PEPY TOURS 2011 A YEAR OF THINKING DIFFERENTLY
PEPY Tours is a social enterprise with the vision that travel should be educational, adventurous, and fun, but also benefit local communities. We offer adventure trips through Cambodia that emphasize social action and accountability, while also raising awareness and funding for youth empowerment and education programs.
As with PEPY NGO, 2011 has been a year of great self-reflection and transition for PEPY Tours. We have developed new educational and informational resources, changed organizational structure and leadership, but most importantly we’ve taken a deeper look at what makes PEPY Tours unique, how we can do what we do better, and what impact we want our small organization to have on the world.
In 2010
we began to shift our
Another
strong focus of this past
focus towards working with school
year has been strengthening our
and university groups. In early 2011
communication strategy and global
we have been largely concerned
advocacy.
with improving the experience of
more
the student and teacher participants
with the world on the topics of
that travel with us. We have received
responsible
positive feedback on the educational
giving, and personal growth. PEPY
component of our tours in the past,
Tours
but
2011
teaching
ambitious,
bright
We
wanted
information
and
travel,
gained through
its
to
share
resources
accountable own
voice
personalized
in
social
students has pushed us to further
media, development of informational
improve our educational offerings.
resources, and other visual media.
We want to give our participants and debate the meaning of being a
120
global citizen over the course of their
Tour participants
short stay here, identify and realize
680
an opportunity to think, question,
their own potential for creating the positive changes they want to see in
past participants in total
their own lives and communities, and give them the motivation and tools needed to help them make these
10
changes upon their return home. We
tours in 2011
have collaborated with development education professionals to formalize our curriculum, provide facilitator training, and compile comprehensive educational toolkits to equip our tour instructors with the necessary knowledge and tools to facilitate critical thinking and kindle enthusiasm in our participants.
der Rea
150+
articles on the PEPY Tours reader
* Fundraising from participants as part of the tours led in 2011. Even after their tour is over many participants continue to support PEPY NGO. In fact, majority of the PEPY NGO donors are past PEPY Tours participants (fundraising amounts contributed after the tour are not included in above figures.
We also became involved in the
invited to be a part of a global effort
efforts to decrease orphanage tourism
to create voluntourism standards. The
in Cambodia and were able to help
term “learning service” is a spin-off
test out the “Children are not tourist
on the “service learning” commonly
attractions” campaign spearheaded
used in North America to describe
by ChildSafe.
volunteering vacations. Learning service
One of the projects we are most excited
is meant to put emphasis on the need to learn before serving.
We believe
to be working on is a set of guidelines for
that there are opportunities to use
effective “learning service” offerings.
travel as a development education
Due to our 2008 work in creating
tool that can inspire improvements
Voluntourism101 guidelines, we were
in the way we “serve” and we want
63% of 2011 participants are students
$ 41,884 Total 2011 * fundraising
1
** bike tour in 2011
6 staff **Yep, you got it! Most of the PEPY Tours’ trips are not bike tours. The majority are development education tours for students or adults, custom tours for adventure and learning travel groups, and experimentation development training trips for educators. Reach out to us if you want to learn more!
to collaborate with others to spread these ideas around the world. We also understand that although PEPY Tours has moved away from volunteering, the volunteer travel trend is still growing and we’d love to help those people and companies moving into this space to make more educated decisions. Our initial guideline will equip readers with a set of critical steps to analyzing their impact before they make important choices
regarding
their
service
opportunities. The final version of this guide will be released in 2012. We hope to share this resource with both travelers and service learning providers in an effort to promote travel that is educational, inspiring, local community-driven, and emphasizes social action and accountability.
PEPY TOURS’ VISION UNIVERSITY TOURS
SCHOOL TOURS
This year
we spent a lot
of time looking into the future and realized that we had no shortage of ideas
TOURS
for paths to achieving our mission of inspiring people to improve the way they live, travel, and give. We have
CYCLING TOURS
EDUCATOR TOURS
decided that a combination of
providing
experiential
development education trips
NETWORK NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORK OF PAST PARTICIPANTS NETWORK OF RESPONSIBLE ORGANIZATIONS
as well as advocating for greater
responsibility
and
accountability for the travel industry are the best ways to achieve our mission. One way we are looking to share our message more effectively in the future is by improving how we continue to engage all of the wonderful people
that have traveled with us, and offer them a chance to stay involved, stay connected, and be empowered to make the changes they want to see in the world long after they leave us. If you want to be involved or share your ideas for how PEPY Tours can continue to grow, please reach out to us!
to connect with us www.pepytours.com