“Travel…With A Purpose” – Exchanging Help In Iceland
Alrighty, here’s my first installment to inspire purpose-driven traveling. Remember though, I ain’t never gonna be preaching in this blog. I’m also going to be working on my grammar. No, but seriously this blog is to help motivate myself as well as others. I’ve got a personal goal set for how much of my year I want to spend in charity, missions, and volunteer work. If anyone needs to get their butt in gear it’s me!
I’m going to start by highlighting a site that wound-up providing my friend Steve and I with a great experience. That site was www.helpexchange.net. Basically it’s a great source for finding farm-related volunteer work all over the globe. For about $20 you get a two year membership, and access to people from Arizona to Australia. Families and businesses post their info and you go with the ones that interest you most. Sending an e-mail starts the process and it’s up to you and your potential host to work out the details. Just about everything I saw back when I was hunting for an exchange involved a farm of some sort. In general they almost all involved a lot of outside work. If that kind of thing scares you, watch out! But then again, it might be a great character building experience. Everyone I reached out to got back to me. Lining-up schedules and transportation can be challenging, but worth the effort. It goes without saying of course, that you’ll use iTourNow to plan your trip!
I know I wrote about this before, but I wanted to touch on it again. Steve and I used Help Exchange to land a stay near Selfoss, Iceland. In January no less! Our journey from Reykjavik to the farm was one that I’ll never forget. It ended with a bus dropping us off in the middle of nowhere, with only a hunch of where to go next. Luckily we threw on our packs and hiked off in the right direction.
For about a week we had a fun (but tough) stay with a family who ran a sheep farm and made their own candy. By the end I was a pro at two things: convincing 30-plus sheep to go where I wanted them to go, and well…mucking a stall. When all was said and done though, I can look back and know that Steve and I were a blessing to that little family out in rural Iceland. We were able to help relieve them of some major tasks, which made getting through their day a little easier. In the process we got to know them a bit (and an awesome Swede!), and explore the area. It was quite fulfilling and my character was definitely built, to say the least!
So if you’re looking to travel with a purpose on your next trip, check out www.helpexchange.net. Step into someone’s world for a bit and give them a helping hand. After all, sheep herding is great for padding a resume’…
Picture: Looking back down the road we had hiked to get to the farm. By the way, I’m a sucker for pictures of roads that disappear off into the distance…
Comments (1)











Nice recommendation Dave. I will look into Help Exchange. It sounds very similar to WWOOF (http://www.wwoof.org/), which is also a world wide organization, where you work in exchange for room and board. I experienced my farm stay in Australia as a WWOOFer. Keep the posts coming – I’m intrigued and can’t wait to hear more