Lessons I Learned

Blogging allows us to take “Reinvent yourself!” to new heights. Even when we don’t mean for it to happen, our “virtual” selves, and our “real” selves, might have little to do with each other, and the “virtual” world around our blog, twitter, and facebook posts might never know. Since I started blogging here, my outspoken voluntourism skepticism has taken over my “virtual personality”. This not only effects how I am viewed in the web world, but how people view the organizations I run.

I recently met with the founder of a large service travel organization to talk about voluntourism101.com and his thoughts for how to improve it/make the tool more user friendly, and some time after our meeting he wrote me something along these lines:  “Before we met, I thought you worked in voluntourism and you were promoting the benefits of this way of traveling.  It wasn’t until I met you that I realized that you are coming at this from the NGO side.”

As I’ve clearly virtually pigeon-holed my online-self, I thought I’d share how my real self would attempt to “classify” PEPY.

I wanted to clarify.  I, and PEPY, are not operating volunteer tours which then turn into development projects.  Instead, we are supporting the development of affordable quality education in rural Cambodia and our 10 tours per year are one way we raise funds and awareness to support similar changes globally.

PEPY is an educational development organization.  Legally, we are an INGO – registered both in the US and Cambodia.  We operate through the work of 30+ local Cambodian staff, the majority of whom are directly from the rural areas in which we work.  We now employ three foreign staff  but are working towards a place where programs are managed by Cambodian staff with foreign staff working only on donor management, fundraising, budgeting, and connecting to partner NGOs/outside ideas to add to the strategic planning process.

We operate formal and non-formal education programs in 11 villages, with library and literacy programs in 10 schools plus a variety of other teacher training and supplemental education programs.

That is the reason we are in Cambodia, the main work that I support, and why PEPY exists.  We also offer educational trips for our donors which raise additional funding for our programs and help travelers learn how to better support and understand NGO work globally and in Cambodia.  This arm of PEPY is small: we only operate about 10 tours a year for the last few years.

So my verbose voluntourism ramblings come in part from being in the receiving end of volunteer projects, but also from living in a country where the number of international volunteers increases daily, though the positive impact these people have might not.

I hope that clarifies a bit more about what my “real” self does in Cambodia, when not speaking in the virtual world.  Thanks for reading.

My friend and colleague, Soe, passed this poem by Martin Niemoller around our office today, drawing the connection to the Khmer Rouge period.  It is a powerful message which I wanted to share with those of you who don’t know the poem, and all of us who should read it again, and again, and again…

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Speak out when there is something you don’t believe in.  Please.

The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) has a website called yourtravelchoice.org and they recently interviewed me about voluntourism.  They asked questions about PEPY and about the benefits and risks of volunteer travel.  Read up here or below.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Considering Voluntour-ing? Tips for Travelers – Daniela Ruby Papi, PEPY Tours

12 NOVEMBER 2009

Wondering what it’d be like to participate in a voluntourism trip? Interested in making a difference through travel but not sure where to start? This week, TIES asked Daniela Ruby Papi of PEPY Tours and Danielle Weiss of Planeterra Foundation for their insights into on-the-ground voluntourism experiences and some advice for travelers interested in learning more about voluntourism.

Read on to find out what voluntourism means to Daniela and PEPY Tours!
*For our interview with Danielle, see: “Considering Voluntour-ing? Tips for Travelers – Danielle Weiss, Planeterra Foundation”

Ask Daniela – PEPY Tours

TIES: If you were to summarize, in 100 words or less, the reason PEPY Tours is engaged in voluntourism, what would it be?

Daniela: Our goal is that people who join us on a trip will be inspired to live, travel and give differently after their trip to Cambodia. We aim to expose travelers to the people and ideas that are having the most impact on the issues we are looking to effect change in: education, the environment, and health. We focus less on service and more on learning, and like to look at our trips as edu-ventures: educational adventures which allow travelers to support projects, programs, and people we believe in. We think experiential learning is the best way to change attitudes and actions, so rather than teaching the lessons we have learned about development via writing and books, we want to expose travelers to these ideas in an experiential way through our tours.

