Language, Cultural Immersion, and Volunteering – Off the Beaten Path
People in economically underdeveloped but culturally rich communities welcome visitors in their language, culture, and community as part of an equal exchange that provides a source of income and meaningful cultural exchange for families, teachers, program staff, neighbors, and the greater community.
Participants learn local language and culture, as well as adaptation and leadership skills in the classroom, home, neighborhoods, and volunteer work projects. Language and culture are taught in daily classes by local teachers. Local families reinforce language and culture through daily, first-hand interaction. Organizations hosting volunteers learn from the experience of some, help ...
About You
Contact Information
Title
Mr.
First name
Tom
Last name
LeaMond
Your job title
Founder/President
Name of your organization
Travel Alive
Organization type
Business
Annual budget/currency
$35,000 US$
Mailing address
725 Hayes Ave, Oak Park, Illinois
Telephone number
708-434-0448
Postal/Zip Code
60302
Country
United States
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
un cuadro y media al sur de radio segovia
City
Ocotal
State/Province
Nueva Segovia
Postal/Zip Code
11111
Country
Nicaragua
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Year innovation began
2005
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Living culture.
Name Your Project
Language, Cultural Immersion, and Volunteering – Off the Beaten Path
Describe Your Idea
People in economically underdeveloped but culturally rich communities welcome visitors in their language, culture, and community as part of an equal exchange that provides a source of income and meaningful cultural exchange for families, teachers, program staff, neighbors, and the greater community.
Participants learn local language and culture, as well as adaptation and leadership skills in the classroom, home, neighborhoods, and volunteer work projects. Language and culture are taught in daily classes by local teachers. Local families reinforce language and culture through daily, first-hand interaction. Organizations hosting volunteers learn from the experience of some, help ...
IDB/Fomin
Si perteneces a un pais de Latinoamerica y el Caribe tienes la oportunidad de presentar tu iniciativa para acceder a fondos para innovaciones en turismo sostenible del BID/FOMIN (para mayor informacion leer la seccion sobre la oportunidad BID/FOMIN en la pagina principal del Desafio).
No deseo postularme.
Si perteneces a un pais de Latinoamerica y el Caribe tienes la oportunidad de presentar tu iniciativa para acceder a fondos para innovaciones en turismo sostenible del BID/FOMIN (para mayor informacion leer la seccion sobre la oportunidad BID/FOMIN en la pagina principal del Desafio).
Consumidores (viajeros), Grupos comunitarios autóctonos, Atractivos naturales y culturales.
Indica cuales de estas tematicas cubre tu innovacion (elige todas aquellas opciones que apliquen)
Planificación y Gestión de destinos, Innovación y diversificación en el desarrollo de productos turísticos, Profesionalización, buenas prácticas y certificación de servicios turísticos sostenibles, Estrategias y herramientas innovadoras para la promoción y puesta en mercado de destinos y productos en turismo sostenible y geoturismo..
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
To provide meaningful travel experiences for volunteers and language students in exchange programs that greatly benefit both travelers and hosts.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
People in economically underdeveloped but culturally rich communities welcome visitors in their language, culture, and community as part of an equal exchange that provides a source of income and meaningful cultural exchange for families, teachers, program staff, neighbors, and the greater community.
Participants learn local language and culture, as well as adaptation and leadership skills in the classroom, home, neighborhoods, and volunteer work projects. Language and culture are taught in daily classes by local teachers. Local families reinforce language and culture through daily, first-hand interaction. Organizations hosting volunteers learn from the experience of some, help others gain experience, and enjoy mutually beneficial cross-cultural interaction. The community as a whole benefits from an inclusive form of tourism, without walls, fences, and private property, where locals and travelers study, live, and work together without sacrificing the character of the community.
Each community develops and manages the program based on its qualities and resources. Travel Alive recruits participants and provides pre-departure, in-program, and post-program support, and international health insurance. We also support the community by managing program registration and pre-program orientation, aiding with emergency situations involving participants and their families, providing program development consultation, making suggestions, and providing participant feedback.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
Instead of thinking of the community as “in need” and “recipients of aid” we treat the community as a partner. Under principles of socially responsible entrepreneurship, Travel Alive and local partners develop a meaningful and sustainable tourism flow that thrives on maintaining the cultural integrity of the community and markets the local language, culture, history, and traditions.
