Our Story
NuMundo was birthed in April 2013 by co-founders David Casey, Erika Logie, Shayna Gladstone, and Jennifer Schmidt. They shared a vision of a network of interlinked “impact centers”. Impact Centers are land based projects that offers individual transformation, regenerative living education and strive to leave a positive local impact. An impact center could be an ecovillage, organic farm, yoga retreat center, or even a hostel, as long as they meet this criteria.
NuMundo arose out of a need for better access to information and resources for both travelers and centers. The founder and visionary, David Casey, spent four years traveling to centers in Latin America and realized that there was no centralized channel for people to obtain trustworthy information about these locations and experiences. Over the years, hundreds of people asked him for advice on which places to go, and he understood the clear demand for the NuMundo platform.
David, Erika and Shayna had all helped to run impact centers in the United States and Latin America, and had themselves experienced the challenge of promoting the transformational experiences offered at these centers. They were determined to support these projects by making them more visible and connected through modern web technologies.
NuMundo released the first alpha version of an online platform in December of 2014, which was built using Drupal. We started as a simple directory and have continuously been developing features and strengthening our network, evolving into a booking tool for accommodation, work-trade positions, events, and other experiences at these centers. Our goal is not only to facilitate the experience of educational and transformational travel, but to also support centers by attracting talent and generating resources which will help them increase their local impact.
Click here to watch a video of our humble beginnings!
In 2015, NuMundo was accepted into Startup Chile, a startup accelerator program based in Santiago, Chile. We were given a grant from the Chilean government for $30,000, which enabled us to rebuild the platform using more modern web technologies and create a completely custom interface. During this time, we were fortunate to meet Lukas Sommer, who became our tech lead and technical co-founder. The NuMundo team spent 6 months in Chile, working with local communities, impact centers and projects. We launched a beta version of our platform in June 2015.
After Startup Chile, we created a Crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in the Fall of 2015. The money that we raised from our crowdfunding campaign enabled us to host a work retreat at Finca Morpho in Costa Rica in March of 2016. During our work retreat, we built a booking tool to enable travelers to directly book retreats, work trades, volunteer opportunities, and accommodation through the platform. We launched this feature in June of 2016.
Today, we are still keeping the dream alive, working on new features to better serve our network of Impact Centers, event facilitators, and travelers. If you would like to give us feedback on which features you would like to see on the platform, please offer your input on our Trello board.