A three-year-old website called Workaway.info (be sure to use “info” as the domain name) is suddenly attracting a great deal of attention among would-be American travelers, probably because of favorable word-of-mouth comments from the people who have thus far used it (Workaway.info is British-headquartered, but also employs staff ranging as far away as Buenos Aires). It attempts to satisfy the age-old urge to travel for free, which multitudes of Americans certainly have. Using the services of Workaway.info, you can receive free room and board for various lengths of time in exchange for your willingness to work for four to five hours a day for your host in a wide range of countries.
Note that Workaway.info differs subtly from the traditional “volunteer vacation.” People who sign up for the latter are usually contributing their labor to a worthwhile social cause: they help dig a well for an African village, or teach English to people who need that language skill to obtain poverty-avoiding jobs.
By contrast, Workaway.info signs you to work for people with a purely commercial need for workers, or private families seeking someone to help with the children or around the house. You agree to contribute those four or five daily hours for five or six days a week - on a farm, in a shop, hostel or small hotel, in a business or laboratory, in a home - and your international host then treats you like a member of the family. You sleep for free on the premises, eat three meals a day with your host, and can raid the icebox as often as you wish.
No money changes hands. You simply exchange labor for room and board, and commit yourself for at least three weeks (although you often can stay at the effort for almost as many months as you wish).
Are these exchanges of work-for-room-and-board entirely legal according to the rules of the destination nation? Workaway.info heatedly insists they are, and includes a discussion on their website of the visa requirements in some of the countries they handle. Workaway.info lists those requirements. I would guess that the absence of any cash payment for what you do results in most governments paying no attention at all, but Workaway.info guards its flanks by pointing out that people planning to work in numerous countries are required to apply for a work visa to do so. Whether every client of Workaway.info does this is unknown to me, and I can render no judgment on the lawfulness of the entire Workaway.info activity.
Recently, on our weekly radio show, my daughter and I interviewed a Buenos Aires employee of Workaway.info, reached by phone in Argentina, and we were impressed by the enthusiasm and idealism she displayed. Quite obviously, Workaway.info believes its has created a major network of international hosts who hold the key to the fulfillment of your own dream to live for free - for several months, if need be - in a foreign nation. According to our radio guest, more than 3,000 such work activities are now in the website's inventory, and the possibilities exist for some avid participants to live for free for many, many months on end.