We have transformed and changed our name from Organic Volunteers to GrowFood. 
Why? For starters, we always had the domain GrowFood.org and it was
in our logo. 

We did a lot of research on our name
and surveyed our members. We found that Organic Volunteers was too limiting.
We don’t just include organic farms. We want to be inclusive of our
many local, sustainable farms that are not certified. We also include
urban gardens, permaculture, biodynamics and even non-farming sustainable
practices like natural building and clean energy.  

 “Volunteers” is also
misleading. Our hosts offer many different opportunities including paid
positions, long term apprenticeships and academic courses with fees.
According to Richard Heinberg, we need 50 million farmers in this country
if we’re to transition to sustainable agriculture. That means we have
to help transition farm interns into paid managers and eventually to
farm ownership. And we want to reconnect the rest of society to their
food source, with day volunteering and farm tours. 

On our old website we used the term
“wwoof” more often and many people ask us how we’re different
than wwoof. (WWOOF stands for “willing workers on organic farms”
or “world-wide opportunities on organic farms”) We are part of the
international network of wwoof organizations and are one of a few wwoof
organizations in the US, like WWOOF USA and NE WWOOF. Wwoofing tends
to be short term work on organic farms in exchange for room and board.
We still offer many wwoofing opportunities in addition to apprenticeships
and paid work. 

So tour around the website and tell
us what you think! You can post feedback to our forum. We’re still
making changes and working out the kinks. We need to hear from you so
we can make this the best service possible.