Rootz Travel

My name is Adam Stieglitz. I am a founder of the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development (AASD) and PhD candidate at the University of Louisville. The mission of the AASD is to harness collective intelligence to support community led development in the highlands of Peru. Since 2010, I have been living, working, and doing research in the Andean region of Peru. My development philosophy is that social change, regardless of the specific issue or challenge, must come from the bottom up. My role as a practitioner is to help facilitate this process by connecting marginalized communities with actors and resources that allows for community members to be informed about their challenge and empowered to own and conquer whatever that issue might be.

Indigenous communities are slowly disappearing in the Peruvian Andes. Indigenous youth are turning their backs on a lifestyle grounded in sustainability, community, and environmental friendliness in exchange for well-paying jobs in urban areas. As these communities disappear, so does their rich culture and indigenous knowledge. 

There are two core reasons this problem exists: economic disparity and a social stigma associated with being indigenous. This project addresses both of these issues by connecting rural communities with socially conscious travelers who are in search of a culturally rich, off-the-beaten-path travel experience. Think of this project as the AirBnB for rural tourism. 

Unfair wages, lack of market access, and low self-esteem exist at the core of most social challenges across the globe. This project will elevate humanity because it is an easily scalable approach to address the most pressing and widespread global challenges.

Each year, over 4 million tourists travel to Cusco, Peru to visit the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. Tourism has recently surpassed farming and mining to become Cusco’s primary economic driver. Problematically, wealth generated from tourism rarely trickles down to surrounding indigenous communities. In fact, according to the National Department of Economy and Finances, four of the ten poorest districts in the country exist just outside the thriving city capital of Cusco. These communities are at a social and economic disadvantage due to unemployment, lack of market access, and an overall stigma associated with being indigenous. Sadly, these communities are beginning to disappear as youth leave their homes in search of better jobs in urban areas.  

Many indigenous communities believe tourism could help break the cycle of poverty. Unfortunately, major travel agencies see this as a threat because they use indigenous communities to increase profits. They promote expensive tour packages for tourists to see “the real Peru”, and bring them to indigenous communities to hike, visit cultural heritage sites, and camp. Little to none of the revenue gets reinvested in the communities. This behavior exploits indigenous lifestyle and creates a barrier for indigenous community members to enter the tourist market.

Rootz Travel connects rural community members interested in hosting tourists with adventurous travelers looking for an authentic travel experience. The framework for this project builds off the AirBnB Direct-to-User business model. Similar to how home owners use AirBnB to offer visitors their home, in this project rural community members offer a unique travel experience to tourists. These experiences might include a day-long cultural excursion where locals show tourists how they fish to provide food for their family or learn how to dye and weave textiles. More adventurous travelers might select a multi-day, fully immersive excursion where they live with a local family, share meals, and experience life in a different culture. All of these experiences are housed on a website/app where tourists can search and select based on price, experience, location, etc. Host communities determine the cost of the experience and earn nearly all profits. My organization, the AASD, will coordinate logistics such as transportation and language, as well as ensure health and sanitation standards. This project creates an entirely new stream of revenue for rural and/or indigenous communities, which leads to various social and economic benefits.

This project was designed with indigenous Andean communities in mind. Located between 10,000 - 15,000 feet above sea level, most of these communities maintain a traditional agrarian lifestyle. They are largely limited to potato cultivation because of the high altitude and harsh climate. Selling potatoes is their principle form of income and it is not very lucrative. I have been building relationships and working directly with people from these communities for the past ten years. To understand their needs I simply spend time in the community, which often leads to meaningful dialogue regarding the challenges they face. Their greatest challenge is a lack of market access and insufficient income. I have been partnering with community members on development projects for many years. The best way to engage them is to give them ownership of the project’s design and implementation. The AASD has seen this approach lead to long-term success and sustainability. This project will create new economic opportunities for indigenous community members to reinvestment in the health and well being of their family and community. Additionally, it is an opportunity for locals to show off the beauty of indigenous culture, where tourists can learn from and experience local, indigenous practices. 

