Journeys Within Our Community (JWOC)
Web site: www.journeyswithinourcommunity.org
When Brandon and Andrea first came to Cambodia, it was easy to get involved helping the local community. There was definitely no shortage of need, and Brandon and Andrea immediately started offering the “Give and Take Tour,” a way for guests to visit Cambodia and see the highlights, but also spend a week volunteering at a local school.
The success of this program, along with the requests of a growing number of guests who were looking for ways to help, led to the formation of Journeys Within Our Community, a registered 501c3 in California and a registered non-profit in Cambodia. The slogan for JWOC was “See a Problem, Solve a Problem.” The idea was that Andrea, Brandon, and John Walsh, the first JWOC director, were in Cambodia seeing the issues the local communities were facing and finding ways to solve them.
Guests and travelers immediately took up the call and started donating water wells, one of the first JWOC projects. A language school followed and then, thanks to Walsh, our unique scholarship program was born. The final projects of the microloan program and the Village Venture Fund have really rounded out this amazing organization that empowers local people and gives them chances to better their own lives. With the successes in Cambodia, JWOC is now running projects in Laos and Myanmar and getting guests involved in many ways to help drive the success of the projects. Camilla McArthur and Andrew Piner, the current managing directors, and Nicole Long, the Laos community director, work tirelessly to make sure that JWOC runs with an incredibly low operating budget, while still keeping incredibly high standards.