The PEPY Tours team put together a short animated video about the history of PEPY Tours and the ways our work has changed over the years.  Check it out!

Video by the @PEPYTours team with illustrations by the fabulous Wei Peng!

You probably didn’t have access to the internet as a small child. You can remember a world before “social media”. But your kids had Facebook profiles from the womb and, before they could speak, they could maneuver your mini-computer (which you call an iPhone, just to make you feel connected to a past when people owned something called a “phone” which only did voice transmission). Their world has always been online: their birth weight was bet upon by your friends on some baby betting platform, they got a cell phone when they were in elementary school to keep them “safe”, and their grandparents talk to them through the computer on video and then later show up at the door (yet eventually they realize that Mickey Mouse wont do the same). They don’t know what the world was like when your “pen pal” was someone from whom you anxiously awaited handwritten letters.

But YOU do. And when they start getting addicted to the inter-web, when Angry Birds is more important than setting the table, when they get made fun of online by a “friend” or get broken up with via text, when they throw a tantrum because their cell service is slow during your family vacation in the South of France or can’t stop checking Facebook to see how much fun their friends are having “there” while apparently loosing the ability to have fun “here”, you’ll wish they could. And so will millions of parents around the world.

I have often reflected that in the future I imagine paying for adventure travel which is truely disconnected – like rafting trips through the Grand Canyon where the operators ban cell phone usage. There is a HUGE untapped market that is about to open: Off-Grid Adventures. The concept is so palpable that I just Go-Daddy’ed the name and it was available and then 5 minutes later when I changed my mind and decided to buy it, GoDaddy had bought it already, obviously agreeing with me about the potential of this market. This market will be huge and the need for it is fast approaching.

Actually, it’s already here it seems. In Korea, there is now a bootcamp for kids who are “web obsessed”. The internet: our latest drug addiction.

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I imagine a whole range of new products which could service this market:

- material you can put in your walls which makes cell phones and internet not work thereby creating “internet-free” zones

- internet-free cafes, spas, tourism destinations and maybe even whole “Off-grid towns” where people can get away from the over-communication which dominates the rest of their lives

- Cell phones and computers with settings which automatically turn off during certain hours of the day to force children to have internet-free time (or for adults to force themselves to take a digital diet)

- Coaching and training classes on “How to disconnect in order to reconnect” for corporates, for youth, for retirees, etc

- And surely, Off-Grid-Adventures (which I was able to get from Go Daddy, with dashes, for any of my friends who really does want to take on this space!) There will be space for many companies in this market and I can see a lot of current adventure providers re-branding themselves and rewording their sites to highlight their off-grid potential

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I have watched as adventure travel experiences have changed people’s lives and, although our official aims at PEPY Tours are to inspire people to improve the way they give, travel, and live, “life transformations” are often what people take away from their trips. We are all so wrapped up in a race to the bottom of our email pile and are in constant fire-fighting mode managing our multiple communications channels that it is only once we step away from them that we realize we want to change our lives: enjoy the work we do, get out of a bad relationship, or commit to a good one. (At one point when we were trying to track the long-term impacts of our trips through a survey we realized we could more easily track the number of breakups or marriages that had results from our trips than anything on our official goals list!)

As we all explore the “urgency of slowing down” and getting off the grid, I imagine we’ll find times in our lives when we want to show the next generation what life was like before on-line communication made all of the knowledge of the world available at your fingertips. Before we felt a constant sense of being behind on all of the information being pushed our way. And when we took more time to think and then freely decide what to learn about before slowly walking to the shelf of encyclopedias and seeing what Mr. Britannica had to teach us. As this NY Times article says, “the children of tomorrow…will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines…that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.”

How do you see the need for digital dieting effecting our futures? And, who is interested in creating opportunities in the space that is opening up “off-grid”?

I don’t usually link to PEPY’s monthly newsletter in my blog, but the song from the PEPY Tours video in here won’t get out of my head, so I thought I’d infect you with it too.  (Click on the image to see the newsletter)

Yep, that song is a Khmer rap song. Yep, it’s pretty awesome. Do YOU wanna ride with us? Awwwww, yeah…. I hope it will be in your head all day too so you can spread the Khmer rap love around the world.