TIES: Have you received any requests or suggestions from travelers who have participated in PEPY Tours’ voluntours to change the way the tours are run? If so, what was the feedback and how was it implemented?

Daniela: We have been operating PEPY Tours for four years and our initial tours were very focused on giving travelers volunteer opportunities. Slowly we realized that the best projects we wanted to support were working to build human capacity and to improve systems in Cambodia, not building or giving things. As such, it was harder to incorporate travelers into all of the projects we were supporting because they couldn’t add value to teacher training the way they could with school building.

As we began to offer less service and more learning, we started to get feedback from travelers that they wanted more hands-on volunteer projects. Rather than cater to those requests, we began changing the way we marketed our trip to be more focused on the learning aspects of our tours and, even more importantly, on the how’s and why’s of the decisions we have made to our travelers themselves.

Now, when guests turn in their feedback forms at the end of trips, they often reflect that they had previously thought they would be able to add value physically on their trips, but were grateful that they learned on the trip that the biggest ways they were adding value were through funds supporting longer-term projects and by the actions they will take when they leave. That is EXACTLY the attitudes we want people to walk away with!

TIES: Tell us about your first voluntourism experience (personal or professional) and the impact that the trip has had on your life.

Daniela: My first voluntourism experience was with Habitat for Humanity in Nepal. I left that experience so grateful for the chance to interact with and learn from Nepalese people during our building project. I decided that I wanted to travel that way “at least once a year from now on,” and I did. I went with Habitat to the Philippines and Papua New Guinea and then independently to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami.

It took me a while to realize that the key wasn’t to try to “do good” now and then to compensate for the rest of my year, but to actually change how I lived and my daily actions to have a better impact overall. I realized, after starting PEPY, that pursuing a career which allowed me to learn from and with other travelers to improve the impact we all have when we travel was a way for me to do work I believed in and was passionate about year-round. I attribute that first trip to Nepal as an influential.

TIES: What would you recommend first-time voluntour participants to do before their trip so they will be prepared to make a difference?

Daniela: Learn! Learn about the organization you will be working with, the area, the issues, etc. Setting the historical and cultural context of the place will help you learn even more when you travel. In addition, I would read things like “To Hell with Good Intentions” by Ivan Illich or other critics of western aid travel. Though not any one of these views is “right,” it is just important to hear other voices than just those saying “GO ABROAD AND SAVE THE WORLD!”.

The best impact we can have are with how we live our daily lives and the influences we have on the people and the world around us. Setting up your mind to be in a place to learn during your travels, not just to give, will set you up to be better able to transfer the new skills and ideas you learn into your daily life.

TIES: What should travelers participating in PEPY Tours’ Cambodia voluntour program expect from their voluntour-ing experience, and what should they not expect?

Daniela: Don’t expect that the world can be changed in a week or a month or a year. What CAN be changed is YOU. If you expect that you will be plugged into a hole and be able to add value right away during your trip then you will probably be disappointed. Instead, you will be most likely to make the most impact by being willing to do whatever is needed of you at the time.

Sometimes the biggest impacts you can have are meeting people, sharing and learning from them, and showing them that you care about learning about their culture and their work. By seeing how your work is a part of something much larger, that started before you got there and will continue after you leave, you will see how your investment of time adds value.

The biggest changes don’t always happen in a short time so if you expect to start and finish a project in your time there, you will be disappointed. Instead, look to add value when and where you can, and then follow up to learn about the longer term impact you are having even after you leave!

About PEPY Tours

PEPY Tours offers edu-ventures, from bike tours to service learning experiences in rural Cambodia. By traveling with PEPY, your funds and time are channeled into on-going educational programs operated by PEPY’s local staff members. PEPY Tours are designed share lessons about development and responsible travel and influence how we all live, travel, and give in the future. This is highlighted by PEPY’s tag line: Adventurous Living. Responsible Giving.TM The team at PEPY Tours worked with a range of industry professionals to create internal monitoring guidelines for voluntourism which was just launched on Voluntourism101.com. PEPY Tours was recently chosen as a winner in the National Geographic and Ashoka Geotourism Challenge.

