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 groups 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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Sing it, Christopher!

(I wrote to his organization to get approval to re-post this here.  I’d love to read comments!)

Process-driven models of change work better

Every organization dedicated to social change believes it is providing a service in its community. Consequently, there are perhaps as many models of change as there are organizations. All these efforts can be placed loosely into two categories: “product-driven” models of change and “process-driven” models. We at Educate the Children, an Ithaca-based nonprofit that works to provide educational opportunities for women and children in Nepal, employ a process-driven model.

Now, what can be wrong with building a school? Well, nothing. But, what is a school? Is it the building? Or is it the administrators, teachers, parents, students and the relations between them all that make it a functioning educational environment? An excellent teacher can make do with the shade of a tree and a stick to draw in the dust, though a classroom with desks and a blackboard certainly can make the job easier. But a building? A building can’t teach.

There are excellent things that can come from product-driven programs, like well-stocked libraries or low-cost computers. These products can be useful, but without a social structure to support them, they easily become white elephants. The problem with product-driven models is that they are mechanical models: add Product Z and social change follows. If only life were so easy.

By contrast, a process-driven model strives to build the necessary social relations that make products useful and sustainable features of local social life. Rather than build school buildings, we work with the community and local government to plan and execute the refurbishing of existing structures. This is far more cost-effective than starting from scratch, but it also initiates a process of the community working with what they already have, instead of relying on outside agencies. This means we can use resources to train teachers, provide teaching supplies, establish kindergarten classes and provide in-kind scholarships for students who otherwise could not afford to attend school.

However, there is more to succeeding in school than better classrooms or just being able to show up. One of the most important tools for success is breakfast. Children who arrive in class with contented bellies have the energy to exert their minds and bodies and the capacity to relax and concentrate. In order to ensure that kids eat, we must work with their families. This means initiating a process of consciousness-raising through literacy and communal organization in addition to intensive follow-through on subjects as diverse as proper use and maintenance of toilets, child and pre-natal nutrition and improving the productive capacity of farmland for food security and income.

While a product-driven approach starts with a pre-determined solution, the process-driven approach starts with people, works with them to identify needs and then devises solutions. Ultimately, product-driven approaches sell solutions while process-driven approaches help make them happen. So, whatever organizations you support, ask them, “what is your model of change?” You will get many different answers. Just remember: the best models start with people, not products.

Christopher London is the executive director of Educate the Children.

I want to clarify. My piece in Beyond Profit called “Much Ado About Scale” was intended to be anti-scale. If we can scale a quality solution: fabulous! It was intended to encourage other ways of looking at reaching more people with our ideas, rather than just trying to encourage organizations to “scale up” when their might be more successful options.  Here are my comments/thoughts to clarify:

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“Scalability” is a great quality of a project, don’t get me wrong! Of course we should aim to get more quality solutions out to more people. What I am talking about are the cases where quality and quantity are mutually exclusive in a way that makes “scaling” dilute the efficacy of a solution.

All too often I think we jump to the conclusion that the way to get ABC successful solution to more people is to get ABC organization to “scale up”. This blog post http://ow.ly/1Fg0e highlights some of the other solutions I think we need to consider more quickly when we find a quality project, such as getting that organization to train what others might view as “competitors”. We shouldn’t look to these options as exceptions to the “always try to scale-up” rule, but rather look at how to preserve quality while maximizing our scope and then pick the appropriate solution. Why are we not aiming more often for scaling a process rather than scaling a solution, when we know from years of NGO lessons learned that the thought processes are what can be spread from place to place, not the solution housed within an organizational framework which was designed for success in a smaller scale project formed from local knowledge?

I used the examples of Skoll and Unreasonable Institute, two organizations I respect, not to say they are picking the wrong people and ideas to invest in, but to say that I think they, and perhaps our whole sector, should alter the writing on our doors. Both organizations, one a well-respected industry leader and the other a new support mechanism for our field, have funded groups which are not profitable (ones which rely on grants to sustain themselves) and solutions which were not “scalable” to the degree they claim to be looking for. Why? Probably because they too, get that quality should be the trump card which clears scale and profit when all three aren’t in one hand. Yes, you are more likely to win the game if you have all three, but if your solution is only going to get dealt one, I’d bet on quality any day.