Planning involves collaboration with local individuals and families. The strength of the program is the involvement of the community and emphasizing what makes the community special. It is managed by community leaders, families, and teachers who see cultural tourism as a way to educate, highlight their strengths, and improve conditions in the community.
Travel Alive provides services that are not available in the community: recruitment, consultation from the perspective of participants, feedback and keeping alumni involved, program registration, hard-to-find resources, health and accident insurance, and pre-program orientation; describing hardships and joys one may experience better preparing them for life in a third world culture.
The result – a mutually beneficial experience for the traveler and the community that maintains the integrity and character of the community and provides an international exchange forum in a region that may be left out of traditional tourism activities.
Impact
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
The impact has been very positive for local families, teachers, and the community. Measured by a high local partner retention rates, families and teachers benefit from extra income and cross-cultural interaction.
The impact on participants ranges from high to life-changing. We measure impact through a voluntary feedback process where participants rate aspects of the experience on a scale of 1 to 5. Most express difficulty at first, mixed satisfaction as volunteers and language students, and extreme satisfaction with their home-stay family and the overall experience.
Continuous evaluation of successes, review of feedback, and communication among families, teachers, and staff minimize negative impacts.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
The program is managed by two local people whose backgrounds include teaching, economics, tourism, and anthropology. Accommodations are managed by mothers and grandmothers and supported by whole families. Classes are taught by young people who interact with, orient, and teach participants. Interaction between participants, neighbors, and the community as a whole is limitless.
Every year those involved collaborate to determine program costs based on local needs. In 2009 we decided together that volunteer projects should be included in financial considerations and they will now receive weekly contributions in addition to volunteer resources.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Engagement is built into our program through home-stay and volunteering. Families share every aspect of their life including cultural events, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and hardships like sickness and death. Volunteers are faced daily with the real strengths and limitations of every day life in the community.
Language acquisition and community involvement builds visitor enthusiasm as milestones are reached and successes in communication and service become more frequent. Enthusiasm is shared when an elderly person can describe his history and culture, or a mother can brag about her children to visitors in a shared language.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
The program provides a forum for local residents to share the area’s culture and natural heritage with international visitors. While showing it off, residents reinforce their local knowledge and understanding and they share it with pride.
Visitors are naturally curious and absorb the lessons of their hosts learning about the community, the culture, and history.
Environmental issues such as depletion of natural resources, interruptions in electrical service and running water, scars from deforestation, pollution, and a crumbling infrastructure are everyday realities for locals and are learned about fist-hand by visitors.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
With an annual operating budget of around $35,000 we are still reaching towards sustainability. Our total revenue for 2008 was $65,000 and comes from program fees paid by participants. In February of 2009 we have already matched our 2008 revenue. All local staff and families are paid based on the number of program participants and there are currently three volunteer staff members in the U.S. We hope to start paying U.S. staff in 2009. We are a for-profit company working with for-profit local partners. As such we use entrepreneurial principles to organize and manage our company to make social change.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
This initiative is absolutely sustainable, financially and organizationally. We are currently striving to reach that point of critical mass where participation will keep the community busy, support local partners financially, support a U.S. staff financially, and allow for program development and expansion to other world communities.
It is important we reach that point before running out of resources and inspiration. Each year we gain more interest, recruit more participants, and hear from more communities around the world who want to explore this initiative. Profits for the next three to four years will go towards marketing, staff compensation, and program development.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Because we have not reached a point where our efforts can support a full-time, professional recruitment and program development staff we are have only the time we can donate to the project. Not being able to dedicate our total attention to recruitment it will take us longer to reach a level of participation that can support growth and have a greater impact.
With full-time staff and some well placed, and well timed, mass marketing campaigns in colleges and schools we could reach more interested people and educate them about the experience. The cost of large scale mass marketing (print advertising, postering and college visits) and high internet placement fees are also barriers.
