Food helps to build community.

There’s something about sharing a meal that helps you to connect to someone.

When family and friends come for a visit during holidays, there’s nearly always a large meal that brings everyone together to share food and stories.

Food is starting to bring people together in a different way, though. People are beginning to realize the importance of locally grown food; both from an environmental and fiscal standpoint.

More and more, people are seeking out opportunities to volunteer at farms near where they live. Just like any other volunteer opportunity, the volunteers’ motivations vary. They could have a connection to farming, they might be passionate about food and local agriculture, or they might just want to get out from behind their desk and stick their hands in some soil on the weekend.

Crop Mobs have been springing up across the country, bringing together landless farmers with farmers willing to share their knowledge and who need some help on their land. The first Crop Mob came together in North Carolina in late 2008 and they’re .

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) started in England in 1971 by a small group of people eager to leave the city for the countryside, and who wanted to support the growing organic food movement. Nearly forty years later, there are WWOOF organizations in fifty countries around the world.

Groups like Crop Mob and WWOOF help to bridge the gap between urban and rural communities. They bring urban dwellers into rural areas to help build and support rural farmers, and those farmers help people to understand the impact and importance of buying food that has traveled short distances to get to their tables.

 

Have you volunteered with a Crop Mob or with WWOOF? Do you participate in another program that brings together rural and urban communities? Tell us about it in the comments!