So, when our top supporters are making many “exceptions to the rules” my question is, why do we all keep trying to push scalability as a requirement for entry into the social entrepreneurship circles? People talking to me about our educational programs ask me all the time how we are going to “scale up our impact” as if focusing on quality in one area is not a high enough goal. For the educational program side of our work, as the founder, I would be disappointed if we were aiming to be in every province in Cambodia, in every school, or in every neighboring country. Why? Because I know that the solutions with which we have found success are the ones based most strongly in local knowledge, leadership, and collaboration, and that to scale to the levels others would define as success would not be possible in my lifetime given the quality I would like us to aim for. Rather, I want us to “scale” outside of our current shell by spreading our lessons to others rather than spreading our organization around the world: do trainings for other organizations, make all of our ideas and solutions open source, and give away our ideas for free to anyone out there who wants to repeat the processes we have used. That is counter to OUR ORGANIZATION reaching “scale and higher profits”, but in my opinion that is the only way to help more people have quality solutions in this specific field.

Here in Cambodia, I was just approached by a social investment fund looking to invest in one of our profit generating ideas. They wanted to fund our project but said they needed to sell this to their board and management team as something we were aiming to do in 10 cities all around South East Asia in order to get them on-board. They approached us, eager to invest… why? Because they, like so many other social investment funds, are struggling to find these “profitable and scalable” models. The local-based team wanted to push to invest in us, knowing full-well that we had no intention of being the biggest and most profitable solution, but they were going to need to adjust our story to get the board on-board. Isn’t that silly! Why do we keep profit-driven and scale as our gatekeepers, when so many of us are investing in “exceptions to the rules”?

We turned down the money from the investment fund, largely because I’d rather have us focus on quality in one place, until we get it right than be judged through the lens of scale as our finish-line. If and when we do create a successful model, if we can “scale up” and keep our quality, then we might look to do that. If we can’t, then I’m happy to kick scalable and profit-driven off of our cards and teach others how we reached the quality we were aiming for in the first place because for me, that’s the one gatekeeper I’m looking to please.

Our development philosophy is based on these core beliefs.  I will expand on each pillar below this week, about how we came to value this development philosophy, and how we are putting each into practice. In order to empower people to make changes in their own lives–to create our vision for a world where everyone has access to quality education, increased health and environmental awareness—we believe we need to:

Build capacity in people.

Partner with other organizations.

Share the lessons we have learned.

Allow flexibility in our programs.

Work with local government systems and power structures.

Overall, we believe that the changes we want to see in the world are only possible if we invest time in people.  Changes won’t result from giving things away, they won’t result from throwing more money at a problem, and they won’t happen by rushing to reach more and more places without committing the time to create high quality impacts.  We are just as impatient as the rest of the people looking to make change in the world, but what we have learned through our mistakes and our slow and small successes is that investing time in a team of passionate leaders will keep us on the path to reaching our vision.

Check back in over the course of the next week as I talk about the lessons we have learned around each of these pillars, and please add your thoughts, questions, and stories as well if you like!

This post on Social Edge talks about hybrid organizations and I added the comment below which relates to other thoughts I have posted on my blog about social venture scalability.

Would love to hear more thoughts on this!

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“Is splitting a venture into for-profit and non-profit actually just a crafty way of getting around the fact that your venture is NOT economically self-sufficient?”

I think there might be BIG problems in the future if we keep trying to push social entrepreneurs into thinking that ALL parts of what they do have to be “economically self-sufficient”. What about Grameen? They are a bank. They make loans. It makes money. Good for them.

But a LARGE part of their positive impact comes from Grameen Foundation, aimed at educating lenders and creating training/education groups and methodology for the women taking out loans, (this is my interpretation of some of the ways they use non “economically self-sufficient” funding). If they DIDN’T do those things, and if they just gave loans without investing in educating both lenders and borrowers, they would not be as successful. Do they have to incorporate that training and all of those costs into their business model? Sometimes, the way this group via Skoll or Echoing Green et al talk about financial sustainability and social ventures, it would appear so. Even programs such as The Unreasonable Institute and other training programs within this growing sector ask that you prove economic sustainability in order to qualify.

