PEPY is an international NGO and tour company based in Cambodia that aims to improve education in rural communities. Through partnerships with 10 schools, PEPY supports education for over 1,700 families. PEPY focuses on leadership development, literacy programs, and supplemental education to empower communities to improve their standards of living. PEPY Tours organizes educational tours to raise funds and awareness for PEPY's programs. While PEPY has achieved increased education rates and community involvement, ongoing challenges include developing local management capacity and transitioning programs to be fully community-led.

1. PEPY
“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”
www.pepyride.org
“Adventurous Living, Responsible Giving”
www.pepytours.com
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Abstract
PEPY is both an international non-governmental organization (NGO) registered in the USA and Cambodia, The PEPY
Ride, and an educational adventure and service-learning tour operator, PEPY Tours, that helps to fund our education
programs while inspiring change in the way people live, travel and give. PEPY's mission is to aid rural communities in
improving their own standards of living, with a focus on increased access to quality education. Through its partner
government schools and informal education initiatives, PEPY supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12
villages and 10 schools in rural Siem Reap. PEPY believes education is the key to sustainable change, and is committed to
a holistic developmental approach, which empowers children, parents, teachers, and communities to make the positive
changes they want to see in their lives. PEPY invests time and resources in people, with the belief that improving
education, providing training, and stimulating ideas builds capacity for people to better solve their own problems.
Authors
Holly Ray: 2nd
Year MBA Candidate at the University of Notre Dame, Marketing Concentrate. Interned with PEPY in
Summer 2010.
Eric Lewis: Former PEPY Ride intern, current Chief Tourmaster of PEPY Tours.
Summary
Legal Entity PEPY:International NGO with USA 501(3) status.
PEPY Tours: LLC
Geographic Region Cambodia, South East Asia
Year Founded 2005 (LLC split off in 2007)
Sector Focus Education, Leadership, Health, Environment, Responsible Travel
Number of Clients PEPY:Working with +1,700 families, 10 schools and 35 Khmer staff
PEPY Tours: 15 tours per year ~ 100 participants
Target Population PEPY: Rural communities who have not previously had access to quality primary and secondary
education.
PEPY Tours: 1) Young leaders who have not yet solidified their life paths, who are open to
inspiration and guidance to follow their passions, be more responsible travelers, and improve
their impact on the world by changing their attitudes and actions regarding global citizenship. 2)
Current and future donors, not just to PEPY, but to any programs around the world, who are
open to learning about responsible giving and those who want to learn more about the
development issues they are funding.
Number of Staff 36 Khmer Staff, 4 Foreign Staff
Key
Products/Services
PEPY NGO: Community education programs focusing on leadership and student-led change,
school partnerships with school support committees and school administration where PEPY's
model empowers local leaders to make the changes they want to see in their schools. Literacy:
literacy programs and monthly trainings in 10 partner schools with 50 classroom libraries; Local
Language Book Printing: early literacy material creation; Goal Guides: investing in staff (21 out
of 36 are from the areas in which PEPY works) by funding their university or ongoing education
as well as education for local government "contract teachers" to reach their
school equivalence exams.
PEPY Tours: educational, adventure, and rural experiential tours, which raise funds and support
for PEPY's NGO programs and inspire travelers to change the way they live, travel and give.
Annual Budget 2009: $530,000 (due to large program with Dubai Cares)
2010: $350,000
Quantifiable 1000% increase in 7th grade entry and 1000% increase in 9th grade graduation rates in target

2. Impact community. Increase from 50 to 1000+ in books checked out of the local library, 100% of
teaching staff reaching 95% attendance each month for two consecutive school years (apart
from two months) where previous rates were as low as 40%. (Note: PEPY does not think the
numbers of books checked out measures improvements in education nor does having teachers
present mean their students are getting a better education. Kids are not only entering the library
and checking out books, but they are reading them, rather than just flipping through pictures.
Teachers used to punch in and sit around, but now they are teaching the majority of the time in
class, which results in higher student attendance). 100% of students have passed the 6th grade
exam for two consecutive years in our first partner school, where as many as 10 students had
typically failed in the past.