About Daniela Papi, Director, PEPY & PEPY Tours

Daniela Papi is the director of PEPY, an educational development organization working in rural Cambodia. PEPY is funded in part through PEPY Tours, and edu-venture tour company offering cycling trips and service learning experiences in South East Asia. Driven by a young group of social entrepreneurs, in the past four years PEPY has grown from a one-off bike ride which funded the construction of a rural school to a non-governmental organization working in over 10 schools and employing over 30 local staff. Daniela is active in the voluntourism sector, speaking regularly on the both the negative and positive impacts of this growing trend and encouraging industry players to be self-reflective and proactive in measuring their impact. Daniela was a finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards. Daniela grew up in New York but has spent the last seven years in Asia working in education and tourism. She currently manages PEPY from her home in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Photos by PEPY Tours – Flickr.com/photos/pepyride

I think that question is impossible to answer…. yet many people have asked me that or shared their answers with me.  Once again, I think the question is coming at this from the wrong angle.  WHO CARES how long the trip is, it is how the trip is designed that matters!

A two week teaching English trip is too short, in my opinion, if the volunteer is the students main teacher…. wouldn’t the ideal time be the whole year or semester?  But if the volunteer is coming in with a lot of skills and does a two hour training course for teachers on how to teach phonics to early learners, who is to say that is too short?  I think the voluntourism bubble is too big to try to put broad definitions around, but if we ask questions which are focused on community needs in each situation first, the “ideal” answers are very often different than the “ideal” answers from the tourist perspective.  Meshing those too, finding what realities are really possible, and arranging the most ideal volunteer/program match are the tricky steps anyone walking in the volunteer placement space must navigate.  I think we all know that it is not going to be “ideal” all the time – but we need to keep asking the questions to get closer as we learn what works and what doesn’t.

I added other thoughts about this here:

http://voluntourismgal.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/voluntourism-right-or-wrong/

Would love to hear yours!

vol⋅un⋅teer  [vol-uhn-teer] –noun

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: Continue Reading

This is a post I originally put on the PEPY Team Journal.
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What is this “sustainability” you speak of?  I do not think it means what you think it means.  This word is used so often now in development that it seems to have taken on a huge range of meanings.  Are we all spending too much time looking for an imaginary lost city and too little time focusing on other goals that increase the impact of our programs?  Has “sustainability” turned into the Holy Grail of development — promising that once you find it, your program can live forever? And perhaps the most important questions are, how is sustainability even possible and should it always be our goal?

Like any overused word, the answer to these questions depends largely on how we define it.  “Financial sustainability” is something people involved in any type of business can understand.  A business can be financially sustainable if the money coming in is equal to or higher than the money going out, and if the timing of those transactions matches up to allow the group to continue operating.  By this definition, sustainability would be the same for an NGO’s micro-loan program as it would for a Swiss bank.

“Financial sustainability” focuses on one variable — money — so it is easier to measure than sustainability in NGOs.  Merely taking into account financial factors in order to rate an NGO’s overall sustainability is too limiting.  Likewise, rating NGOs only by looking at their overhead to program budget is not a successful way to rank the “best” NGOs.  Both of these disregard the main reason NGOs (should) have been started in the first place: the “impact” of their work. (Note: For further disucssion of financial sustainability and how this relates to social ventures check out this posting).

For our own purposes of understanding the impact of our programs at PEPY and creating future plans of action, we needed to do two things:  1) decide how to measure the “sustainability” of our programs, and 2) decide if/when “sustainability” defined as such should indeed be a main goal for each program we offer.

In order to facilitate this discussion with our staff, Continue Reading

In a post by my friend Paco, who works for Better World Books, he questions what BWB’s role can be as a social venture working to improve literacy globally.

I added some thoughts here as well.

http://donniya.blogspot.com/2009/10/books-for-africa-literacy-in-africa-and.html

I recently went to the BWB office in South Bend, IN and was SO impressed with the team I met there and what they have accomplished in the last 6 years.  Very impressive people with a great idea!