Photo by: Sabrina Rubli

Many times we rush through our lives without pausing to consider what is going on in the world and the impact that we can have with our thoughts, words, and actions. At Operation Groundswell, we make a conscious decision to do just that. It’s not something that we do but rather, something that we are. We pride ourselves in being what we like to call “backpacktivists” -- a special breed of travellers that traverse the world ethically and responsibly, consciously aware of their social, economic, and environmental impact. This summer, 173 remarkable individuals embraced this backpacktivist lifestyle and joined us on our adventures around the globe. Our summer fundraising efforts this year have been like no other with a whopping 2500 donations for a total of $189,409! Thanks to your generous donations and support, our backpacktivists built the first factory made out of styrofoam building blocks in Haiti, constructed sustainable drainage trenches for a village in Peru, shadowed Ghanaian doctors, and volunteered with youth arts organizations in Cambodia. They watched the sunrise up top the Santa Maria volcano, lived amongst the hill tribes of Northern Thailand, and trekked the frigid mountains of Ladakh.

A Message from OGHQ

We are humbled everyday by the generosity of our donors, the open-mindedness and compassion of our participants, the multifaceted skills of our trip leaders, and

the tenacity of our local partners who work in some of the harshest conditions in the world. We are all integral pieces of this giant puzzle.

With love and thanks,

Eyal, Jo, Taha, Kari, Ali, and Justine OG Headquarters

Our Story

Operation Groundswell (OG) is a non-profit organization that offers travel and community service opportunities around the world.

We aim to build a community of backpacktivists that are socially,

environmentally, and politically aware of their impact in the communities they travel

to and live in. Founded in 2006 by hungry and curious students, Operation Groundswell is an ethical and affordable alternative to the many travel volunteer for-profit businesses out there. When we first started our travel volunteer adventures, we were disappointed by the options available, and so we set out to do it ourselves. We spent months meeting and connecting with amazing locals, finding incredible partner NGOs and setting up an organization we are proud of. In the process, we’ve made lifelong friends in Sandema, Port-au-Prince, Phnom Penh, Jerusalem and everywhere in between.

After 6 amazing years of adventure, learning, fun, and growth, we have learned just how deep the impact our trips have on our participants and the local communities we have formed partnerships with. Our first generation of participants returned from their experience wishing they had involved more people back home and had more resources to make a greater impact in the communities they worked at. Since then, we decided to make fundraising for local community projects an integral part of our programming.

Fundraising Efforts

Fundraising is a crucial component of all OG programs and is just one way we support our local partner NGOs and charities. We ask each of our participants to fundraise $1000 giving them the opportunity to share their experience with friends and family at home. Past participants continually tell us that supporting local organizations is one of the most rewarding aspects of their OG experience.

85%

5% 10%

In Country Projects

Administration

Carbon Offsetting

In-Country Projects

Carbon Offsetting

Administration

85% of participants’ fundraising efforts go directly to support projects of our local partner NGOs. From constructing the first Ubuntu Blox styrofoam factory in Haiti to building houses in Cambodia, our groups always leave a lasting impact. Employing a consensus-based decision-making model, each group decides on which projects to fund once in country, whether they be major group projects or smaller personal projects. Funds that are not dispersed by the group in-country will go towards the OG Project Fund, a communal pool that all OG alumni can submit project proposals to after the summer.

There is no doubt that running trips around the world has an effect on the environment. Round-trip flights and in-country transportation undoubtedly leave a large carbon footprint. If our volunteers are going to fly, we want to encourage environmental responsibility. For this reason, we carbon offset all of our programs, contributing 10% of all fundraising money to PlanetAir, a Canadian organization regarded as one of the leaders in the industry by the Suzuki Foundation. All of the projects we support are assessed against the Gold Standard’s sustainable development criteria.

OG runs a lean non-for-profit. Only 5% goes towards the administration of funds, assisting participant fundraising, staff salaries, and bank transfer fees.

