Long Term Community Member Opportunities

Thanks to all travelers that seek to be part of our mission to promote tolerance, understanding, global citizenship and environmental stewardship.  While travel seems to be the ideal and logical way for this to happen, travel merely to "see the sights” is not enough.  It's necessary for world citizens to meet one another in a genuine, safe and comfortable way in order for these friendships to form.  Conventional forms of tourism and hotel accommodation rarely meet this need because they seldom provide opportunities for genuine interaction between people.  Pacific Tradewinds Hostel continually strives to create a safe and comfortable travelers community, where forming international friendships is the goal.   In community, we seek to learn how each person and their country fits into the global community and find ways to break through prejudice and nationalistic hubris and isolation. We also want to show travelers that living in community can be more fun and more ecologically sustainable than living alone.   Pacific Tradewinds is an extremely friendly home for travelers, where it's easy to meet other travelers and create amazing lifelong memories.

Travelers frequently seek to stay long-term for a variety of reasons (including educational interns, co-housing advocates, service to travelers).  They volunteer their time and passion to help other travelers and experience San Francisco like a local.  We select some guests to stay long-term with us from the many who apply mainly because they are extremely outgoing, friendly and passionate about service to travelers.   Volunteers do not always receive accommodation in exchange for their help at the hostel.  Because U.S. labor and immigration laws are more complex than most other countries in the world, we regrettably can not offer barter or work exchange arrangements to all travelers.   When bartering and work exchange is possible, it will be conducted in accordance with IRS rules.    Please contact us if you have questions.  

Here are some of the ways travelers have helped with our mission:

Blogging

If you are an experienced travel blogger or writer we would like to talk to you.   Now that we have our new website in place, we are looking for travelers that have experience blogging and travel writing.   We would like to fill our website with detailed information that will help hostel-style travelers visiting San Francisco.   We feel, while there are lots of books and websites about San Francisco, only a small few of them are written from a backpackers perspective.   Even resources that do serve backpackers are usually fairly limited in the amount of information they have available.  If you are interested in colaborating with our hostel, please contact us.   Although we don't pay for this type of work, we can provide you with credit and a link to your website.   This is a great way to build your portfolio and references.  We will want to see some samples of your previous work.  

Photography

Do you usually have a camera around your neck wherever you go?   There are so many locations in San Francisco we need photos of.   While you are out enjoying the city, you can also be taking photos to help us out.  Although we don't pay for photos,  we can provide you with credit and a link to your website if you want.   This is a great way to build your portfolio and references.  We will want to see some samples of your previous work.

PHP Programming

It's sometimes difficult to arrange this sort of work, since will want to see your qualifications and references before we turn you loose on our code.   However, we can sometimes provide a day or two of work alongside the owner, Darren.   Darren was the founder and former owner of Hostels.com so he has a limited about of programming skill and can usually point to the exact lines in our code that need help.    If we really like you, a long term relationship might be possible. 

Mural Painting

Everyone says they can paint murals.  Few have photos of their previous work to back it up.   We are specifically looking for artists that can paint mythical nautical scenes like this, this and this.  Let us know if you would like to paint on our walls.