my life.

Speaker 1:

I have an aura ring now and I got a 96 readiness score two weeks in a row. I actually just realized my aura ring is not on. I went to charge it this morning and didn't put it back on. So if you're watching this on YouTube or on Spotify. I swear I do have an aura ring, it's just charging. So, yeah, my body loved it.

Speaker 1:

I felt amazing, being outside, working in the garden, waking with the sun, walking barefoot in the yard every single morning, meditating, doing yoga. I feel so blessed that this was our very first workaway experience and our very first time volunteering abroad, because I do know that when it comes to somebody who wants to start to give back and start to do volunteer traveling, that it can be a bit tricky. I mean, I am familiar with the concept of white saviorism, which is that idea that well-intentioned white people position themselves as these rescuers of non-white communities which can often create unintended harm, and all these power imbalances. I'm aware of this. I've also heard of so-called volunteer programs that operate more like fundraising scams, right Instead of genuine nonprofits, where they have these really high volunteer fees and are just like funneling that into themselves and only a fraction of the cash goes into the programs.

Speaker 1:

As an animal lover, I have to be especially cautious with programs that promise to rescue or rehabilitate exotic wildlife or farm animals and position themselves as sanctuaries, but really they're just facilities that mistreat or exploit animals for photo ops right? It's so sad that we live in a world where, if you have finally gotten to a point where you have excess time, desire, passion, resources and you want to give back, that you have to be so discerning in terms of where you give your time and make sure that it's legitimate. I find that really, really sad that that's the reality of the world, but I think more of us leaning towards that idea of giving back and sharing our excess and not just making it all about us and so individualistic, has got to be a step forward. Right, that's got to be a step in the right direction. I have a long road ahead of me to learn about what this all means and how I do this sustainably and safely and responsibly and effectively. Effective altruism is really important to me and it's going to require a lot of effort because of the world we live in today. But Workaway felt like a really amazing first step to feeling what it would be like to not only go and enjoy amazing place in the world, but also find a way to give back and actually be part of the community in a more hands-on way.

Speaker 1:

I am really curious about what is in the future and how I can travel with purpose, participate in regenerative tourism, volunteer abroad. Use my extra freedom to leave places a little bit better when I visit. Jared and I are already starting to think about our 10 year anniversary is next summer and how I think we want to do a volunteer trip instead of just like another big trip for us. I think I love the idea of volunteering for maybe two to three weeks and then vacationing for one to two weeks after that. I think that could be really great and cool balance. So stay tuned for more of that. If you have any experience with volunteering abroad highs, the lows, the scams, the wins, any tips for what to look for I would love to hear it. You can find me on Instagram at samlaliberty, and until next time, freedom seekers, enjoy your freedom.

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