Making a monthly newsletter at PEPY is something we have been doing since 2005 and you can watch the progress and change of our vision and learnings if you flip through old additions. We’ve kept up this practice over the years as we believe that having a monthly newsletter is more valuable than just a platform to connect with supporters. It’s a way to share the lessons we have learned, reach out to other NGOs working in similar sectors, give travelers information about global philanthropy issue, and allow us to highlight a place which often gets media coverage with a different bias through a new window.  Read up, ride with us or at least sing the song, and let me know if/how you’d like to see the PEPY newsletter improve to add more value in the world

This month, I was lucky enough to join Summit at Sea, the fourth event put on by the Summit Series team who bring together business visionaries, artists, social entrepreneurs, and environmentalists with the goal of fostering collaboration and innovation through the revelry they create at their exclusive gatherings. The event was unlike any other I have attended, and I thought I would write down some of the lessons I learned about how they created such a unique environment.

#1) Well Vetted Participants – Summit Series attendees were each personally invited by a member of the now 20 person planning team. While the first event started with 17 people, this event with more than 1000 was the result of those 17 recommending friends, and then those people recommending others. Everyone was somehow connected through a web of mutual respect and therefor the participants each felt honored and welcomed into the group…

#2) Innovators Across Sectors – …and while other conferences might focus on one or two business sectors, this group of innovators across all fields meant that there was cross-sector idolization going on. It was not uncommon to see someone who had just been thronged after their presentation waiting patiently in line to meet another speaker. At conferences with one sector of participants, say the Knitters Association, there would be a natural hierarchy whereby all the newbie knitters would be idealizing the polished and practiced old-timers.  At Summit Series, it didn’t seem like there was a constant divide between a celebrity crowd and their fans but rather a group of people with mutual adoration for each others work. I smiled watching Tony Hsieh of Zappos, who had been a star presenter the previous day, wait among a crowd which formed around Chip Conley (author of PEAK and founder of Joie de Vivre) after his presentation about Emotional Equations (the topic of Chip’s next book). There was a lot of mutual respect and old friendships shining through (like when Tim Ferris, author of the 4 hour work week/4 hour body, gave a shout out to Charles Best of Donors Choose during his talk as the two had been friends in school). The Roots entertained us each night, but during the day the artists who were starts in the evening were walking around the ship just like everyone else…

#3) A Captive Audience – …and that was the key to this unique experience! Everyone, including presenters and participants, was “stuck” on the boat, just like everyone else. Apart of Richard Branson and Chris Sacca who presented at the opening session and jumped ship before we set out to sea, all of the presenters and participants were there for the duration. No leaving early, no coming late, no other meetings to sneak off to, no presenting and then heading out the back door, and no breaking up into different restaurants for dinner based on exclusivity. Everyone was there together, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dancing, and that meant that the best conversations and chances to learn from each other could continue on all day and all night….

#4) No Internet or Phones – ….. and no one would be pulled away by a phone call!  At sea, our phones didn’t work and internet was so cost prohibitive on the boat that most people did not use it much or at all. If internet had been free or if our phones had continued to work, I bet most people would have taken a minimum of 1-3 additional hours each day to do work. Removing those electronic networking distractions allowed for a full immersion into the Summit experience, giving us all more time in our day to meet each other and engage in the experience through a real human social network…

#5) All Participants ALL Aboard – …as we had been told to do from the beginning by Summit Series founder, Elliot Bisnow. He reminded us to embrace the chance encounters and to fully engage each person we met in conversation as they all had a story to tell and value to share. I found the inclusive environment where everyone was welcomed into conversations so refreshing and motivating.

The last evening, during an all night jam session where a group, chaired by Gary Vaynerchuck, engaged in discussions and debates around technology, the future, social entrepreneurship, and successful charity models, I looked around and realized that each member of the group was being challenged and inspired to engage in topics they had rarely had a chance to passionately discuss before… and each of us was better for it.

