WHAT IS JOURNEY?
Journey is a new generation of travelers, driven to address the needs of the world.
From 2016-2018, Journey designed and led international impact travel experiences that transformed both the communities and destinations and the travelers onboard. Those travelers helped fund and build 150 homes, 5 school renovations, a community skate park and women’s empowerment programs in 9 countries worldwide. Each trip of 12, 25, or 50 people was a 6-day deep-dive into service, self-growth, community, and adventure.
In 2018, after 600+ travelers and more than $1M raised in social impact capital and nonprofit impact funding, Journey closed its doors. A final letter from the founders can be found below.
WHY WE JOURNEYED
Journey's co-founders Amy Merrill, Lauren Biegler, and Taylor Conroy came from the worlds of brands, crowdfunding tech, and nonprofits, respectively. They started Journey as a new approach to engaging with social impact, with a foundational belief that empathy is a human instinct, but requires firsthand contact: when you see someone in pain or in danger, it is your instinct to help them, rather than turning away and perpetuating suffering.
The team set out to capture that scenario and replicated it, allowing people to engage with social impact in deep, authentic and fun way that encourages them to deepen their involvement in social causes and make new decisions about how they show up in the world when they arrive back home.
150
150 HOMES TO HOUSE 1,000+ PEOPLE BUILT ACROSS CENTRAL AMERICA IN CROSS-CULTURAL EXPERIENCES
6
6 SCHOOLS RENOVATED TO TRANSFORM THE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS
$1M+
OVER $1M IN SOCIAL CAPITAL AND IMPACT FUNDING RAISED IN HYBRID NONPROFIT/B-CORP STRUCTURE
FAREWELL LETTER
Fall 2018
Dear Journeyers,
we started Journey in December 2015 out of a strong desire to create travel experiences that created an impact in the world.
We saw the potential to use travel to transform the communities we visited and the travelers we engaged. We saw an opportunity to view each traveler not as our customer, but as a seed of positive change in the world. We saw a chance to reinvent service work and make it cool. We combined what was powerful from our own experiences in nonprofit work and volunteering, summer camp and festivals and other experiments in community, and designed an arc of a six-day trip that combined impact and integration in combination that had the potential to be truly transformative: a real chance to experience big central emotions like gratitude, oneness, and love.
And when it worked, it worked.
As Journey grew, the impact spread: you built more than 150 homes to house 1000+ individuals, renovated 6 schools for hundreds of youth, worked with womens’ entrepreneur collectives and Afghan refugees, built a skate park for the youth of Costa Rica. We led 24 Journey for nearly 700 travelers, and brought together community leaders BC Serna, Nicole Mejia, Ryan Sheckler and so many more. We also made hundreds of new friends (ie. YOU). We laughed/cried/sweated/meditated/camped our way through Central America and Europe.
After two and a half years, we have made the difficult decision to dissolve Journey. In a social enterprise model that prioritized impact funding and needed to keep trips affordable for millennial travelers, we weren’t able to develop a strong enough business model and pricing to support sustainability and growth. The operations and logistical team needed to run trips that were well-organized, safe and inspiring meant a monthly burn that wasn’t met by the revenues we brought in from tickets. On top of this, we found ourselves in constant catch-22s: needing to add new trips to the calendar, but with no guarantee of meeting minimum numbers, sometimes filling up all the rooms and sometimes cancelling trips at the last minute. It was hard!
And yet, it’s bittersweet to write this. We loved the challenge and we loved the people. We have no doubt the ripple effect change will continue with you. We are deeply grateful for our time together and for the opportunities, learnings, and unforgettable memories that these years offered us personally. We are each continuing on in service in new ways; more on this soon.
We started Journey to create change for others, and wouldn’t you know it, we have found ourselves deeply changed. We see other groups creating impact travel like ours, and we know this kind of trip will continue to exist. We continue to be inspired by those of you questioning your world and living your values: stories like coming home and finding yourself paralyzed in the produce section of Whole Foods, in disbelief at the abundance taken for granted. Or returning to a desk job in finance that is no longer justifiable, no longer a fit. The world is still in big need of repair, but we ignited a light: we will continue to shine, light the way for our community, and reflect back the brilliance of others.
Thank you for showing up big. We’d love to know how Journey manifested in your life when you went home, and we have no doubt that our paths will cross again.
Big love,
Amy + Taylor
THE JOURNEY MANIFESTO
We are seekers.
We question everything.
We’re driven to solve problems.
We speak our truths and honor the truths of others.
We show up.
We are adventurers.
We chase new lands, waves, mountains, roads.
We go, see, do. We find mischief—or it finds us.
We do what sets our hearts on fire—and it’s contagious.
We dream up ideas so big that they scare us—then build them.
We are one.
We believe there is no “other,” no charity,
no giving and receiving, no cause and effect:
instead, our actions exist within the flow of one living, breathing organism we call humanity.
Our actions are not for them or for us or for you.
They just are.
We are fueled by purpose, adventure, community, and love.
We are Journeyers.
We are you.