To Date’s Biggest
Accomplishment
Due to influences from seeing and learning from the PEPY process and programs, 20 junior
high school students in Chanleas Dai formed their own volunteer program teaching in 11
villages (raised their own funds, have their own management structure/sustainability plan, etc.).
Why the Enterprise Exists
Cambodia is a nation fraught by social and
environmental challenges, many of which are also global
problems. PEPY believes the primary tool for
overcoming many of these challenges is quality
education, along with ubiquity of educational access.
Widespread lack of access to quality education in the
basic areas of language, health, math and critical
thinking has far-reaching, negative impacts in all areas of
life and quality of life in general. For example, in
Cambodia:
- 47%+ of children who enroll in primary school do not
reach grade six
- 53% of the female populate is illiterate
- 40% of the population lives below the poverty line
- 90+% of rural Cambodians practice open defecation
- 74% of deaths are due to water borne illness
- 14.3% of children die before age five
PEPY’s founders arrived in 2005 with enthusiasm but also naïveté regarding ground conditions and sustainable
development. They aimed to “teach about the environment” when they themselves admittedly knew little about Cambodia
or its environment. Through investing time and money in the wrong areas, they learned that investing time in people, not
merely giving things away, is what encourages people to take actions to improve their own communities. New schools do
not educate children, quality teachers do. And objects do not change lives, people knowing how to use them or make them
does. PEPY, "Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”, was named for a belief rooted in the environmental lessons of that first
trip to Cambodia. PEPY’s programs have expanded beyond environmental education with a focus now on leadership,
Khmer (Cambodian language) literacy, and broader improvements in the education offered in government schools. Our
basic ethos, however, is still the same: by making small changes in our lives and continually striving to educate ourselves
about the problems around us, we can all take leadership roles in improving our own lives and the world. In support of
this philosophy, PEPY is two legal entities: a nonprofit facilitating capacity building and education programs in rural
Cambodia, and a for-profit (PEPY Tours) offering educational tours to raise global awareness about this country’s
development as well as funds for the nonprofit’s ongoing programs.
Organizational Background
Through partner government schools and informal education initiatives, PEPY supports education for more than 1,700
families in 12 villages and 10 schools in rural Siem Reap province. Because PEPY believes education is the key to
sustainable change, it is committed to a holistic approach, which empowers children, parents, teachers, and communities
to effect the changes they want to see in their lives. It is not PEPY’s place to solve problems for others, but instead to
encourage and support others with the tools to solve their own problems. To this end, PEPY supports

3. Leadership: PEPY works to empower school,
community, and youth leaders to take action to
create quality learning environments—carried
out through youth leadership clubs, school
support committee development and training,
and government school partnerships.
Literacy: PEPY empowers teachers and
students with the tools to increase literacy rates,
the use of printed material in the classroom, and
a love of reading in government schools—
carried out through school and classroom
library programs, teacher training, resource
creation, Khmer language book printing, and
summer literacy camps.
Supplemental Education: PEPY works with
government schools to offer additional
academic programing during students’ free time
and school breaks. PEPY’s junior high school
program focuses on creativity and critical thinking through a Creative Learning Class, which uses XO computers, science
experiments, and (soon) robots as media for learning problem solving.
Educational Tourism: These rural education programs are supported in part through PEPY’s tourism arm, PEPY Tours.
PEPY Tours offers learning, adventure, and development-education experiences to students, teachers, families, and
independent groups looking to travel Cambodia responsibly. The tour fees cover participants’ travel expenses, and the
required fundraising or donation goes directly to the non-profit programs, which will continue on long after they leave.
As with any organization constantly striving to improve, PEPY’s “special sauce” is its progress-minded people—
committed both to PEPY’s overall goals and to their own personal goals. PEPY has seen that individuals who improve
themselves are also those who improve their organizations. PEPY values constructive self-criticism, eschews
complacency, and is willing to change programs and organizational structures when more responsible, sustainable
solutions become apparent (and indeed, it has changed much in five years and will continue to do so!).