The unique combination of these five characteristics (plus a whole LOT of work by the SS Team) made Summit Series an experience of overwhelming interconnectedness, passion, energy, and collaboration. Kudos to the Summit Series team for breaking down the traditional barriers to connecting at a conference event and for creating an unforgettable experience. Let’s hope those of us who participated continue to take these new found connections, ideas, and opportunities out into the world to continue to create collaborative experiences which inspire even more people to grow. And let’s hope that the Summit Series team finds a way to match this inclusive, off-the-network conference next time…. group flotilla down the Grand Canyon, anyone?

I recently wrote a piece about PEPY Tours on World Nomad’s website.  I am reposting it below as it relates to a lot of the themes of this blog: Responsible Giving, voluntourism, Cambodia, etc

Fast Five Profile: PEPY Tours

One of the PEPY riders on her bike for Cambodian based PEPY Tours

1. Who are you?  Brief description of trips you offer

Daniela Papi, Director, PEPY and PEPY Tours.

PEPY Tours offers educational tours where travelers have the chance to learn about development issues and support programs committed to making change even long after the travelers leave.  Our tours of Cambodia and neighboring areas range from bicycle trips and high-end educational adventures to service-learning programs for school groups. The required donation portion of our tour fee supports the ongoing educational programs of our partner non-profit organizations.

2.  How do you define Responsible Travel?

Responsible Travel is a conscious and educated approach to tourism which incorporates learning about and supporting local initiatives and goals in the areas we visit. If we have limited knowledge about an area, it is very difficult to make the most responsible decisions, so the most important aspects of responsible travel are the research stage and the monitoring/follow up sections.  If we want to be responsible, we need to understand the true impacts of the choices we are making.

3.  What does your company do to make sure it travels responsibly?

We are willing to change, transparent about our mistakes and the lessons we are learning, open to suggestions and new ideas, and we work to educate travelers on ways they can improve all aspects of their future travel. Our tours bring travelers to meet with the people and organizations making changes in Cambodia and helps them develop a framework for which to better analyze and understand the issues facing Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and community groups. Our goal is that travelers with PEPY Tours will change the way they give, travel, and live as a result of their trip with us.

4.    Tell us about a successful initiative.  And an unsuccessful one – what did you learn?

We used to bring people to visit a variety of programs in Cambodia, including model orphanages. Our trips were supporting these orphanages through on-going funding, so we felt that the chance to visit the place where their money was going would be a great way to connect travelers to their local impact. This view was too traveler focused, as even if it would increase fundraising potential, the cost of bringing groups of foreigners into a home which is supposed to be a safe-haven for children is not a responsible practice and should be replaced by less voyeuristic fundraising initiatives.  We did not have any direct incidents as a result of bringing travelers to these orphanages, but we felt that we were contributing to a growing trend of orphanage tourism which we believe is, overall, very harmful to both the children and to efforts to reduce corruption in Cambodia.  If donor dollars can be linked to orphanage tourism, then more and more fake orphanages will continue to be created as business, as we see here in Cambodia.

In the first few years of offering tours, we used to indulge the travelers and our own desire to “give back” on our tours through tangible ways.  Most people feel more connected to a project if they can physically “help” – paint something, build something, “see results”.  The problem with this mindset is that most of the actions travelers are contributing involve giving things away to people or building items, not building people.  We have learned that what Cambodia needs most is capacity building among leaders who are looking to improve their own lives and that things like teacher training and skill building will do more to improve education than building schools.  If we continue to only offer travelers ways to give back physically, we will teach them that improvements are equated to developing infrastructure but not a nation of people.

For the last few years we have taken the time to expose our travelers to these ideas and concepts through reading materials, educational activities, and sharing our previously incorrect assumptions and mistakes.  Travelers now leave our trips better able to support sustainable on-going projects designed to leave Cambodia and Cambodians better equipped to improve their own country rather than fostering a continued dependency on outside support.

