need help clearing the fields for cultivation, and they just didn’t have the money to pay for it.
But they knew lots of people wanted to visit New Zealand.
So they set up a website and advertised for volunteers to come and help on the farm there.

Anyway, they got lots of volunteers, and they got their farm going, and ExtraHands.com was born.

Today, the organization matches people who need help with people who are willing to work as a way of seeing the world.
You can either be a host, if you need assistance, or a volunteer, if you’re offering to work.
In either case, to become a member, you just fill out a form on the ExtraHands.com website and pay the \$25 subscription.
You only have to do that once.

But for your membership to stay active, every 12 months you have to go back to the website and check the details on your form there, adding information about any help you requested or work you did over that period.

So how does it work?
Well, if a host has some work that needs to be done, he or she goes to the ExtraHands.com website and posts a description of the work.

So the way most volunteers access these details on the website is by specifying the country or region they’re interested in working in, but a few search according to how long they want to work for.
Not many people have strong feelings about what sort of work they want to do.
They’re mostly fairly open about it.

If you’re interested in volunteering for a particular job, you can email your host to arrange the dates and establish things like accommodation and hours of work.
It’s all fairly informal.
There are no legal documents or anything like that, but you do both need to have some sort of written record of what’s been agreed before you actually arrive.

What about problems?
Well, there are too many members for the organization to be able to investigate them all.
But there’s an online message board where members can post details of any difficulties they’ve had, things like unsatisfactory accommodation, or volunteers who haven’t done the work agreed.
And this works very well.

I know you’ve personally had lots of ExtraHands.com placements, Stephen.
Tell us about them.

Well, my first placement was in Portugal where I helped a local guy with a guidebook he’d written in English.
I read what he’d written and corrected the English and made some suggestions for improving it.
I was very pleased with it when I finished and I learned lots about the country.

The next placement was on the other side of the world in Australia.
I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and since I’m pretty good in the kitchen, they had me fixing meals for 30 sheep shearers.
I stayed two months and it was a lot of fun, but I can tell you I was glad to get back home to California and just lie on a beach and relax.

Okay then, after a well-deserved rest, I did a job in South Korea for a small company that wanted an English speaker to show visiting Americans around.
They gave me some books to read, and I learned as I worked.
I loved it, and I developed a real taste for Korean food.

My most difficult job was for an older lady in the USA.
She had a gigantic house and grounds, but she couldn’t maintain them all herself.
So I worked for her, digging and planting flowers and stuff around her swimming pool.
And she grew tons of vegetables, too.
She was nice, but she fed me hot dogs morning, noon, and night.

Now, my most recent placement was last summer in Italy.
I helped a family add a room onto their house.
I didn’t speak Italian or know the first thing about building, but the husband had an English-Italian phrasebook, and together with sign language showed me exactly what to do.
And the wife’s cooking was out of this world.

Thanks, Stephen, and if you want more information…