Visiting Gentle World
Thank you for your interest in visiting and/or volunteering for Gentle World.
We are always open to any and all requests to visit. Due to the high volume of correspondence we receive, we ask everyone to read the following carefully.
Our visitor-volunteer program is offered as a service to the public as part of our educational outreach, to provide interested individuals with the opportunity to learn from the experience of living and working in a sustainable vegan community.
Gentle World is not a business or a working farm, but a team of dedicated volunteers who live and work cooperatively to accomplish the goals of the organization. Our gardens, rather than being for profit, are used to demonstrate the principles of veganic growing, and to feed the member-volunteers and visitors.
Although our expectations of visitors are very reasonable, volunteer duties do not always follow specific hours, and can include a variety of tasks not limited to garden or agricultural activities. In addition to garden maintenance and yard work, duties can also include food preparation, cleaning, and some miscellaneous tasks such as painting and organizing of storage areas.
Gentle World does not charge money for our educational activities. However, due to the rising cost of organic food and basic necessities (such as food, gas, water, electricity, internet, etc.), we are now requesting donations from our guests and volunteers to contribute toward the costs of our visitor program. Details of the sliding scale are explained in the form below.
No matter what your situation is, we welcome all applications for visiting Gentle World and all inquiries into the educational programs we provide.
Please be aware that our New Zealand center is only open during the summer months, and is closed to visitors from the end of April until the beginning of November.
We appreciate you taking the time to fill in the form below in as much detail as possible. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
NB: Although we do not put any specific limit on the length of time a person can stay, we are only able to offer short visits at first (three days to a week), as we have limited accommodations and try to arrange for all interested applicants to experience Gentle World.
It is possible for the initial one-week stay to lead to a visit of longer duration, depending on the space available and what our needs are for volunteer assistance. However, since we are not able to guarantee that there will be space available beyond what we have agreed upon in advance, we encourage all visitors to arrange for alternative accommodation in case an extension is not possible.
