PePY offers tours and volunteer opportunities in Cambodia, the country I have long called the best and finest place in Asia for Westerners to spend time and money helping those less fortunate.
We want to live in a world where everyone has access to quality education and increased health and environmental awareness but we believe that traditional development models are failing to make the changes we think are possible in the world.
At PEPY, we are committed to making improvements in education, the environment, and health by investing in a local team of dedicated leaders and connecting them with the tools to help deliver the changes they want to see in the world. We work to build strong human relationships and empower local leaders who understand the specific needs in the areas where we work. Our goals involve changes in attitudes and actions so we take an approach to development focused on community input and capacity building.
By designing our programs with a mix of self-criticism, flexibility, collaboration, and a commitment to constantly reevaluating our impact through open dialogue and feedback we hope to achieve lasting positive changes in education in rural Cambodia.
We think travel should be adventurous, educational, and fun but also benefit local communities. We recognize that “voluntourism" can add to the harm of the development and tourism sectors if travelers’ desires are put before local community needs so we design our tours in line with effective volunteer travel practices that we continually research and reevaluate. Our tours are a combination of responsible adventure travel and service learning, which fund educational programs throughout Cambodia. Our goals are to develop educational programs, volunteer trips, and bicycle tours in South East Asia that put community needs first and expose travelers to inspiring people and programs along the way.
PEPY was founded by a group of young social entrepreneurs who believe in our two-part model for change. Seeing a need for educational resources and advocacy in developing areas as well as a global desire for meaningful travel options, PEPY's founders have created an organization that fills this space at the intersection of development and tourism.
The idea for this organization started as a cycle trip across Cambodia which I co-lead with my friend Greta Arnquist. We rode from Thailand to Vietnam through the red dusty back roads of Cambodia to raise funds for educational projects. Four of our friends joined, and our team of people from five countries spent five weeks visiting schools and orphanages, teaching the first PEPY environmental lessons. The team raised enough money to fund the construction of The PEPY Ride School in rural Chanleas Dai, Cambodia. To mark the school opening ceremony on December 31, 2005, 35 people joined us for a one-week trip to explore beautiful Cambodia and support the school opening.
A group from that original volunteer team saw the impact this had on both the travelers and the community of Chanleas Dai and quickly founded The PEPY Ride, an international NGO now registered both in the USA and Cambodia. We bring together rural Cambodian people who might not know about or have access to the services of organizations in the city and travelers who are looking to give back but do not know where to best invest their time and money. Travelers who join a PEPY Tour are able to give back while they travel, support our on-going development projects, learn about this fast-changing country, and perhaps alter their lives because of these experiences. The communities and programs we support benefit both from the international exchange and time donated by the volunteers, as well as the funding for educational programs.
Many voluntours offer "episodic spectacles for the sake of tourism", to quote one of our board members. By creating a non-governmental organization (NGO) on the ground in Cambodia, we are able to operate sustainable development programs and offer short term visitors the chance to be a part of something ongoing. In addition to providing funding and time in support of our programs, participants come on our tours as advocates for all those who have donated to PEPY, to see our projects, learn about our mission, and have a chance to live what they give. Donating to an organization can be rewarding, but I believe that following up on that investment, seeing the good your money can do, and being a PART of the organization makes your involvement more meaningful.
On the development front, we at PEPY do not wish to ride alone, oblivious to the great work done by other organizations. Keeping our wheels true requires us to seek out the best NGO programs with similar missions to PEPY. So many organizations work as independent silos, rarely sharing their information, storing their knowledge to compete for limited funding, and very often repeating work. Some of that is inevitable, but we feel that so much can be shared and many millions of dollars in donor funding can be saved if organizations find the best practices among themselves and work together. PEPY is looking to be a bridge between organizations, gathering the best we can find in the areas of education, health, and the environment and delivering that to rural areas which are often overlooked in the race for development funding.
PEPY stands for "Protect the Earth. Protect Yourself" because we teach about the relationship between the environment and our health. Protect the Earth, and, in effect, you also Protect Yourself. In today's world, with so many partisan debates about "Is global warming happening?" and "Is carbon offsetting good?", there is often too much talk and not enough action. Rather than argue about if/when/how we are harming the earth, we at PEPY acknowledge that we are inarguably harming the earth in many ways and we need to ACT, beginning by making small changes in our daily lives. Global warming or not, we all agree that we are part of this changing planet, and by protecting it, we are protecting ourselves. This is the message we bring as we cycle and visit organizations throughout Cambodia.
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