I think the reason Grameen is viewed as a role model is BECAUSE it ISN’T just trying to be economically sustainable. If they tried to push all of their training into the same business as the loans, there is no way they could break even and perhaps to do so they would have to dilute the efficacy of their educational programs. Instead, they went “hybrid” and Grameen Foundation does the bulk of what makes Grameen great OUTSIDE of the income generating business model.

SHE (www.sheinnovates.com) – now how can you get a better social venture model then that? They are using locally available materials which were once considered waste and giving those things value. They are solving needs locally, through training and business creation. They are targeting needs identified from within the community. Each of the businesses can, hopefully, make money in the future. Each group of women can buy and own their own factory. BUT, what about the technology behind the manufacturing? Can’t that be improved upon and developed further?

In organizations like this, one might argue that people or companies could “volunteer” to help do those things, but isn’t that just a way of changing the facts to try to “appear” financially sustainable because the outside world, and now even more strongly the INSIDE world of social entrepreneurship, is telling people they have to be? Why shouldn’t SHE be able to take donations to cover R&D costs? I for one know that my investments would be used a lot better there than in many traditional non-profits without the income generating arm.

Plus, SHE wants to educate women about health issues and encourage them to use their products, not just so that they can sell more products, but because they want to promote women’s health! Does that advocacy and education need to be included in the same budget as that of the factories? Or should that be funded as a separate NGO allowing the education portion to grow beyond what the company can afford? Yes, that NGO could be an entirely separate NGO not associated with the for-profit arm, but what about the cases where the appropriate NGO partner doesn’t exist? Does giving SHE the freedom to have an NGO arm open Proctor and Gamble up to do the same thing with their products? Slippery slope, yes, but I think we had better start talking about this, as the focus on “economic sustainability” from within this community might kill momentum for projects that ARE successful because they are NOT economically sustainable. They want to be more than just a micro-finance bank or a sanitary pad manufacturing plant. They want to change the way people think and interact with these products, so for them, their “marketing” becomes a social service in and of itself.

Would love to hear other thoughts on this but, my vote overall is “It’s complicated”. Being hybrid is not “just a crafty way of getting around the fact that your venture is NOT economically self-sufficient” but instead a crafty way to add value to social sectors which are not able to include all of the social value potential with their business model constraints. And sometimes, if you look at the groups making the most impact, if you took the “non-economical” parts away, you would end up with a non-exceptional product.

As my comment was not  a review of the area, it was not approved, so I am posting it here.

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I am writing in response to a post stating that one way to give back to Siem Reap is by visiting orphanages.

I beg to strongly disagree.

Having lived in Cambodia for over four years, my opinion on visiting orphanages has gone from encouraging it to abhorring it.  Recent research has shown that the number of orphanages in Cambodia has tripled in recent years with the majority of those “serving” kids who are not orphans at all.  There are some groups standing up this movement to encourage support for whole families rather than removing children from their parents, but in many of the worst cases, the poor practices are not from lack of foresight but instead from fraudulent intentions to start.

Orphanages that keep kids in squalor and can attract tourists on a daily basis are able to bring in far more funding than they choose to use to support their “orphans”.  The practice of keeping kids looking needy to bring in more income is highly linked with donor visits to orphanages and with increasing travelers’ philanthropy in the area.  Sometimes “doing  good” can cause harm, and the practice of visiting orphanages which you have not properly vetted, and which have not properly vetted you, can be a harmful practice.

People have asked me “What is a good orphanage I can go visit today?”  And my answer is always: “Any orphanage where they will LET you visit today, un-planned, is likely NOT a good orphanage.”

Keep these things in mind when visiting Siem Reap, or any developing country.  There is so much to see and so many great projects to support which, can provide more direct benefit than funding the often corrupt orphanage network in Cambodia.  Overall, if you want to see temples, learn about history and culture, are looking for an adventure, and want to meet people who are working hard to improve the future for their next generation, Cambodia is the place to do it.  Just don’t trust all orphanages to be the best choice of your additional support.

It would probably make a lot more sense if we stopped using the title “volunteer” for positions where people are getting paid.  The result is that I have met Cambodians who say “I want to be a volunteer when I grow up.”  Hmmm… do you think we are spreading the wrong message?  Volunteers in Cambodia are getting paid more than local staff.  I think we need to redefine this word.

