Off Bound Adventures (OBA) is a Colombian Outdoor Education Company, which organizes and executes educational trips for students from elementary and high schools. The trips occur in rural, non-urban, initially Colombian locations, and increasingly in other developing countries through Envoys, OBA’s US-based sister company. The combined OBA + Envoys operation provides income generation opportunities for over 860 small local owned vendors of food, lodging and diverse cultural and outdoors activities which they offer to students during the educational trips.
In 2013, GBF committed a loan to Off Bound Adventures to expand operations into the US market through the founding of Envoys, a US-based subsidiary, which designs unique educational travel programs for schools that want to develop globally competent youth. OBA and Envoys partner with small local owned vendors in Colombia, Peru, Thailand, Ethiopia, and other destination countries (currently 17 countries) that provide hospitality services during the trips.
GBF BAS & OFF BOUND ADVENTURES:
GBF’s Business Advisory Services (BAS) has focused on the development of social impact measures and indicators to ensure suppliers fit its social criteria. Other projects focused on improving field operations. GBF has also assisted Off Bound Adventures in improving internal capacity related to financial management.
Operations: Review and improvement of operational processes. Improving risk management through the strengthening of procedures and communications strategy. Developing a dashboard of operational metrics.
Financial Management: Implementing a tool to improve financial management and the ability to produce financial projections.
IMPACT
From January 2019 to December 2019, Off Bound Adventures and Envoys directly impacted 235 small, local suppliers of food, lodging and diverse cultural and outdoor activities.
The vendors hire more than 1,400 people and, from their work with OBA, generated an estimated income of $669K
Learn more about Our Approach to Measurement.
