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Introducing Bewelcome

BeWelcome is a http://www.bewelcome.org/faq#question10 hospitality exchange and culture exchange network. Many members in BeWelcome offer a place to stay overnight to traveling or visiting members, or offer to meet-up and show them around their city or region. Free of charge. Bewelcome aims at creating more real social connections in the world and to create deeper cultural understanding.

BeWelcome was founded and is managed by a team of volunteer from all over the world. Their dream is to create a project that allows everyone to visit a destination through the eyes of local people and to experience the variety of cultures in everyday life - when travelling but also at home.

BeWelcome Members

The reason why the BeWelcome members open up their homes to other members, may vary, but generally members offer a place to stay because they want to support travelers, they would like to gain a deeper insight into other cultures, they like to show people around in their city or they simply like to meet new people and make friends; have them over for dinner and enjoy a good evening talk. Other reasons for people to be a member of BeWelcome include:

• to meet interesting, open minded people
• to meet locals and to gain an insider view
• to save money through the offer of free accommodation
• the wish for flexibility and freedom of choice when travelling
• to get contacts, pursue effective networking
• to improve language skills

For more information why members join, please refer to our http://www.bewelcome.org/faq#question10 Frequently Asked Questions.

How secure is BeWelcome

Often new members ask themselves, how secure is BeWelcome? What could happen if I invite 'strangers' into my home? Although BeWelcome is not able to offer complete security, we did however implement a number of features to help increasing security.

1. Detailed profiles. Members are invited to fill in their details as completely as possible in their profile-page, with pictures and profile-information.
2. Comments. Members are able to leave a comment on other members' profile pages after having met to let the community know how the experience went.
3. Verification. In the near future BeWelcome will provide a system of name and address verification, a secure system for member-verification. If verified, members can be assured that the actual member they write to is who he or she claims to be, and actually lives on the address s/he provides. This system is currently in beta-stage.
4. A Safety Team is in place to prevent abuse, to make sure that rules are complied with and to take further steps if they are not.

How BeWelcome is Organised

BeWelcome was founded by former volunteers of Hospitality Club, another hospitality exchange network and were later joined by ex-volunteers of Couchsurfing, yet another network. These volunteers share the vision of a network that is based on principles of transparency, openness and horizontality. BeWelcome is not in competition with these other networks but sees itself part of a larger hospitality movement, where different organisations may have different priorities.

BeWelcome is run by the organisation BeVolunteer, which is a registered non-profit organisation in France. BeVolunteer is thus the legal organisation behind the BeWelcome project. BeVolunteer is a volunteer-run organisation, with yearly elections for the Board of Directors. It offers the members different possibilities to take part in shaping the organisation and networks. In principle all members of BeWelcome can also become a member of BeVolunteer, whose members have voting-power and can also apply to be in the Board of Directors.

The software that is used to run BeWelcome is open source software, or free software. This means anyone is able to have a look at the source code and submit changes. The software is released under a GPL license. BeWelcome is the first non-profit hospitality network based entirely on open source software.

BeWelcome Facts and Figures

• February 2007: Launch BeWelcome as first non-profit open source hospitality network
• August 2007: 1,000 members
• October 2008: 5,000 members
• July 2009: 7,000 members
• October 2010: 9,700 members - and growing!

For up to date statistics please check here.

Contact a BeWelcome Member

We have several members you can contact to ask questions about using BeWelcome. Please feel free to sign up and contact members yourself or to leave a message on the forum. However, we also have a pool of volunteers in different countries who are happy to share with you their experiences. You can also speak to one of the BeVolunteer volunteers or members of the Board.

• For more information please contact media@bewelcome.org