In Peru there is a stigma associated with being a rural, indigenous farmer. Their agrarian, traditional lifestyle has left them socially and geographically marginalized as modern day national policies promote a western capitalist agenda. Ironically, indigenous communities live the most sustainable and ecologically friendly lifestyle. Regardless, indigenous youth are leaving their communities and traditions behind in search of high paying jobs in urban areas. A major goal of this project is to elevate the pride and self-esteem of indigenous communities in the Andes, while simultaneously increasing access to basic human rights such as health, education, and fair wage.

Over the past ten years, my colleague and I have been living in Peru as we started our non profit organization, the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development. During that time, we traveled to the most rural and under-explored regions of South America. However, as directors of a non-profit organization, we were forced to travel on a limited budget. For most that is a limitation; for us it was an opportunity to create unique adventures and travel experiences. This led to connecting with locals who would lodge and cook for us, as well as show us the hidden areas within their community and teach us about their day-to-day lifestyle. They commonly expressed their dream to host tourists, however they didn’t have the resources or connections to reach travelers. 

Each year the AASD hosts dozens of students and visitors; many of which are looking for unique adventures. I began to connect them with my favorite hosts and the experience always turned out to be the highlight of their trip. Based on that feedback, we wanted to formalize these win-win type experiences, thus came up with the idea for Rootz Travel. 

I have been working with indigenous communities in this region for a decade. Over and over farmers have expressed interest in benefiting from tourism, but until now they have not had the tools or opportunity to enter that market. If anything, they take low-paying jobs with tour agencies where they leave their families for days or weeks at a time to carry tourists' food and tents as they hike along the Inca Trail. In this situation they are lucky to make $10 per day.  

I understand the plight of farmers and have seen first hand how difficult it is to support their families. Additionally, I know how beautiful indigenous culture is and believe there is so much for westerners to learn from indigenous culture. It is a travesty how local community members are taken advantage of and marginalized from one of the most popular tourist destinations in South America. They may not have high levels of formal education, but they have the passion and dedication to create amazing experiences for tourists. I believe this project will bring a new dimension of economic well being and cultural preservation to a group in need of new opportunity.

I am in a unique position to deliver this project because of my sound understanding of both community and tourist perspectives. With respect to my ability to represent community resident needs, my greatest assets are the relationships I have built with local communities over the past ten years. These relationships include people who are ready to participate in this project, as well as others who have expressed interest. I understand the intricacies of the traditional lifestyle here and know first hand the value of being exposed to a new culture, especially compared to more western perspectives. Finally, I speak the local language and have a local staff who are ready to assume a position in the project. With respect to my ability to represent the travelers’ perspective, I am the type of traveler that would participate in this project. That means I have sound insight into what would be appealing from a programmatic, logistical, marketing, and cost-based perspective. Ultimately, my greatest strength would be recruiting project participants from both sides and making this project a seamless reality.

My colleague and I founded the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development while we were Masters students in 2010. After graduating, we moved to Peru with whatever was leftover from our student loans and committed to growing our organization. For the first five years we made an average of $8,000 per year in salary. While that is barely a livable wage, it forced us to take a patient approach to creating our programs, and more than anything, focus on relationship building rather than project implementation. Spending countless days in local communities afforded us the opportunity to create real, trust-based relationships with the community members we would eventually partner with. We constantly discussed the real challenges they were facing in their community, and we were able to respond by leveraging funders, universities and local governments to facilitate projects that were both impactful and sustainable. For most non-profit organizations, not having money to spend on development projects would have been a recipe for failure; however, we turned that situation into an opportunity. Now, ten years later, the AASD is a successful social enterprise that works with dozens of indigenous communities and continues to stay true to our community-led, relationship-based approach.

I live in Sacclio, a small farming community in Peru. Recently, Sacclio started experiencing issues related to water scarcity due to climate change and an eroding canal system. As part of my PhD research, I bridged a partnership between Sacclio, the AASD, and the J.B. Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville to help address this challenge. Over the course of two years, using drones and GIS technology, we mapped the community and its whole canal system. I led university students to Peru to collect data on the irrigation system, such as percentage of water loss, major damage points, and demographic information such as the canal’s distance, width, and material. Now, as a result of that partnership, the community is working with the local municipality and engineers to repair the canal system. The use of GIS technology is proving to be a very useful tool in the Andes, so much so that I plan on scaling this project out with other universities and other communities that face similar challenges.