Scaling & Sustainability Actions
PEPY Tours’ vision is for travelers and global communities to recognize their ability to enact changes they care
about, through responsible giving and mutual respect. PEPY Tours therefore offers educational tours designed to inspire
people to be more responsible donors, travelers and citizens, while also bringing financial support for PEPY’s educational
programs.
PEPY believes that lack of education creates and sustains a cycle of poverty, and feels that by working both
within and outside of government schools PEPY can help increase access to quality education, with a focus on
environmental and health-education. PEPY’s programs and models of giving are built on these principles: Build capacity
in people, partner with other organizations, share our lessons learned, allow flexibility in our programs, work with local
government and power structures, and monitor our impact. Through these guidelines PEPY has contributed to significant
growth in the availability of quality education in an area of rural Cambodia while also empowering communities to be
directly involved in their own growth.
This growth has created employment opportunities for community members as well as opportunities to participate
in community problem solving. Along with the growth of elementary and secondary education PEPY has contributed to
the growth of higher education by providing all its local employees with scholarships for continued education. The
programs are not only about traditional classroom education, but also about investing in young leaders and helping them
to identify solutions to problems in their everyday lives. PEPY has learned that improvements in infrastructure/resources,
without human capacity development components, have little impact.
What sets PEPY apart from similar organizations is its commitment to knowing its impact, learning from
mistakes, and willingness to be flexible when acknowledging a need to adjust programs to ensure the best possible impact.
An internal eagerness to recognize, learn from and discuss mistakes has allowed its programs to be innovative and
transformational by nature.
Partnering with organizations, and divulging mistakes and lessons learned, allows growth in PEPY programs that
would not otherwise be possible. Partnerships and cross-organizational capacity building raise the bar for global
development overall. It can also help PEPY expand its impact to other places in Cambodia and around the world. Through

4. partnerships with other organizations PEPY has been able to accomplish more than it could have alone, such as helping
Room to Read expand into Classroom Libraries and encouraging their new focus on early literacy material, implementing
Dubai Cares’s programs in Cambodia and expanding interest in responsible donorship in Dubai, becoming a test school
for the One Laptop Per Child program, and contributing to Basic Education and Teacher Training’s early literacy books
program.
Dedication to sustainability is the aim of PEPY’s innovation. Flexibility is the only avenue for sustainability in a
country that is rebuilding and in constant transition. The fact that PEPY is funded mostly by private funding allows for
adjustment of programs with sustainability in mind. PEPY’s commitment is to put communities, not donors, first, and has
previously turned down funding that would require sacrificing program integrity to meet grant requirements.
Challenge: Growth, Scale, Transition
What started in 2004 was an idea for a bike ride. The following year looked initially like it would culminate in the
construction of a school. PEPY was reminded again this year, having now funded the construction of six government
schools, that schools alone do not teach kids. In fact, without trained and motivated teachers, an interested community,
basic resources, and ease of access, school buildings are a waste of money. Now, five years later, PEPY works to use
these schools by investing time in the people who give these buildings value. PEPY still has progress to make, more
structure to put in place to support its 35 local staff members, more programs to improve, and more voices to listen to. If
PEPY did not admit challenges or show failures as well as successes, it would be omitting important parts of the story.
In order to progress, for example, rather than brainstorming ways to improve education in Kralanh (our target
area), PEPY asks school support committees do their own research to prioritize problems and implement locally-based
solutions. This is a movement toward programs that have broader impacts and follow repeatable models, which can be
sustained through local leadership. PEPY prioritizes community-driven initiatives, focusing on programs that one could
be sustained locally in the future, without ongoing support. Work in several primary schools is now achieved through
collaboration with local community members and school administrators. This more participatory approach to educational
development centers on “school development plans,” created and executed by empowered school support committees.
