Help Exchange also known as HelpX for short is being developed and administered by an English backpacker who now lives in New Zealand and has travelled extensively throughout both Australia and New Zealand over several years, during which time he has worked at several locations for accommodation and sometimes for meals as well. These places have usually either been a farm or a backpackers hostel. He sometimes used a casual system that was running where owners of farms were asking for help by putting up notices on hostel notice boards. There are also schemes that produce booklets that list such places. But realising the best way for many prospective helpers to find suitable hosts was via a system that operated online and finding that there was no such thing he decided to develop one himself. It was also a great opportunity to put his new web development skills into good use after gaining a Diploma in Internet Technology.
Advantages of an online organisation include:
1) Giving the host total control over what information they display and being able to update that information whenever and as often as they wish ensuring that their details are continually up to date and free of errors. It is up to hosts to ensure their information is entered accurately. When their details are viewed, the helper can see when the last time the host details were updated by reading the 'Last Updated' date.
2) If a host at any time does not wish to have any helpers staying, for reasons like being out of season, holidays, illness etc, they can sign into their listing and choose not to have their listing displayed by ticking their 'Disable Listing' checkbox. Their entry will then remain out of view until they sign back in and untick the 'Disable Listing' checkbox.
3) Helpers are required to agree to Help Exchange rules and ideals prior to being able to view the full host details.
4) Everything is instantaneous, hosts can join up and their details are instantly ready to display, allowing them to see exactly how their details will look when viewed by helpers. A helper can join up and they can view hosts straight away. No waiting for delivery of a membership pack by 'snail mail'. A helper can easily check current host entries when checking their email at a cyber café during their travels.
5) If a helper wants to stay at certain kinds of hosts, for example, permaculture style hosts, they can easily find them using the host search box. They just need to type in their search term, so in our example permaculture or permac for short would be typed in, and then click the 'Find Hosts' button. All host entries containing that search term will be displayed. Searches can be further broken down into selected Regions or Categories if desired. Other popular search terms are 'horse', 'solar' and 'vegetarian'.
6) Helpers tend to be working holiday backpackers who wish to stay with one or more hosts during their travels. They don't need the hassle of finding and carrying an additional book around when they can join up and view hosts quickly and easily online when checking their email during their trip, if they have not done so before leaving home. Also, they may only find out about HelpX during their trip, in which case they can join up as quickly as it takes to sign into their email accounts. If their trip includes visiting both Australia and New Zealand they don't need to worry about joining up a second time.
7) It's highly environmentally friendly. No paper involved, no delivery / transportation required.
I hope you find Help Exchange to be a useful service to you. Help
Exchange relies heavily on the 'word of mouth' in order for new
hosts and helpers to find out about it, so do let others who may
be interested know about it. You may wish to put up poster
at your local host, backpacker hostel, information center, internet
cafe. Click here for our poster
page.
Rob Prince
Founder of Help Exchange
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