5.   What’s some advice you can offer to travelers wanting to travel responsibly?

Read up before you travel. Do NOT give money to any organization you do not know and have not researched. To do your research, speak with people working in a similar sector in a nearby area as they will have more honest feedback about a group’s work than their own website will offer.

As one of our NGO partners said, “You have to earn the right to leave your money in this country.”  If we all recognize that we, as individuals, DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO FIX THE PLACES WE VISIT by giving money away, we will have less negative impacts of funding corrupt and ill-planned programs. Sustainable changes take long-term efforts and need to last much longer than a short visit to a new place on vacation.  By finding the people and programs committed to finding ways to make long term change, your money will go much further than giving it to a child-beggar on the street. In fact, perhaps that child would not be begging in the tourist area you are visiting if it was not profitable to do so. By cutting off that funding stream to the “pimp” who possibly rents that child out per day as a beggar and redirecting it to on-going programs supporting the needs of children living on the street, you will likely have a much better impact on the places you visit.

Our focus is really on encouraging travelers to be socially responsible. The media and public relations campaigns from large tourism corporations are full of green travel tips, such as conserving water and energy, recycling, using refillable water bottles, and making sure your hotel is doing everything they can to conserve. These are certainly important things to work on. At that level, though, the entire social aspect of sustainability is just missing.

If you are looking to volunteer abroad, ask a lot of questions about how they choose their partners, monitor their impact, and what mistakes they have made. The most responsible groups will offer you transparent and honest answers to those questions.  Ask about how your specific program was designed.  I have asked English teaching volunteer programs which travelers pay a significant fee for why they have chosen to offer English teaching as their volunteer opportunity when they seem to always be scrapping to find NGO partners as the response has been “That is what travelers are looking to do.”  Do we want our impact to be designed for YOU, or designed to fit actual needs? If we want to fit actual needs, then sometimes we need to be willing to do the less glamorous jobs, have less opportunities to visit orphanages and pet children, and be satisfied that we are indeed doing good rather than “getting a rewarding experience.”  It shouldn’t be about us.  If you want to be comfortable, have fun, and get to play with kids, go to an amusement park.

If you want to know more, visit the PEPY Tours website.

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This is a guest post by Eric Lewis:

“Take lots of pictures!” It’s something we hear just about every time we leave for someplace exotic. Family and friends want to experience our adventures vicariously, and who can blame them? Photographs preserve certain moments—priceless scenes and scenarios that evade verbal description. But every action has an opportunity cost. What is the price of photographically cataloguing our travels?

Cost one: disconnect

We look for or are struck by opportunity: a picture that frames well and tells a story. The story can be anything. The story of glistening sushi, the story of a flat tire in the middle of the Bolaven Plateau, the story of haggling with a pregnant Cantonese fishmonger. Something that we must never forget, and that we want to share with others.

Next we try to capture the story. Ambient light, camera settings, timing, an eye for composition. The process of composing a picture pulls us out of the reality that we’re trying to capture. There is plenty to say in favor of this creative process, of course, but Facebook, loved ones, and our own vanity argue strongly enough in favor of photography. My aim is to discuss its drawbacks—and the act’s creative nature is drawback number one.

We cannot listen while talking, and likewise we cannot experience a moment while trying to communicate it to others.

I was once strolling through Prague at dusk with a friend. As we neared the Charles Bridge, a fireworks display went off, pitching swaths of orange and blue over the city’s gothic landmark. We had no idea this was coming. My friend, Katie, dropped to her knees and tore through her backpack, fumbling to locate and assemble her Pentax. I, having recently been gassed and robbed on an overnight train and therefore camera-less, just stood with my mouth open, looking into the sky. Then came a crescendo, then the finale. Katie shrieked in frustration. The show ended before she could snap a single shot. And I will never forget what the Charles Bridge looks like under the glare of fireworks on a clear winter night.

Had I not been freshly robbed, I probably would have flipped into snapshot mode. Sometimes life gives you free lessons.

