The OW originated in Brazil with de Morais' 1954 Recife workshop. In the wake of the coup d'état of March 1964, de Morais went into a 23-year exile in Chile, and the OW spread from there in the late sixties. After specializing in Cultural Anthropology (Santiago University) and in Land Reform at the ICIRA (Capacitation and Research Institute for Agrarian Reform Institute), de Morais became consultant for international and national development institutions and NGOs. Since then, the organization workshop has become a constant in a number of agrarian reform efforts in Latin America and (community) development projects elsewhere. From Chile, the OW spread to Costa Rica, Mexico, Panamá, Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, the Caribbean, a number of African countries as well as Europe. In 2015, for the first time in the UK, a pilot OW took place at 'Marsh Farm' urban housing Estate, Luton (near London) as part of a government supported Enterprise and Job creation project.