Along with changing its perspective on development, PEPY has made internal structural changes to stay aligned
with its operational transitions. In 2007 it restructured, splitting the hybrid organization into two separate entities. PEPY
Tours is legally a for-profit tour company, though it exists to support the PEPY Ride, the nonprofit entity that runs
sustainability- and education-based programs. Previously, fitting the
PEPY Tours component with the PEPY Programs portion was
challenging, as the hybrid structure often caused confusion as to what
PEPY actually did. This proved a weakness in matters of funding, tour
participants, and donor relationships. PEPY made the split for legal,
accounting, and growth reasons: its board should not be liable for tours,
nor should the board spend time discussing tours when they could on
education. With the tourism entity standing on its own, without NGO
funding, both organizations can grow at their own rates.
Despite the formal separation, the two entities still function
together in many ways and are together referred to as “PEPY,” which
still lends itself to confusion. Figuring out how to have these two
separate but intertwined entities coexist without confusion is an ongoing
challenge.
Another ongoing organizational challenge is the ability to find
rural Cambodian people with educational levels adequate for training
and placement in management and leadership roles. Almost all of
Cambodia’s teachers were killed or fled the country during the Khmer
Rouge period, and Cambodia still struggles with a lack of trained
educators. While the official adult literacy rate (ages 15 and older) is
73.6%, some sources report a much lower rate, 30-40%, as a result of
differing definitions of “literate.” While 98% of children enroll in
primary school, attendance is low and attrition is high. In rural
Cambodia, more than 50% of children drop out by the 3rd
grade. PEPY’s
impact (detailed in “Results”), though significant, is in a relatively small

5. area. To scale its impact, PEPY partners and shares ideas and lessons learned rather than try to grow its own programs and
risk diluting their results. This allows PEPY to concentrate on building relationships and momentum in one area while still
impacting a larger community.
PEPY’s original goal was for individuals from its target communities to be running its programs within five
years. PEPY has not yet achieved this goal. Three out of four Cambodian program managers are from urban areas where
they could achieve higher education, and only one is from Kralanh (target district). In order to build local capacity, PEPY
has hired 21 of 36 staff members from the Chanleas Dai area in Kralanh, who work directly with each program manager.
With the lack of educational background comes a lack of problem solving and critical thinking skills, which,
coupled with the fact that Cambodia lost one in four people during the Khmer Rouge period, while targeting the educated
population, means it is extremely hard to find more seasoned and successful management staff. This makes it difficult to
achieve full local sustainability at the pace originally projected. After losing its local director due to a move to northern
Cambodia, PEPY has searched for a director for nearly two years, and though it has found many great leaders, PEPY has
not found one who fits its core values as well as management needs until recently. PEPY has finally hired a Cambodian
director, who is currently finishing her PhD, and will be join the NGO before the year’s end. PEPY sincerely believes that
its efforts will reach a point of local sustainability; it will be an ongoing challenge, however, to reach goals within the time
frames originally set.
Financial sustainability is another goal for the next five years. Currently, 60% of operating expenses are covered
by three large donors, yet donations are never guaranteed and PEPY wants to get to a point of financial sustainability that
is not dependent on outside sources. PEPY Tours, located in Cambodia (and registered in the US), leads tourists on
responsible adventure tours—trips that have an educational component and often visit PEPY programs (in addition to
projects run by other NGOs whose missions have an appropriate fit). All tours have both a trip fee and a donation
minimum, which goes directly to benefit these programs. The amount of revenue created from these trips is rising, and
while the support current and past participants provide for existing projects grows, PEPY continues to pursue other means
of support for the ways in which PEPY programs will expand and adapt to maximize impact.
Results:
The Chanleas Dai Primary School principal
credits PEPY’s programs and support with:
- A more than 1,000% increase in the
number of students entering grade 7
- The development of a reading culture in
Chanleas Dai, with students taking out
more than 1,000+ books each month (the
lines of students going into the library
during class breaks is a testament to
this!)