Summer 2012 by the Numbers 173

17 8

$1094.83 CAD $189, 409 CAD

$2040 CAD 2500

35 53

participants trips regions in the world average fundraised by each participant total funds raised highest amount fundraised by a participant total donations local partner NGOs and charities ongoing projects throughout the summer

0$  2,000$  4,000$  6,000$  8,000$  10,000$  12,000$  14,000$  

Total  Summer  Fundraising  

TOTAL  EARLY  SUMMER  PROGRAM  

TOTAL  LATE  SUMMER  PROGRAM  

Field Notes …words found on our blog from around the world…

Guatemala Fair Trade Eduardo, somewhat of a rugged teddy bear figure, and Mercedes, a cowboy hat-wearing peanut and coffee farming master, gave us the quintessential coffee rundown of our partner, As Green As It Gets (ASAIG). In the most patient and knowledgeable manner, Eduardo and Mercedes took us through everything from coffee types to harvest seasons to cultivating steps. By the time they finished their lesson, we could’ve farmed our own cuerda of coffee, having all the necessary tools minus the raw experience. This is OGG’s third year working with As Green As It Gets. One of the coolest parts of AGAIG is that they’re always testing new techniques and seeking creative alternatives to do what they do best–help people help themselves. Whether it’s testing new crops in the experimental field plot or marketing new talents like peanut butter making, AGAIG never stops after one success. There’s always room to grow, potential for new opportunity, and new markets to uncover. Aside from innovative projects, AGAIG also does an amazing job working closely with its farmers and crafts men and women. The close relationship they maintain with the actual people keeps the cooperative from feeling too much like an organization and instead more like a friendship. It is their personalities that shine through the cooperative, making it what it truly is…

Southeast Asia Music and Culture We struggled through the intensely emotional day at the Killing Fields and the infamous Security Prison 21 (S-21), now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Hundreds of Killing Fields can be found all over Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge period. In an effort to bring Cambodia back to the Year Zero and return to an agricultural society free of inequality and western values, the Khmer Rouge waged a genocide against its own people… Over 16,000 people went through the S21 prison and only 7 survived. Famous for its brutal torture techniques, the Khmer Rouge interrogated individuals they thought were out to thwart the revolution. Men, women and children passed through this hell. Blood stains the floor. Barbed wire fences are on every level to make suicide an impossible escape. Photos of the victims line the walls with looks of not fear or sadness, but either defiance or defeat. Tiny cramped cells with chains. Bullet holes litter the walls. A heavy and negative aura surrounds the museum making it difficult to breathe. The victims of the S21 prison were brought to Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields, for their final moments. The excavated pits hold the memories of the 20,000 souls that lost their lives at this site. A pagoda stands in the middle of the site housing the skulls of the lost. A tree is marked as the baby killing tree. The sound of young school children fills the air with an eerie sound of the hope and future. Why didn’t we learn anything about this in school? This is current history. These are fresh scars. Cambodia continues to overcome the odds and has not given up! Growing from the ashes of this broken society are the youth of today. Empowering the next generation is the only way to guarantee success tomorrow…

Peru Mind and Body It’s a popular phrase here in South America: everything is possible, but nothing is certain! OG Peru Mind and Body lived this motto the past four weeks, soaking up as much of the Peruvian culture (and Andean sunshine) as we could and spending the past two weeks completing our major project in the small mountain village of Chahuay. After working with the community day in and day out, we successfully refurbished and added on to a children’s park, visited centers for young children and new mothers, and formed a bond with a community that truly became a home.

West Africa Discovery and Development

Living in the community of Sandema was unforgettable. We had the luxury of not only exploring and developing new potential projects and ideas, but also making friendships and memories that are etched into our minds forever. Through the magical, and often hilarious moments, we also had our share of difficulties. Initiatives like starting a recycling and sanitation awareness project and setting up a girls football tournament take time, planning, and dedication. Visiting schools and waving at excited children is one thing, but sitting down and really asking the right questions and understanding what students want and need is a complex process. Our group struggled early on in our stay to grapple with our prior expectations: what did we think we came to do, and how can we turn a three week visit into something lasting, something beneficial, and something we can be proud of? Sometimes that “something” is different from what we originally planned for. What we really learned was that it’s not about what we want, but ultimately what they need, since these are their lives and their homes. This is, after all, a discovery trip and this community is giving us more than enough to learn from.

