Newsletter

Dear %anonymous%,

Did you know that:

• the BeWelcome website is available in 41 different languages, Thai being the latest addition?
• you can find hosts even in very “exotic” places like the US Virgin Islands and French Polynesia?

Here is the news of what has been happening on BeWelcome during the past few months.

BeWelcome Events

French BeWelcomers are great organizers. Marseille is now the third French city to organise an international gathering. The “In cod we trust” or “Seek the Sardines” event will take place the first weekend in October. It will be days full of joy and great encounters with more or less crazy travellers. So pack your toothbrush, head to the Mediterranean coast and join in – it is going to be BIIIIG fun!

For the 5th time, the BeWelcomers of Toulouse in the south of France organized the Seek the Duck weekend on May 20th to 22nd. About 30 BeWelcome members gathered to party for the so-called Fête du canard (Duck Fest). You could hear the quack-quacks all weekend long! Locals and travelers shared amazing moments around different activities. The local community is waiting for you to share these good times again next year!

For the first time the BeWelcome community of the beautiful World Cultural Heritage city of Lyon organized an eventful and unforgettable weekend called Seek the Pig at the beginning of April … Discovery walks, a grunting competition, outdoor games, a picnic in the park – about 25 BeWelcome members had the luck to experience the hospitality of the Lyonnais. And yes – they were inspired by “Seek the Duck” as are the Marseillais…

How about you getting inspired as well and start organizing a BeWelcome weekend? Please do not hesitate and start planning your own event. If you have a good location get in touch with the Communication team to support you spreading the word. If you have questions regarding the organization of a BeWelcome event the experienced organizers of Seek the Duck or Seek the Pig will love to help you.

General Assembly

BeWelcome is run by an association called BeVolunteer. The law requires the members of BeVolunteer to hold a General Assembly once a year. This year it will happen the first weekend of November (November 5th + 6th) in Venice, Italy. You can check the wiki with useful infos and the activities connected to the General Assembly. Every BeWelcome member can join and attend the General Assembly if you want to meet the people who run BeWelcome and other members. Be invited!

Interview with volunteers

Everything on BeWelcome happens because somebody volunteered to do it. Most of our volunteers work silently behind the scene and you might not even have noticed who they are. We would like to change this and introduce you to some of the many active volunteers who dedicate their time and effort to BeWelcome – please read up on the interesting and very personal interviews with our volunteers:

• mountx from the Forum Moderators Team
• Jesus82 from the Redesign Team
• ivers0n from the Translation Team
• Fhina from the New Member BeWelcome, Support and Safety Teams
• samuele from the Support and New Member BeWelcome Teams
• conrado888 from the Support, Translation and New Member BeWelcome Teams
• artep from the New Member BeWelcome Team

If you are looking for more responsibility and a challenge you are welcome to volunteer for tasks within BeWelcome and to join BeVolunteer, the non-profit association which administrates BeWelcome. Find out more on the BeVolunteer website.

Redesign is on its way

During the past year, a handful of volunteers started redesigning the website. One of the goals of redesigning the website is to make it more accessible on mobile devices. We also expect the website to load a lot faster. It was extremely difficult to change the design completely, because the code had been rearranged and altered by many different people over the last nine years. In order to come up with a new design, our code needed a big clean-up.

Some parts of the new design are more or less finished, but we still need to recode and redesign the rest of the website to get a full working version on bewelcome.org. In the next weeks and months there will be a lot of testing and we hope to present the new design at the end of this year or the beginning of next year to all members. If you are interested in testing the future website of BeWelcome please get in touch with amnesiac84.

Get active and update your profile

• Complete and update your profile: Would you like to meet other BeWelcome members? If so, you should provide them with a first impression by adding a profile picture and filling out your profile.
• Invite friends to BeWelcome. Write a comment for them, so they can be trusted by other members of the community.
• Social Media: you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
• Join or start a BeWelcome group: If no group for your region or interests currently exist on BeWelcome, you can create one.

Wishing you happy travels and enriching encounters,
The BeWelcome Volunteers

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