MR. THY – THE PILOT PROJECT
In 2016, one of our team members traveled through Cambodia and met a man with a passion for giving children a fair chance. In order to accomplish this mission he aimed to build a school next to his house and hire a teacher to provide English lessons for the children of his village . Yet, without any steady income, his project was completely dependent on donations. We saw the opportunity to help Mr. Thy achieve his goal, by making use of the many free rooms he had next to his house as accommodation for travelers. With this idea, a bunch of enthusiastic students within the student initiative Enactus got together and designed the idea for the very first Socialbnb homestay: Mr. Thy’s school in Pang Na in Cambodia. In just three months we were able to welcome just about 20 travelers in Pang Na. With this additional money, Mr. Thy was not only able to pay an English teacher for the class, but he could also invest in computers and books to improve the learning experience as such. Soon, we realized that Mr. Thy might not be the only one in such a situation. After some research, we discovered that over 60 percent of small local non-governmental organizations struggle with the same problem: highly dependent on donations and simply not enough money to realize their projects that help to solve the future challenges of our world.
THE BIRTH OF SOCIALBNB
Using this idea we created Socialbnb, an innovative platform connecting local NGO’s with travelers from all around the world. In April 2018, we managed to launch the first version of the website. In June, two of our team members traveled to Peru to spark the interest of even more NGO’s. Soon, there will be many more destinations available.
WHAT’S NEXT
At the moment we are working hard to improve Socialbnb. On one hand, we are expanding to other countries in South East Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. On the other hand, we are working on developing our platform for Socialbnb, to make the booking process even easier and faster! Fell free to tell us your feedback and ideas.
WANT TO BE PART OF OUR SOCIALBNB COMMUNITY?
Whether you’re an aid organization, lonesome traveler, blogger or anything else, we are always happy to welcome new people to our Socialbnb community. Find more information on how you can collaborate with us here. Or simply send us an Email !
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