WWOOF ESTONIA NEWSLETTER - LAMMAS

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Annual meeting 2011 and 4th birthday of WWOOF Estonia On one nice Saturday WWOOF Estonia gathered in Tallinn to celebrate the organization’s 4th birthday and conduct an annual meeting. First, all the coordinators gave an overview of what their team had done during the last period – we introduced the WWOOF movement in Põlva Ecofair, sent out one newsletter, wrote an introduction about Estonia to international WWOOF Handbook, organized a summer trip to a WWOOF farm. We also asked feedback from our farms - you can read more about that from another article. Currently, we have over 500 volunteers and 19 farms. Annual meeting affirmed new coordinators for the next period: * Admin – Karin Kilk * Public relations – Ann Muuga * WWOOF hosts – Priit Pikk * Wwoofers – Rita Jürmann (from May 1st) A very important change for the new period is registration fee for volunteers. It will be 9 EUR and the volunteer will get access to hosts’ profiles for 2 years. If everything goes as scheduled, the fee will be taken from the 1st of May 2011. The decision about the fee was hard, but life has shown that without an income a NGO has difficulties operating – managing our website, meeting with each other (members live in different parts of Estonia), organizing trips to farms etc. Therefore there will be some changes in profile as well. We will put information concerning the fee on our website. If you have any detailed questions about the fee, please do not hesitate to contact us. In annual meeting we also discussed when should we take our traditional summertrips to Estonian farms. If everything goes as planned, the trips will be in may, in August and in September. Detailed information comes to our website when plans are more specified.
Spring 2011 WWOOF ESTONIA NEWSLETTER Summary of WWOOF farms feedback 2010 It is time to summarize year 2010. We thank all the participating farms who engage in receiving volunteers! On the other hand, we thank and greet volunteers who devote their time to give a helping hand where needed! We wish You all brightness and strenght to your days! Year 2010 was active for some WWOOF farms and calm for others. Volunteers visited 6 farms: Rätsepa, Orapera, Lepaniidi, Murese, Alliksaare and Proosa. The furthest volunteer Leah came to Rätsepa from USA Ohio. Besides her visited the farm Erkki from Tartu Estonia in March, in July Andrea from Germany and Tanya from Latvia. Another American was working in Orapera farm. Orapera also got help from two Estonian ladies Renata and Helme. Lepaniidi received helping hands from Estonia and elsewhere. At first in May there was a volunteer Ruth who stayed for two weeks and a second year in sequence came Estonian Maris who just started to like the place. Beside her worked in Lepaniidi another Estonian Madli after Midsummer Day. It seems that the farm has enchanted others too because French girl Elsa spent there almost a whole summer and American Susanne a month. Murese WWOOF year was brightened with Gemma from Holland and Susanne from Germany. As told by the farm, these women were very nice, Susanne also took an interest in handicraft and Gemma in folk music so they found time to visit Viljandi Folk Music festival. Susanne spent a week and half in Murese and Gemma spent 5 days there. Last but not least there was a volunteer in Proosa working with soil. WWOOF Estonia made its spring trip to Alt-Lauri farm in Rõuge, Võru. The Farm deals with growing eco-vegetables. Farm`s hostess Kaja Keskküla is an active woman who also provides Tartu households with local goods. We helped in clearing the fields and hoeing. Gathering old plastic pieces from the ground made us recognize once again that every action has an impact to our mother Earth. Ignorance or lack of knowledge about the Earth is what makes some people throw their rubbish just outside or bury it under the soil. This may be a great obstacle for a household who follows nature protection. In exchange for work we were indulged with delicious dishes. It was the only trip for WWOOF Estonia last year. We hope that the present year brings great new possibilities to sting our fingers in the ground. One WWOOF farm decided to skip receiving volunteers during year 2010 because of a increase in family members. We wish Goodkaarma luck and happiness! We heard that some farms are worried about the language barrier with foreign volunteers. Sometimes volunteers also worry if they understand the tasks correctly when they have to use body-language and a dictionary. So to comfort you we can say that these feelings are mutual. We encourage you to try anyway, even many times because the joy that comes from jointly made work is almost always bigger than the initial fear! Additionally we encourage farms to contact WWOOF if they need extra-help during some period because we can publish your wish in our home page. The Sun is taking higher rounds already and it is time to start with spring work and prepare for new volunteers who give a helping hand. This kind of cultural exchange is exciting for both participating sides!
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WWOOF ESTONIA NEWSLETTER - LAMMAS

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