Offways

We know that transport is polluting in an excessive way, we know that more and more people want to reduce and offset their trips, we know that a better agriculture can absorb CO2.

Is it possible to build a solution that will reduce the C02 of transport while improving the agriculture on earth? And why do that? 

We've built a price comparison website for bus - trains - flights tickets that helps travelers to understand, reduce and offset their carbon footprint. We gather thousand of people, thousands of dollars around one cause : reduce the amount of CO2.

Then, how to maximize the impact of our offset process?

We believe that methods such as agroforestry or fruit trees have the best impact. They suck carbon, protect the land from aridity, flooding or erosion, protect the villagers, secure food, give joy, work and shadow. We plant the trees in poor areas.

Millions of farmers in the third world countries don't have access to the same knowledge that we have, don't have access to credits or don't have the human ressources to shift to an agriculture that preserve their land. 

On the other side, thousand of villagers are constantly looking for work and are facing migration when the land become so aride that nothing would grow.

Also, climate change will affect first the populations of the third world countries. And the western countries are much more responsible about it. The more we consume, the less we give a chance to the populations affected by climate change. Therefore it is primordial to educate rich countries about their impact.  

Offways is a price comparison website for bus - trains - flight tickets focused on eco-tourism. We educate travelers about their carbon footprint and we empower them to reduce and offset it. 

We use 80% of our benefits and 100% of our users donations to plant trees where the earth needs them the most. In order to have the highest impact, we decided to work with farmers and help them for free to shift to Agroforestry. It's really easy, we plant different native species in and around their field by employing local communities. 

The trees, often fruit ones, create a cascade of positive elements. It gives knowledge to the village, improve their resilience, improve the quality of the soil, protect it from erosion, flooding, aridity. Bring back biodiversity which also brings a cascade of positive elements. 

We use the newest (somehow oldest) methods : Agroforestry, Afforestation, Assisted natural regeneration and more.

We target any region in the world that need more agriculture resilience and haven't the money nor ressources to do it. 

We target any village in the world that risk to migrate if their fields came to dry up. 

We target any person willing to travel in the least polluting way and that want to improve human conditions earth. 

We have enrolled local people that are trees in agriculture experts. They will be in charge to help villagers and farmers. We believe the local peoples better understand their own needs more than anyone. Our experts are native, benevolent and are in charge of the execution and reports.

Again our solution allows farmers to shift to a more resilient agriculture, have better soils, more money thanks to the fruits and so on. It cost them 0€ 

The problems we see are twofold.
One directly concerne the challenge :
Agriculture in third world countries is facing many threats : aridity, erosion, flooding. Those threats, if not taken care of will bring more problems, migration, starvation, war and more. 
Our solution in one sentence is : we bring sustainable resilience to farmers most affected by global warming.

The second one indirectly concern the challenge. We help people travel less, closer, better. By doing that we reduce the emission of CO2, educate people. Therefore, (it is indeed minime) our solution will lower the impact climate change has on those farmers.

To tackle climate change, we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere and at the same time avoid putting it into it. 

Our solution helps Western countries to emit less and at the same have an impact on third world countries that will absorb more.

Our solution is really innovative because it's helping the rich countries and the poor one at the same time. We connect those two to create a positive loop. There's only benefits as it cost nothing to the farmers and nothing or almost nothing to the travelers.

We are developing a meta-search engine that implements APIs using the New Distribution Capabilities. We've join that meta-search with an algorithm that precisely calculates the carbon footprint of each trip. 

In parallele, each trip is connected to an agroforestry project. Approximately every 100 trips made by our customers, we transform 1 hectare into agroforestry.

Our solution is feasible and rely on the connection of different actors that want to fight climate change. 

Our solution is like Skyscanner. You just need to add an algorithm that calculates the carbon footprint, give 80% of your benefits, empower and incentive people to make a donation, convince people to travel more by train, and connect your company to thousand of projects.

We're into a new technology that is called NDC. But it's already working well.

Our theory of change is twofold : 
- People travelling will better understand their carbon footprint and will travel less, closer, better.

- Farmers will benefits from experts and free workforce to make their field more resilient and more productive. 

We are currently serving 500 people.
We've planted 700 trees.

Next year we will serve 20,000 travelers and help 2000 farmers.

In five years we hope to serve 10 million travelers per year and create 100,000 hectares of agroforestry.

Our ambition is to become the number one platform of ecotourism. We also want to connect people with the reality of the lives in third world countries. 

We also want to develop new programs with the local communities, help them to share their knowledge around them and thus replicate the models. 

Our ambition is to discover new agricultural methods, gather the ones that already exist and share the knowledge to a maximum of farmers, communities, etc. 

The technical barriers are a bit high but feasible. 

To avoid any cultural barrier, we employ locals experts on agroforestry who convince farmers to be part of our programs. They are in charge of execution and they report to us.

Then we have to do a great promotion campaign to have travelers booking on our platform in order to have money to the farmers.

We are 10 people working full time.

The CEO is an expert on cleentech mobility and tourism. 

We've got a team of 6 senior developers with + 10 years of experience. 

We have advisors around us that work for the UN, travel sites, impact ventures, in agriculture etc. 

30 airlines,

All big travel agencies,

20 Bus - Trains companies.

Then we have partnered with Edenprojects.org and we're in the process to work with 5 more NGOs.

We earn money every time a person travel with us. We give 80% of our benefits to trees in agriculture.

Solve can bring visibility, partners, ideas and experience to our solution.

In order to have the maximum impact we need to convince the maximum travelers to switch to Offways when they need to buy plane bus or trains tickets. Again, our role is to help those travelers to travel less, closer, better.

Solve can connect us to the best NGOs around the world and maximize our impact. In order to replicate the impact model, we will need advisors.

We want to partner with NGOs to have the maximum impact. 

We also want to partner with as many companies as possible to allow them to reduce their carbon footprint when their employees or customers travel while having a positive impact on the other side of the globe.

We want to partner with other king of companies that can add something into the ecosystem we're trying to create.

Any NGOs Solve works with.

Any companies who have a connection with MIT and directly MIT.

They can be users and customers. They will be able to travel at a lower carbon footprint and help thousands of farmers improve the resilience of their fields.

They can also bring ideas to maximize our impact.