Cost two: intrusion

Another story: During a tour of Cambodia’s Angkorian temples, my group visited Ta Prohm, famous for its appearance in the Angelina Jolie movie Tomb Raider. Naturally, the site is always thronged with tourists. Near the entrance a backpacker had asked a passerby to take his photo. Standing as far from the crowd as possible, the backpacker instructed his photographer: “Make sure there’s no tourists in the picture!”

A participant from my group advised, “You’d better get out of the shot then.” So true.

It’s easy, when taking photos, to see and think of our surroundings only as we want to. In framing the perfect shot, we often block out the bigger picture. This myopia is especially prevalent—and egregious—in the developing world, where well-meaning visitors transform into misery voyeurs, scanning for shots that pack at-home shock value.

Disregarding the context of our photography may be harmless at the entrance of a temple, but it can be downright intrusive when people are the subject matter. There’s a reason why rock bands and Marine platoons are notoriously distrustful of the press: they’re skeptical about how they will be portrayed. Approaching people with a camera is a good way to put them on guard, especially in developing parts of the world, where no scenario is off-limits in the minds of snap-happy tourists. The association between visitors with cameras and invasion of privacy is not lost on locals, who are showcased without consent on countless blogs and Flickr accounts.

Cutting cost

Try going camera-free. By removing this distractive crutch, you will truly engage your surroundings. Enhanced memory is just one benefit of being mentally present. Because memory is a multi-sensory capacity, tuning in to the scene around you will enhance your ability to recall it. Taking photos creates a cycle: we need pictures to jog our memory because we depend on them to do our remembering for us.

Even more rewarding are the interactions you’ll have, with locals and fellow travelers alike. People act more naturally off-record, so ditch the camera for unfettered authenticity. Photo-fasting is especially useful in cultural exchange situations, such as home stays. The aim is to connect with people who are ostensibly quite different from us, and we can facilitate interaction by removing the mental and physical barrier that photography imposes.

Making it work

While it may be unrealistic to stop taking photos completely, you can reap the benefits of intermittent photo-fasting. I recommend a ‘one day with, one day without’ routine. (If you’re the journaling type, note the differences between these days.) Another option is to nominate one person in your group to photograph each day—the Internet makes photo sharing easier than ever.

As photographer Adam Vaught puts it, “Anyone can shove a camera in someone’s face and bring home unique photographs, but at what cost? I’ve discovered that honest interaction, exchange and interest in your subject leads to more interesting photography.” Photo-fasting will help you find this balance between observation and interaction, which will improve both your photography and your ability to connect with those around you.

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Eric Lewis recently returned to his home state of Virginia after spending the better part of a year in Cambodia with PEPY. He believes personal happiness is positively correlated with one’s use of passport and library card.

It’s exciting when people look past the bottom line of their own company and spend their time and resources to take action to improve the whole field in which they work.  Priscilla Macy of Global Sojourns is someone who does that on a regular basis.  Priscilla and her company offer a range of adventure travel options and she also runs “Giving Circle” trips where travelers have a chance to support and learn about development programs in Africa. Having worked in development for many years, Priscilla has strong reservations about having short-term and inexperienced volunteers get involved in any development projects, so “voluntourism” is something she has stayed away from.  She does though try to encourage people to support the projects they learn about on their travels and is always looking for the best ways to facilitate that.

As we have seen proven in Cambodia as well, Priscilla believes that there is a lot of learning which must happen on the part of travelers and novice donors in order to translate their good intentions into positive results for local programs.  As such, she has created and collected a wealth of resources with which to educate her guests and provide context for their travels.

Here are two of Global Sojourns’ reading packets for their Giving Circle Tours.  The “Ambassadors Booklet” has information about traveling and supporting development work in Africa.  It is an interactive PDF and it has a wealth of valuable resources which are useful for travelers looking to support programs in any country.

The “It’s More Complicated Than It Looks” reading packet includes a few short reflections (including one of my own) about Traveler’s Philanthropy gone bad – a sort of how not to do global giving handbook – which is intended to highlight the importance of long-term planning for travelers looking to support development programs.

Check these out and use them in your travelers!  If you love them (as we do), then please visit Global Sojourn’s website and tell Priscilla you’re impressed with her work!  We sure are!