In the world of international development, organizations often seek a one-size-fits-all approach to the world’s most complex challenges. From what I have seen, this does not work. Every community is different and therefore faces unique challenges. For development to be successful, i.e., sustainable and community led, both the challenge and the solution needs to come from the community itself. The AASD has taken this community-driven, relationship-based approach from the beginning, and it has led to positive results and impact where we work. 

I have spent a decade as a field-based development practitioner and have a masters degree in international development and public administration. I have spent countless hours in the most rural communities, participating in conferences, and partnering with universities. One of my biggest takeaways is that regardless of a community’s unique challenge, at its core lies unfair wages and low income. 

At first I considered proposing the AASD’s bottom up approach to development for this award, but its replicability presented too many issues. As I looked more closely at the application, I thought perhaps Rootz Travel, a shoot-for-the-moon vision that my colleague and I have been talking about informally for years, made the most sense. The project we are proposing is innovative because it is actually an easily scalable, one-size-fits-all approach to address perhaps the world’s greatest challenges as they relate to income disparity, human rights, and cultural preservation.

The principal goals of this project are increased income for marginalized, indigenous community members and a newfound sense of pride in their indigenous culture. The primary activity to achieving both of these goals is connecting indigenous community members with tourists. This will lead to two primary outputs. 

First, community members will see an increase in income. In 2018, according to the Peruvian National Institute of Statistics and Information, indigenous farmers in the Cusco region earned on average less than $5 per day. Community members who participate in this project can earn at least $30-$100 per day. The second major output from connecting tourists with indigenous community members is an increased sense of indigenous pride. Currently, there is a widely shared belief amongst indigenous community members that a farm-based, traditional lifestyle is not worthy of being revered. Consequently, youth populations are leaving the community in search of modern day, capitalist-driven jobs. Tourists paying good money to experience the traditional Inca lifestyle - whether it be textile workshops, spending the day harvesting crops, or Andean cooking workshops - not only leads to an increase in income, but also gives indigenous farmers a reason to be proud of their culture. 

Increased income and pride will lead to life-changing outcomes for indigenous communities. Increased income will lead to various social improvements, such as improved housing and community-based infrastructure, increased levels of malnutrition, access to transportation, access to new markets, improved education, and the ability to reinvest in the services they offer through rural tourism. Additionally, an increased sense of pride will reinforce the importance of traditional practices that are currently being left behind, such as speaking Quechua and growing food using traditional organic practices. 

Finally, an increase in income and newfound sense of cultural pride might be enough to stop the extreme levels of rural to urban migration these communities are currently facing and preserve the existence of these impressive, indigenous communities in the Andes.

Although the AASD partners with over 500 farmers, since this project is a new idea, there are only approximately 12 people we have begun planning with. However, within one year there will be 30-50 people participating in this project. Within 5 years, it is reasonable to expect after an international scale out this project will serve 300-500 people directly. Given those numbers, the amount of people that will be affected indirectly will be in the thousands since this project affects not only the direct beneficiaries, but also the communities where they live. 

My goal is to continue working with and for indigenous communities to help them advance towards achieving the development goals they set for themselves. After years worth of discussions with countless community members, now I recognize that ultimately what people want is to earn a stable living and provide quality health, nutrition, housing, and education for their families. The primary skill of indigenous community members in the Andes is farming, hence selling their crops in local markets is their main source of income. However, this does not provide enough money to meet their needs and contributes to high levels of poverty. Local indigenous communities are desperate for a new form of income, and tourism makes the most sense. It is my goal to connect community members with this market.

In the long run, my goal is to contribute to the reversal of rural-urban migration in the Andes, as well as communities all over the world. These communities are not rich economically, however they are rich in other important ways, such as traditional culture and sustainable livelihood. This deserves to be preserved. Unfortunately, capitalism has taken over ancestral practices and now they are at risk of disappearing. As a global community we can learn a lot from indigenous knowledge, thus I see it as part of my responsibility to expose people from western society to that brilliance. Although this project might seem solely like a business, it inherently has the opportunity to change many people’s lives and cultures for the better.

