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How to Get Free Room and Board Overseas

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Suzan Haskins

Costigliole d’Asti (Piedmont, Italy): landscape

Help make wine in Italy and you can stay at the vineyard, no charge. ©iStockphoto.com/Dagherrotipia

If you like spending time in the garden... love to eat healthy, organic food...and enjoy traveling, there’s a way to combine these passions—for free.

You can volunteer at an organic farm next to the Podacarpus National Park in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, or on an apple orchard and organic bakery in Mendoza, Argentina. Help make goat cheese on an Irish farm near Ballyvaughan, County Clare in Ireland, learn about wine making on a vineyard in Italy’s Piemonte district while staying in a village house with a view of the Alps...

How about joining a team running a surfing school at Curio Bay in Southland, New Zealand? Or renovating a 100-year-old timber house with a view of the Pacific on the Fiji island of Ovalau?

You don’t need any serious experience, just a willingness to take on agreed-upon tasks.

You won’t be paid, but as a volunteer you’ll get free meals and accommodation.

Besides planting, tending, or harvesting organic gardens, you may be asked to milk goats, build chicken coops, or, in the case of small hotels, help with cooking or cleaning.

Read on…

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