Keïteï Ventures

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Work Away is a platform that allows you to volunteer anywhere in the world in exchange for accommodation. Some places include food and some even offer a payment.
It covers a huge range of exchanges from farm-stays, house sitting, pet sitting, community projects, sustainable projects, teaching, boat related or living with a family.
Hosts will show what they need and are able to offer and volunteers can message if it’s something that they’d like to get involved with.

All Workaways are different, some are short, some ask for a minimum of two weeks, some have multiple Workawayers, at some it will just be you.

My first Workaway experience was at a Japanese Guesthouse where I worked 25h a week.
= 5h a day for 5 days. By doing this I was offered free accommodation and that suited me fine. ☺️

My original work away plan was to volunteer a month in a different location in Japan.
Backstory: I had a working holiday visa so was able to stay in Japan for a year.
Please note that you not need Working Holiday Visas for Work away – it come down to how long you in tend to stay at your Work away and your passport, obviously do your research before you travel.

I enjoyed my Workaway that much that I decided to stay and ended up volunteering there for 8 months.
It was fantastic, I met so many incredible people and was able to experience Osaka change throughout the seasons.
My Workaway was broken down into 3 shifts: AM, PM & Eve which covered 5h. These involved being on reception or housekeeping – 24 beds divided between 8 rooms and the bathrooms. Once your tasks were done, you just hung around in the living space and were there in case anyone needed anything.

It was a super social guest house and made up a network of 4 other guests so parties were plentiful. I found out that the Japanese love any reason to celebrate so Potluck parties, birthday parties, leaving parties, national holidays – you name it and we celebrated it 😁

The only downsides I can think of were super minor and more just personal gripes.
I was hoping to improve my Japanese but most of the guests were international so I couldn’t take my Japanese to the next level but my German improved a lot 😁
And on another minor note, you’re never really off the clock when you live there. When you’re not on shift and trying to have a quiet morning as you munch through your breakfast. Guests will ask if they can extend their stay or if they can have more coffee etc. It’s not the end of the world but I was relieved that the guesthouse had a roof space the guests didn’t know about.

All in all I loved my Workaway experience and continued to use the platform as I continued my travels.

Another huge bonus was that when I returned to the UK I was able to use the experience beyond just travelling. When applying to jobs I could download a document which included all of my Workaway references that the hosts had written about me. This was very helpful when applying for jobs.

I would recommend Workaway to just about anyone. It has a huge, varied library of roles available to suit solo travellers, couples or families – anyone travelling on a budget basically. It’s one of the best ways I’ve found to meet locals as well as other travellers and a great way to meet a great bunch of people in general.

Happy Travels!