There are three primary barriers to getting this project off the ground in the short term: technology, marketing, and funding. Technological barriers include the actual software design for the [insert project name]. For this project to be successful, we need to create a user friendly platform that can be accessed on people’s phones or computers. Once software is created, the next barrier involves reaching a target audience to use the service. In this case, the target audience will be young- to middle-aged travelers interested in rural tourism, and gaining initial momentum in attracting customers will be a small challenge. Finally, initial funding will be necessary to support each step of the process, including building the software, executing a marketing plan, travel to communities to coordinate with initial community partners, staff, and overhead. In the long-run, the greatest barrier I foresee is finding the right relationships and partners in other countries when scaling out the model. 

In one word, the way to overcome these barriers is through partnerships. To build out the technology we plan on leveraging our university partnerships, such as the Stanford Business School, to connect with businesses in the Silicon Valley that would support this idea. For marketing purposes, we will connect with travel books, magazines, and agencies to promote this socially driven-model of adventure tourism. This might include television or print advertising. To raise seed funding, the AASD will leverage the relationships with funders we have built over the past ten years. This includes support from personal donors and foundations. It is standard in this field that funding is provided with a match, so if the AASD can contribute a certain amount of money I feel confident that can be doubled by bringing in our existing funding partnerships. With respect to scaling the project out to other regions of the world, the first step would be to partner with local non-profit organizations that take a responsible and relationship-based approach to social impact. With those strong relationships, I am confident we can expose ourselves to other communities that are already offering rural tourism opportunities, yet are hindered by a lack of access to the tourist market.

The AASD currently has three types of partnerships: public, private, and university. The AASD has a unique relationship with each of our partners. With respect to the public sector, we partner with the regional and district level municipalities in Peru. Specifically, we provide capacity building workshops and certain resources for supporting local development projects, such as greenhouse construction or workshops in agroecology and sustainable farming. In the private sector, the AASD partners with foundations that support grassroots non profit organizations. The primary foundations we partner with are the Swift Foundation, IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, Project Redwood, New England Biolabs, and AMB. These foundations support the AASD’s projects in various ways, although primarily through grants. When the AASD implements grant-funded projects we are constantly in communication with our funders and implement monitoring and evaluation methods to measure project success. Finally, perhaps the strongest type of partnership the AASD has is with Universities. Our major university partners are the University of Vermont, University of Louisville, St. Thomas University, University of Rhode Island, Middlebury College, and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The AASD partners with these universities in various ways including research endeavors related to development in this region, co-designing faculty led programs, hosting student interns, and semester-long student programs in Peru.

Currently, major tour agencies take advantage of indigenous communities by charging exorbitant amounts of money for rural tourism opportunities and do not fairly compensate or reinvest their profits in the community. This project provides a service that bi-passes third party tour providers and connects tourists directly with rural, indigenous community members who are interested in offering authentic travel opportunities for tourists. Bridging rural communities with tourists will lead to various types of social impact, including but not limited to a newfound economic opportunity where rural community members can earn an above-fair wage. 

This service will be provided through a Direct-To-User Application where tourists connect directly with rural community members and the experience they are offering. Similar to AirBnB, each community host will design the experience they are offering and determine how much it costs. Adventurous tourists looking for a unique “off-the-beaten-path” experience can search and select from various offerings on the app based on location, price, or type of experience. The AASD will coordinate logistics such as transportation to the community, language translation (if necessary), and ensuring safety and sanitation standards. Approximately 80-90% of revenue generated from tours will go directly to the community or community host. Success will be measured by the increase in revenue, as well as social impact indicators such as changes in nutrition, education, hours of child labor, social and cultural empowerment, and overall sense of pride in the community. The remaining 10-20% of revenue generated will cover overhead costs and manage the business.

