Encountour is a social enterprise that organizes volunteer travel opportunities for college students. We are on an unyielding mission for positive social change.
We run eight-day Naked Travel trips over winter, spring, and summer school term breaks to Guatemala and Costa Rica.
Encountour works with nonprofits to integrate our volunteer groups into impactful, locally driven projects that address community problems with resourceful, multifaceted approaches. Volunteers work in the areas of homebuilding, community development, children's health, environmental conservation, and wildlife preservation.
Everyone who works to change the world has a means; ours is Naked Travel.
Naked Travel is travel that is unfiltered and unadulterated; simple, bare and pure. It is exploring the world with an open mind and an attitude one embraces as he or she enters into another culture. Naked Travel is an action and it is an idea; it is the act of international volunteer travel and it is the belief that exposure can change perspectives; and changed perspectives can change the world.
Before action, there must be understanding. And so our trips abroad are naked: naked of the barriers between peoples and cultures; naked of touristic adornment; naked of imposed stereotypes; naked of all that is not inherent in a country's unique reality.
Volunteers are fully engaged with the community or environment in which they work, fully exposed to the realities they encounter, and fully clothed throughout the entire experience...
Encountour has a growing community of compassionate and worldly individuals thanks to our Student Outreach Directors and Executive Board Members: dedicated college students who promote Naked Travel opportunities on their campus.
Encountour Incentive Programs for Student Outreach Directors and Student Executive Board Members.
Student Outreach Directors drive the Naked Travel campaign on their campus by promoting awareness and building a group of engaged community members; keeping them informed and excited about volunteering, traveling, and first-hand cultural learning through the management of an organized student executive board. The Student Outreach Director is a professional position. The job is challenging and rewarding, and demands commitment, enthusiasm, and tenacity. Please see the Official Student Outreach Director Duties and Responsibilities.
The Encountour Student Executive Board is made of a few select and impassioned students, who work together under the guidance of the Student Outreach Director to get as many undergraduates as possible involved in international travel. Together, they maintain an active, efficient, and driven student organization with a focus on international exposure. Please see the Official Executive Board Member Duties and Responsibilities.
Getting involved with Encountour and Naked Travel is more than a one-time experience; it's becoming a part of the ongoing and growing movement to expose college students all over the country to international travel. Encountour hosts the trips, but the movement belongs entirely to college students...own it.