BeachCorps Supports Rotary Club Partnership Initiative on Impact Travel

The Rotary International Convention Toronto 2018 (June 23-27) is here! And BeachCorps is there as an official part of the Rotary House of Friendship in Booth 512 as a Rotary club project. BeachCorps is supporting the new MetroBethesda Rotary and  Puntacana-Bavaro Rotary Club partnership to use traditional vacations to advance Rotary’s mission.  The project in the Dominican Republic will support the Puntacana Group Foundation and will allow donations from BeachCorps volunteer English teaching assistants coming to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in the summer of 2019 to pay for English teaching in 2020, creating a program that is self-funded indefinitely.  The model leverages Rotary’s networks and does not create any burdensome costs or administrative responsibilities for any club.

Impact travel is extremely popular with people with families, millennials, and women.  The BeachCorps model can thus: help boost and diversify U.S. club membership; support service projects and scholarships for kids from the Punta Cana-Bavaro Interact Club; AND fund travel by U.S. Rotaractors to participate in volunteer vacations.  We want to share our secret sauce and encourage all Rotarians to use our model to help grow and diversify their club–with or without BeachCorps involved. 

Our welcome video for booth 512 will also be shown on the convention floor and includes a 30-second cameo appearance at the end (6:00 mark) by Puntacana Group Chairman Frank Rainieri, one of the true giants of sustainable tourism.  Don Frank is also the Founding President of the Punta Cana-Bavaro Rotary Club!

English opens doors for underserved communities, allowing the poor to gain jobs in tourism and even law, medicine, and business that would otherwise be out of reach, especially in Latin America.  Program beneficiaries will gain greater economic potential and become greater global citizens while earning their free English instruction by giving back to their own communities with volunteer work, including by supporting Rotary projects.

We will also be sharing information on a free pilot Rotary volunteer excursion opportunity in the summer of 2018 to support local Interact kids!  We are looking for a Rotary club to support these GREAT kids!  This project is simple and brilliant: if the pilot program is successful, we will seek to create regular projects for Interact going forward where half the donations are used in projects designed by the Interact kids to improve their communities, and half towards scholarships for the Interact kids.  All we need is a great nonprofit to oversee the work of the kids and the scholarship program and we are working on that.  This model could then be spread around the Dominican Republic and then the world!

Here are the Key Points of the BeachCorps Model to support Rotary Club-to-Club Partnerships:

• A club-to-club agreement should support an ongoing, sustainable project.
• Donations to finance the projects will come from the volunteers who participate in the trips; the clubs themselves need not provide funding. 
• The “voluntourism” projects are best based on typical 4-7 days trips with 1-5 days of volunteer activities with a tour operator supporting.
• Make sure that activities include not just manual labor and also promote real people-to-people engagement.
• The model divides responsibilities between the two clubs and does not create excessive administrative duties for clubs; the nonprofit cause does the most work.  The model can also be used to support projects organized and executed by the club.
• Clubs can raise funds through the agreement.
• The sending Rotary makes best efforts to recruit volunteers.  The sending club uses its share of donations to fund Rotaract and Interact participation in volunteer projects to help attract more talent into the Rotaract and Interact pool. 
• The receiving Rotary club confirms a nonprofit cause is worthy and verifies nonprofit reports.
• Focus on promoting local empowerment, not a culture of dependency typical of much voluntourism.
• The model embraces many of the transparency and accountability principles of Rotary grants, such as A Guide to Global Grants. However, the model is much simpler than a regular Global Grant from Rotary International.
• The two clubs seek to avoid conflicts of interest, particularly with businesses owned by Rotarians.
• The model can be used to support Interact community work as well as scholarships for Interact kids.
• All tour operators (including BeachCorps) are replaceable; no exclusivity contracts allowed.

We love Rotary and think there’s a lot of similarity between the Rotary “Service Above Self” philosophy and our “Little Grain of Sand” philosophy.  This year’s Rotary Motto has been: Rotary Makes a Difference. We sure think so!

More info for how to do your own Rotary project: david@beachcorps.com

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