“Lessons I Learned” — A New Site Focused On Our Learnings!

PEPY Founder, Daniela Papi, has decided to take her lessons learned discussions to a new site. Her blog, “Lessons I Learned”  focuses on the things she is learning as she navigates through the development and tourism worlds here in Cambodia (and other life lessons she comes across on her way).
Recently, she wrote a post about PEPY Tours’ new look at voluntourism.  At PEPY, we don’t think of our trips as “voluntourism” as much as educational adventures, but as the keys words people search to find philanthropic adventures are often “volunteer” or “voluntourism” we have decided to keep those words on our site.  We are just as skeptical about the benefits of typical “voluntourism” as the rest of the critics out there, Daniela perhaps even more so, and many of her posts relate to this topic.  All PEPY Tours offerings involve a fundraising or donation minimum which directly supports PEPY’s education programs and projects visited on the tours, but we know hands-on support for a project sometimes offers the most effective educational opportunities as well as ways to interact with the people working full-time on these programs. In an effort to find a way to offer hands-on opportunities which support Cambodian development efforts and put tourists in a position where they can give back with their skills, we are considering offering some “Voluntourists as Tourists” tours. The first of which is described here by Daniela and relates to The PEPY Ride V.
She also put up a post about giving things away in tourism and development and its negative impacts.  Follow along with “Lessons I Learned” to keep up to date with the thought process behind the development of PEPY and subscribe to the blog feed if you are interested in getting updates.  Finally, Daniela is also active on twitter at @danielapapi and the rest of us are typing away on @pepycambodia — so follow along!