PEPY invests time and resources in people, because we believe that improving education, providing training, and stimulating ideas builds capacity for people to better solve their own problems. We have been on a journey, quite literally, beginning with our first fundraising cycle trip through Cambodia, which has led us to fully appreciate what a “people-focused” approach to development might look like.

We arrived in Cambodia in 2005 with a lot of enthusiasm, but also a lot of naïve and incorrect ideas. We thought we could help people by giving them things that they needed and improve education by building schools. We came to a new place we knew very little about with our own ideas about education and change. We have since realized that schools don’t teach kids, people do; things don’t change lives, people knowing how to use them or make them does; and that we had not arrived to teach, but instead to learn and support the development of those who have the capacity to teach, even long after we leave.

PEPY, "Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself", is a belief rooted in the environmental education lessons of the first PEPY Ride trip. If you “Protect the Earth”, in effect, you also “Protect Yourself”. Our programs have expanded beyond environmental education with a focus now on Khmer literacy and broader improvements in the quality of education offered in government schools in rural Cambodia. 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 then the world.  

Today PEPY is both an international non-governmental organization 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 travel.

Since starting PEPY, we have learned a great deal about how to make our programs more sustainable (and here!) and gathered a passionate team oflocal leaders to manage and develop our programs. Reflecting on the lessons we have learned and shared, we are excited about where we are today, and even more excited about where we are going!

And we are always looking to learn more, so please read up on what we are doing, connect us to people and resources you think we could learn from, and share your ideas with us!  We are grateful to have many mentors and advisers who have helped us develop and improve our efforts over the years. We welcome you to share your experiences and ideas with us as a “friend” of PEPY, join us as a trip participant, and support the work we do as a donor or sponsor.

We hope that you choose to become part of the PEPY Team!