India High Altitude The group didn’t flinch when Rajul told us we could sleep at his brother’s restaurant. We were stranded in Manali for the night after a long twenty-four hour jeep journey from Leh. It would be closing soon anyway and Rajul would clear away tables and lay down a long foam mat on the floor, one storey above where we’re standing. We aren’t asked to pay but in backpacker agreements that means we would buy beers then and breakfast in the morning before another long trip to Rishikesh. The group didn’t ask questions. We had slept in weird situations before on the trip (small vans with seats permanently reclined cramping knees behind; local buses–periodically checking if that woman with the sweat dampened sari is puking out the door; jeeps lost in the high altitude desert with only rocks, bush and rabbits; large tents covered in snow; homestays with beetles crawling around the floor, mud dripping from the straw roof; and on the marble grounds of the Golden Temple) so by now there’s nothing that could surprise us. Backpacking is a full time job. There is no such thing as easy. This isn’t vacation. We earn the best moments–the bizarre, the fun, the unpredictable–all of which are remembered best in the fixed routine of our normal lives. Or is this normal? In discussions early on in the trip, I expressed that traveling with a backpack doesn’t make one a backpacker. A backpacker absorbs every opportunity, taking all the good and the bad from the experience. A backpacker adapts to the country rather than imposing their own life into it…

Haiti Engineering Traveling and volunteering abroad always teaches us something about ourselves and the world…in terms of personal growth, we learned to work harder, push ourselves farther away from our comfort zones, and to humanize the other. By constructing the world’s first styrofoam building block factory, we are at the forefront of an open-source movement to remove human-created waste from our rivers and oceans by turning that waste into reusable and sustainable, earthquake- and hurricane -resistant construction materials. A small ripple of an act in the hope of creating a giant sea of change. Haiti is a country known for all the wrong reasons these days. Mainstream media focuses on the earthquake, the challenges of reconstruction and the lack of progress. All true things. But what our team has learned is that Haiti’s story is complex, not one that can be explained in a scrolling ticker on 24-hour news. So we came here to see for ourselves, made some small progress but more importantly, some real connections with real people who are working to create long-term change. In the process, we became better people and global citizens. There’s not much more we can ask for in an OG trip. So to everyone who followed along on our adventures, please don’t let Haiti be forgotten. Its tragic beauty should be a lesson to us all. We know that our OG crew will never forget Haiti or the time we spent here…

‘Nou pap jamais blye ou’ – ‘We will never forget you’

West Africa Global Health

Our work and volunteer placements ranged from the surgical theater at the National Cardiothoracic Center in Accra, Ghana to the makeshift football pitch at Horizon Children’s Centre (HCC) in the Upper East Region. During the work day, the participants donned their white lab coats and shadowed doctors, nurses, and surgeons in the Korie-Bu teaching hospital. There were opportunities to observe, interview, and learn from professionals in several units of the large campus, including the Cardiothoracic Unit, the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department, the Plastics Unit, and several wards and surgical theaters. Several afternoons were devoted to putting our observations into context by having presentations given from several national health initiatives, including the National AIDS Control Programme and the National Tuberculosis Control Board. The entire trip seemed to come and go very quickly, especially as the group gave their final goodbyes outside the taxi cabs on the way to the airport. It’s funny to think that in just this short time, new friendships were made and many changes were made to peoples’ lives. Everyone had a great adventure that will last in their memories for a very long time…

East Africa Discovery and Development At Good Sheppard School in Kiritu, Kenya, there was no library. They had a few battered textbooks, and the teachers would copy the text onto the blackboard and the students would write their homework into their notebooks. Last month, Operation Groundswell sponsored the purchase of over $2,000 worth of books. The teachers compiled a list of the materials they needed, and we used our fundraising dollars to go to the publisher in Mbale and buy them. We bought encyclopedias, and atlases, dictionaries, novels, textbooks, and more novels. “Since the books were purchased, there have been great improvements with the students.” Said Eunice Ahuga, the academic administrator of the school. “Before, children in class 1 would have trouble with numbers, and sounds and letters. Now they have no problems, and even children in nursery are learning to read small words.” The books were locked up in a newly built cupboard in the Director’s office. They are counted each week to ensure that none have gone missing. When a teacher wants to use them, they sign them out, and then sign them back in at the end of the day. They are not letting the children take the books home, though, for fear of them getting lost or damaged. There aren’t enough books for each child to have its own, but it is a start. An incredible start.

On behalf of all of us at Operation Groundswell,

thank you for your generosity!