Replicating this program in other cultures is something we are looking forward to doing. Every week we receive emails from people in developing countries offering to partner with us. It may be a challenge for us to find partners who share all of our core values, but once we do it will be a pleasure to develop and implement new and diverse programs.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
We are exploring opportunities to expand to other communities and to other countries. In 2008 we partnered with a group in Ecuador that matches most of our core values. A very popular destination, we would explore more opportunities in Ecuador.
We are also considering expansion to more communities in Nicaragua, and we are exploring a program in Brazil. By expanding our geographical presence we limit the risk to the whole program from political unrest or program failure in one program community.
Ultimately we would like all of our programs to be consistent with the model developed in Ocotal, Nicaragua.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Tom LeaMond, born in U.S., with an eye towards the larger world, as a sophomore in college switched from studying business to geography, and before graduating had worked on a Mississippi River steamer, in the Outward Bound sailing program, and on two separate Atlantic sailing schooners between Northern Maine and Martinique.
At age 26 learned Spanish and Spanish culture in Spain. At 36 earned an MBA in international business in just one year. Refined his business skills at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and in 2005 founded Travel Alive to provide mutually beneficial immersion travel to others.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
Having enjoyed the benefits of immersion travel, long-term travel abroad, language acquisition, and living in a community abroad I dreamt of ways to provide the same opportunities to other people in a way that may not require a long-term commitment on their part.
The dream usually involved language study in non-traditional locations. My first significant experience abroad was in Spain in the early 1990a, when Spain was still running to catch up with the rest of Europe. An early idea was to develop a program in the Czech Republic, which at the time was quickly emerging from a long period of restrictions from communist rule. It was at my high school reunion in 2004 that I first started thinking about a program in Nicaragua.
My former high school German teacher had been living in Nicaragua, taught at the engineering university in Managua, and was directing a grass-roots, sustainable energy program in the rich coffee growing region of north-central Nicaragua. She explained to me that her program hosted international volunteers, technicians, students, teachers, and others and that often short-term volunteers were only marginally affective spending much of their time in culture shock, struggling with the language, recovering from ailments, and just trying to manage in the new environment. Nonetheless they were valuable to the program for the revenue they brought; paying for accommodation and small donations, and the notoriety they brought to the program.
I wondered how much more affective these volunteers could be if instead of arriving fresh off the plane and beginning their service in a new and strange environment, they could spend a week, two weeks, or more adjusting to life in a local community. What if they could immerse themselves in the language, culture, family-life, and work of the community, and then; after they had reached a level of comfort, they could volunteer with the sustainable energy project. I thought that maybe they could provide a higher value to the project, and the experience might be much more enriching for them too.
That is how the idea of cultural immersion in Nicaragua was born. The next step was to explore feasibility and develop a project plan. My former teacher provided the local contacts who were already interested in a community focused language and volunteer program. Together we started to share ideas and make plans until we reached a point where it was time to make a decision.
I recruited a U.S. partner, and still unsure about moving forward with this project, we traveled together to meet with our local partners who had already been working hard to recruit teachers, home-stay families, and volunteer projects. Near the end of our first of many in-person planning trips we met with a group of about thirty home-stay family members who listened for over an hour as we explained the details of how this program might work. After our presentation we asked for questions and the first person jumping to her feet asked simply, “when can you start sending people”.
Walking away from that presentation I commented to my U.S. partner, “I was on the fence until I heard the first question, now I know we have to do this.” She agreed!
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
Language and cultural immersion allows travelers to experience details of family and community life – not usually accessible to tourists.
They participate in birthdays, anniversaries, street play, and last summer some dealt with the passing from cancer of a young mother who left two young children and no known family.
The exchange goes both ways as the community welcomes visitors into their homes, helps them celebrate milestones and cares for them when they are homesick, ill, or having trouble adjusting.
Visitor and host benefit from the interaction and the end result is usually an understanding that they are not so different.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
Our successes in Ocotal, Nicaragua can be translated into other areas through similar community partnerships. Continuing to seek out suitable community partners will help us spread language and cultural immersion programs to other off-the-beaten-path communities in Nicaragua and in other countries.
Attracting suitable participants through marketing efforts and through partnerships with schools, churches, community groups, and others will provide increased participant interest and eventually create repeat participants and a team of alumni program advocates.
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