PEPY
PEPY
PEPY is a grassroots NGO dedicated to sustainable tourism and educational development in rural Cambodia. I spent two months at their Phnom Penh office working to launch a new website promoting their adventure bicycle treks and a social network to keep past participants and volunteers involved in the amazing work PEPY does throughout Cambodia.
PEPY supports their educational projects with money raised through bicycle treks that combine adventure and volunteering. This sustainable tourism venture was growing and needed it’s own website, so I helped them launch pepytours.com.
The staff responsible for PEPY’s bicycle tours is made of volunteers that stay for 6 month internships. With such high turnover, they needed a website that was easy to update. They also needed something cheap. PEPYTours.com was built with Joomla, an open source CMS.
With so many volunteers and bicycle riders coming to Camboida to contribute to PEPY’s educational projects, they also needed a forum for sharing stories and staying in touch. We used a free, online service called Ning to launch a customized social network named The PEPY People Network. It now has more than 200 members with hundreds of photos and frequently updated blog posts. Because of so many great stories being shared by past participants, The PEPY People Network was made public and now serves as a tool to attract new people to Cambodia.