Rootz Travel is an embedded social enterprise where the AASD’s role will be a blend of market intermediary and linkage. On one hand, the AASD will provide a service through the application to help community members access and connect with tourists (and vice-a-versa). On the other hand, we are facilitating a relationship between the two, where they ultimately decide the price point of the service exchange. The revenue generating model is similar to AirBnB, where a percentage of revenue generated from each transaction goes directly to the host, i.e., the community member, and the difference goes to the AASD to cover staff, management, and overhead costs. Excess revenue from the AASD’s earnings will contribute to our organization’s other community led development projects, which aligns with our organization’s mission. 

 The AASD will cover any additional expenses related to Rootz Travel should it be necessary. The AASD has two principal paths to generating unrestricted revenue. First, the AASD charges facilitation fees for university students who come to Peru to participate in semester long, in-country experiential learning programs. On average, the AASD hosts between 30-50 students per year, so student program fees account for a substantial part of our annual revenue. The second stream of revenue is through foundational support. Recently, the AASD has received a substantial amount of money from foundations to support our projects. The AASD has built strong relationships with our foundation partners and I am confident they would be supportive of Rootz Travel.

Although the AASD is yet to pursue funding specific for Rootz Travel, the following is an account of the institutions that have supported the AASD and our social enterprise mission in 2019-20. There are three main areas of support the AASD receives foundational support: 1) Community and family greenhouse projects; 2) Accelerator training course for farmers in business and agroecology skills; 3) General support, such as administrative costs and staff salaries.

Foundations supporting Community/family greenhouse projects:

SWIFT foundation - $30,000

New England Biolabs - $10,000 

IFOAM - $10,000

Accelerator training course:

Project Redwood - $25,000

AMB - $4,000

General Support

Charles Englehart Foundation - $20,000

Project Redwood - $5,000

The AASD’s 2020 expenses are as follows:

Office rent: $6,545

Staff salary: $103,511

Community agriculture projects: $31,100

IRS taxes: $16,732

Peru taxes: $2,079

990: $550

Utilities: $600

Office fees & maintenance: $5,662

Transportation: $3,784

Conferences and Outreach: $10,000

Insurance: $6,000

Website: $550

Staff work visas/Legal: $3,000

Staff medical/dental costs: $1,000

Staff technology stipend: $2,300

TOTAL: $193,413

While the funding The Elevate Prize offers will certainly help with the development of this project, more than anything I am applying for The Elevate Prize because of the connections and network it seems to offer. For example, two of the barriers I mentioned above as it relates to this project are technology development and marketing. As a small NGO in the middle of the Peruvian mountains, these are nearly impossible feats without a strong connection in the United States. I believe The Elevate Prize could streamline this process. In addition, it seems like the team at The Elevate Prize is taking a unique approach to social change in comparison to other grants or awards. The open-mindedness of the team is apparent on the website, which makes it seem like a ‘shoot-for-the-moon’ type project might actually be appealing to the team. This is a different approach than what I traditionally see when applying for grants or awards. Somehow, the value of the AASD’s approach has always been difficult to communicate because of its simplicity. We don’t bring solutions to communities - we facilitate a process where communities define and address their own solutions, leading to sustainable projects. I believe this is the type of approach and philosophy The Elevate Prize is seeking to promote. For these reasons, I feel like this project is a perfect fit for this prize.

The AASD has grown significantly over the past ten years. While our grassroots approach has led to much success, we are now at the point where other organizations can benefit from our approach. To achieve this level of success, the AASD would benefit most from an influential board and exposure. Since we live and are located in rural Peru, one of our organizational struggles is getting the exposure we deserve. We have a board, but it is rather informal. Adding powerful, connected board members would allow us to more effectively promote our work and scale our model to achieve social change on a wider, global scale.

The two organizations that would be a perfect fit as partners on this project are National Geographic and Lonely Planet. This is because they already captivate a demographic that we have identified as our target audience for this project. National Geographic has a wide audience of travelers who have an open mind and are generally interested in the rich stories of the world’s different people and cultures. Lonely Planet is a travel guide book that adventurous travelers follow during their travels. I believe both organizations would support the social component of Rootz Travel and would be excited about using their platform to promote Rootz Travel to their clientele.