Let’s get some misconceptions out in the open before starting to discuss “international volunteering” as there is a lot of confusion and sometimes a negative perception surrounding those words.

Some misconceptions are that:

-         “Volunteers” are people who are willing to give up any forms of luxury

-         Those doing international aid work can be equated with a martyrs and comparisons should be drawn to Mother Teresa.

-         Having the word “volunteer” is a title is a substitute for “not qualified to do my job”

-         Whatever a “volunteer” is doing must be adding social value by virtue of their title

-         Someone with “volunteer” in their title is not being paid.

As you can see from these assumptions, there seems to be two opposing camps of stereotyping surrounding perceptions of volunteers.  Many people react as if international volunteering is akin to martyrdom.  I’ve heard people say, “Volunteering abroad, that’s like Mother Theresa stuff, right?” There is an idea that international volunteer work can only be done by the rare type of person who is willing to give up all forms of luxury.

The other extreme reaction to the word “volunteer” in international aid work usually comes from people working somewhere within the spectrum of philanthropy work. Some people working in foreign aid see those volunteering abroad as naive, ego-driven or ineffective use of resources draining both time and money away from the “real work”.  Many look at those with “volunteer” in their title as if it were really saying “unqualified-to-do-my-job.”

These somewhat opposing views of volunteering abroad must be based on some truths for them to exist so strongly.  Those viewing the aid workers as if they are making large sacrifices might either have done some volunteer work in the past themselves which felt like a big sacrifice to them or perhaps work in a job they feel they “need” to do to make money to keep the lifestyle they are accustomed to and they view volunteer positions as opportunities which would require giving some of those things up.

Those working in development might have seen or had to work with volunteers whose lack of skills or short-term commitments had decreased the efficiency of their organization’s work.  They might have worked with one too many volunteers interested in the experience to “build their resume” who was less interested in doing the jobs that needed to be done and more interested in having fun in a new country.  These stereotypes might be based on individual’s experiences, but it doesn’t make them truths.

How we define “volunteering” is also now in question.  There are “volunteers” who get paid for their work, like the “UNV’s”, the UN Volunteers, who get paid a fraction of what they would normally charge, though often still make salaries which are multiples of that of their local counterparts.  Other payments also come in the form of post volunteering stipends, like in the Peace Corps.  There are “volunteers” who PAY for their experience, either through a volunteer placement agency or with a development program direction. And then there are “volunteers” who do work and don’t get paid, like the parents who volunteer to come to school and help set up for their children’s next school play.  As in all areas of life, one of the factors of the extreme sensitivity to the word “volunteer” is the money, or lack their of, involved.

Our economies are built on trade, and when we switched to using money as a standard means of exchange (perhaps thinking seashells or camels would run scarce some day) we might have also lost some of the give and take that comes with valuing a certain experience or good.  Now is seems that we too often rely on looking only at the price tag of something to judge its value.  When we think something is cheap, or expensive, we compare the item with what we would willingly pay for it, but rarely is our value comparison in terms other than money.  We might hear, “Wow! I love books about arachnids.  I would totally pay like $50 for that photo book!”  We almost never hear, “I want to buy that spider book from the family book shop down the street.  What steal!  I would wash their dishes and cut their lawn for 2 months to buy it.”

In many areas of life, talk of money causes a visceral reaction, so some of the issue people have with volunteering, could really be a money issue.  “Is having this person here good use of our money, or are they unskilled and taking more time than they are giving?” “She would have made MUCH MORE money if she was doing this job at home.”  “They are PAYING the company for this experience!  And the company is keeping a LARGE portion of the money, and adding very little value to their experience?  Don’t they see they are being sold something where they are making money for a tour company, but not necessarily supporting the local programs?”  These are all things I have heard, said, or thought while working in aid and educational and service tourism in Cambodia.

So, potential volunteers of the world, and potential critics/supporters of volunteerism, let’s remember that, just because people are volunteering abroad does not guarantee negative nor positive impacts.   Let’s start using the word “volunteer” as defined in the dictionary so that we can preserve the honor of those people who give their time willingly and for “free”.  They might not get paid in money, but they surely get a lot out of their experiences or they wouldn’t choose do them.  Good for them for remembering that not all payments come in the form of money.