What is travel2change?

Travel2change is a nonprofit organization connecting travelers, local communities, and organizations to create change through purposeful traveling. Our community inspires with ideas, travels to experience projects, and interacts to share insights.

What does travel2change do?

… provides a platform for connecting travelers, local communities, and organizations to create change through purposeful traveling
…creates awareness about problems in local communities through our idea challenges
…supports our community members in developing their ideas into realizable projects and facilitates collaboration between travelers and locals
…enables travels to experience the winning ideas and provides ongoing support
…fosters interactions among travelers, local communities, and organizations to create and exchange knowledge

Problem

Why does travel2change exist? Did you know that tourism is the major export producer for 83% of the world’s less developed countries and also for 1/3 of the world’s poorest countries? However, not everyone in local communities benefits and for some the costs outweigh the benefits. Together with you we want to rethink travel. We want your ideas regarding how we can travel to positively impact lives in local communities! We believe that traveling can make a difference both in the lives of travelers and in the lives of local communities. Travelers benefit from adventurous and purposeful traveling and local communities receive support in creating change for social, health, or environmental problems. Through connecting travelers and local communities we aim to ignite cycles of positive change. Our community is a place, where volunteer travelers and locals meet to develop, discuss and comment ideas to generate positive change at travel destinations. Our goal is to create a world where everyone is inspired to travel and collaborate with locals for meaningful change. With our worldwide community we want to reach every traveler, who plans to do a purposeful travel. Until December 2012 we want to grow our community up to 3000 users and 5000 until March 2013. In the future we plan to offer corporate volunteering opportunities for our partner organizations.

Solution

More and more people, especially students, want to make travel experiences that are different from standard holidays. We want to give everyone the chance to create positive change individually. Members of our community can discuss, comment and develop ideas to create positive change for local communities. We offer a platform for intercultural exchange of ideas to make our world better. We catch up with the current trend of discovering foreign destinations including environmental and social responsibility. What is innovative: Our online platform gives users (locals, travelers or organizations) the possibility to come up with their need for help as local or as an organization. Travelers can then join a inquiry and come up with an idea, how the traveler can support the local communities. Then locals and travelers can plan the travel and volunteer project online together. As the last step the traveler realizes his idea at his chosen destination. What’s new? We are the first community that connects volunteer travelers from every part of the world. Our possibilities to help are not limited (e.g. youth education, environmental issues, technologic development). Volunteers can connect their passion with their travel (e.g. a social project combined with sports) Organizations can ask for support and are able to reach a huge community of people, who want to help, through our network. To benefit from that you only have to create an account on our website www.travel2change.org

Example

How can the solution create change? We already have experience in implementing travel2change projects. Here are two examples: SEP – Soccer, Education and Prevention in Oyugis, Kenya Project description: SEP is an organization in Kenya that stands for Society Empowerment Project. They aim to promote community development through sport. They have been engaged in this activity for several years. Travel2change and its travelers - together with SEP, Football For Hope (FFH), GIZ/YDF, Two Wheel Foundation (TWF) USA and other partners – hosted a 4-day football event in Oyugis, Kenya. Along with teaching life skills, teamwork and football skills the travelers helped train the children in proper hand washing techniques and the importance of basic hygiene. The production of soap from locally sourced materials was also part of the program. WAVES of Volontourism in Lobitos, Peru Project description: WAVES for Development is a not-for-profit organization which runs a Community Development Surf Project in Lobitos, Peru. Travel2change assisted in running some of their activities to create life enriching experiences in this coastal community through education programs that help develop youth into healthy and empowered adults. The travelers joined local staff to teach local children water safety, beach management and of course how to surf. The project included environmental conservation, social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism classes with travelers as instructors and assistants in the ongoing programs. The cultural exchange, activities to increase a lifestyle of healthy living and teaching skills for life, was another great benefit of the program.

Marketplace

Our competitors are other social media networks, especially those placed in the travel sector. To differentiate from travel communities like travelerspoint.com, we focus on volunteer traveling and intercultural exchange with local communities. Our target group of travelers are young people, undergraduate students and graduates between studies and job life.