More About PEPY


  • PEPY RIDE WEBSITE:
    www.pepyride.org

    FACTS ABOUT CO-FOUNDERS:

    Greta Arnquist graduated from St. Olaf College in 2003 with a degree in English. She first traveled to Cambodia to volunteer at the Future Light orphanage in Phnom Penh in 2004.

    Daniela Papi graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2000 with a degree in Economics. She was working with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) when she first traveled to Cambodia to visit a friend. Papi won the 2006 Delaying the Real World Fellowship.


    Daniela Papi in Cambodia.

A Better Ride
Bike tours double as volunteering opportunities

By Julie French
This article was printed in Abroad View magazine fall 2006

Thirty-five volunteers from 13 countries and Cambodian students helped paint the PEPY Ride School mural durAing the December 2005 volunteer trip. Pictured here are co-founders Daniela Papi (second from left) and Greta Arnquist (fourth from left).

One morning during a five-week bike ride across Cambodia, Greta Arnquist started to feel sick, so she sat down on the side of the road to rest. A few Cambodian women selling fruit across the street came over and began rubbing her back. Within five minutes, she was surrounded by a crowd of Cambodians who had all stopped working to rub her with tiger balm, bounce coins off her back and give her mini karate chops.

Arnquist remembers this simple act of comfort as a defining moment, strengthening her commitment to the Cambodian people. She and Daniela Papi, co-founders of the not-for-profit PEPY Ride, want other volunteers to experience that kind of connection through their organization. PEPY, which stands for Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself, was originally created to support environmental and health education in Cambodia, and has since become a multi-faceted non-profit with an emphasis on sustainable tourism. PEPY brings people to Cambodia for bicycle tours, sightseeing, and a few days of volunteering.

“You can’t go to Cambodia and not react,” Arnquist says. “You meet these Cambodian people—it’s their instinct to help you, to laugh with you, to comfort you, to rub your back. There’s no way that you could not want to share that instinct.”

Cambodia, a country struggling to make up for years of lost education and livelihood under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, is full of non-profits targeting tourists, but PEPY has found its niche by identifying hardships and then supporting organizations already working to fill those needs. If Arnquist and Papi feel a need is not being met, they launch their own efforts.

The idea for PEPY originated in Japan, where Papi and Arnquist met while teaching English. Both shared a passion for environmental education and had recently been to Cambodia. They decided to start their project by riding their bikes across the country.

On the trip, they observed environmental issues like deforestation and water pollution, but hunger, poverty, and lack of education were even bigger needs. “If you cross the border, it’s like crossing a time zone into the past, because Cambodians are so much further behind,” Papi says. “A whole generation missed out on education.”

PEPY believes that teaching kids environmental protection and other needed skills now will equip them to make better decisions in the future, when they are the leaders and Cambodia has the resources to think about conservation and protection.

In addition to supporting more than 10 organizations, PEPY has built its own school, hired a full-time English teacher, and started a bike-to-school program. The group provides bicycles to graduating sixth-graders with good attendance so they can go to high school. Bikes cost $45 each—not much to many tourists, but the equivalent of two-and-a-half-months’ salary for the average Cambodian.

The money for much of this comes from the volunteers themselves—the price of a PEPY bike tour includes a donation to the organization where riders volunteer. PEPY has adopted the motto “Go where your money goes,” so volunteers can see the impact their small donation can have. Papi thinks of these donations as investments, because once someone sees they can make a difference, she believes they will continue to donate their time and money.

So far, it’s working. Thirty-five people from 13 countries went on the inaugural ride in 2005, and nearly all of them are still involved with the organization. In fact, PEPY is entirely volunteer-run and gaining members with each trip. “We ask people to raise a few dollars, maybe paint the wall, read a book to a kid,” Papi says, “and they’ll do so much more than we’ll ever ask them.”

Peppi Stunkel (left) and Julia Davies (right) were part of the original 2006 PEPY Ride team.

The rapid growth of PEPY in the past year surprised its co-founders. After completing that first bike ride, they set a yearlong goal of building a school through the non-profit American Assistance for Cambodia. They needed $16,000—and they raised it by month three, continuing on to break the $1 million mark.

While they are pleased with their initiative’s progress, Papi doesn’t necessarily want PEPY to grow too large. Both she and Arnquist volunteered extensively with Habitat for Humanity before founding PEPY and, at one time, dreamed of overtaking Habitat as the largest non-profit in the world. But, for now, they will stick with fundraising and developing their tours, because “that’s what we’re good at,” Arnquist says. “We want to get volunteers to come to Cambodia, and we want to get them involved and inspire them to remain involved.”

To attract more volunteers, plans for six short trips and the second annual cross-country ride are currently in the works at PEPY. “You get so much more out of your travel experience if you have a job there, if you’re living there, even if only for a short time, because you can relate to the Cambodians,” Papi says. “Instead of a beggar and a tourist, you’re co-workers.” And sometimes that job might include a nice backrub.