- An increase in teacher attendance from
averages as low as 40% to a current 95%
or above for all teachers
- 100% of graduating 6th
grade students
passing the official primary school
completion exam for the second year in
a row
These, and other metrics, are not “PEPY Accomplishments.” They are the achievements of local teachers, community
members, and administrators who have created a culture of learning and increased their own commitment to improving
the quality of education within their communities. What PEPY’s team can claim credit for, including the 21 staff from
Kralanh, is helping to open the eyes of local leadership and students to their potential to create the changes they want to
see.
Key Enablers
PEPY’s growth—both as a facilitator of capacity-building in its target communities and as a responsible tour operator—
can be attributed to many factors. For example, a growing base of PEPY Tours participants, who have seen PEPY’s
programs firsthand, are now ambassadors for the organization. Also, strong partnerships (and time invested to cultivate
them) with local community leaders, education ministries, and other NGO partners enable PEPY to share its ideas and

6. learn from others’ challenges and triumphs. In Kralanh district, a committed group of passionate Khmer leaders, whom
PEPY has invested in through education scholarships and training, now helm projects and are more empowered than
before to improve their communities. Financially, PEPY enjoys strong backing from—among many others—a core group
of dedicated donors who believe in the organization’s aims and methods. And again on the for-profit side, PEPY Tours is
further enabled to share ideas and transform travelers’ perceptions through growing international recognition (National
Geographic & Ashoka Changemakers Award [2009], Lonely Planet listings, Wild Asia Responsible Tourism Award
Finalist [2010: winner to be declared next month], and so forth). All these factors, together with the Khmer staff and
foreign interns who work each day to improve their organization, enable PEPY learn, grow, and share its message.
Additionally, the PEPY board is comprised of six members, all of whom all live in, have lived in, or have made
multiple visits to Cambodia. These individuals assist the NGO’s decision-making process with regard to significant
organizational changes and long-term strategic planning.
Lessons Learned
As its development programs underwent a metamorphosis during PEPY’s first four years, changing from product-
focused to process-driven, so has PEPY Tours. It started as a "voluntourism" operator, giving people the chance to give
back to the places they were visiting. At the time, PEPY equated "giving back" to physically helping projects here in
Cambodia during a short-term traveler's stay. PEPY now realizes that the way travelers can contribute most when
traveling is to learn, as we have to learn before we can help. By learning, by getting informed about injustices, by getting
passionate about the causes and ideas encountered on our trips, participants are fueled with the ability to go out and do the
"helping" once they leave. Rather than focusing their "giving back" to the ten days a year they travel, participants can
focus their efforts on the 355 other days of the year, using the days they travel in Cambodia as a way to learn about
responsible giving, sustainable travel, and issues facing development programs around the world.
At PEPY Tours, the aim is to create changes in the way people give, travel, and live after they leave, and inspire
participants to go out and do their own-world changing from there.
PEPY is still here because it started something with a myopic view of change. Through trial, error, and honest
reflection, PEPY has found that, although changes in attitudes and actions in people take longer to build than buildings,
the results are longer lasting.
There is a theme running through PEPY programs now, which was not there at the start. Rather than swooping in
with big ideas, PEPY tries to listen harder and empower local leaders to be the final decision makers in how they want
their communities to change. PEPY’s previous dialog, if distilled to one idea, might have looked like someone yelling out
into the world, “WE HAVE A GREAT IDEA
FOR YOU! Will you let us help you?” Now,
its image would look more like a librarian,
taking notes of people’s needs and desires and
helping to connect them to the ideas and
resources they need to solve the problems and
questions they have identified. PEPY’s
conversation would be, “What are YOUR
goals? What do YOU want to change in your
world? How can we help YOU achieve that?”
This theme runs through PEPY’s child-
education programs, where children self-
identify the areas they want to change in their
communities; its school support committee
partnerships, where its contribution is to add
ideas and connections to the school
development plan the committee lays out; and
its approach to HR management with its staff,
where PEPY prioritizes helping each member of the team achieve THEIR goals in life. If members of the PEPY team are
each working to become the best version of themselves and achieving their own personal goals, the whole organization
will be better able to achieve its group goals of increasing access to quality education in rural Cambodia.