Building the capacity of nonprofit organizations world-wide one vacation at a time
Mission
Using skilled volunteers with a passion for being of service while traveling abroad, S.E.V.A. helps social entrepreneurs around the globe to achieve greater scale and impact. By sharing our expertise with social sector organizations in low- and middle-income countries, SEVA Travelers’ pro bono consultants, coaches and trainers are empowering the next generation of change agents with the skills they need to succeed.
“The mission of SEVA Travelers is to harness the power of pro bono to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector in the Global South. ”
Organizational Background
SEVA Travelers was founded by husband and wife team Morry & Sandhya Rao Hermon as a way to be of service while vacationing abroad with their twin boys Arjun and Kabir. The idea for their nonprofit first came about while traveling to Cambodia. In 2006, Morry was working full-time as a nonprofit consultant in New York and the Bay Area. His old colleague from Human Rights Watch Asia Sara Colmes said that his services could be put to good use among Cambodia’s emerging civil society sector. She connected him with a wonderful NGO called the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Riep, close to the famous temples of Angkor Wat.
“During my first skilled volunteering trip abroad, Morry recounts, “I worked closely with the founder, executive director and fundraising staff to figure out how to tap into the immense wealth coming through their town (the tourist industry in Siem Riep generates millions of dollars a year) by establishing mutually-beneficial partnership with local businesses. And in exchange for my advice and deliverables, they took me and my family on a tour of Angkor Wat, picked us up from the airport, took us out to dinner—it was so much more meaningful for me than being a regular tourist. I felt useful, and since I had been building these skills by doing this work for decades, I liked being able to pass it along to the Cambodian staff at the hospital. There has been such a boom in the NGO sector, with so many new civil society organizations all over the world. These young leaders could use support from folks like you and me”.”
The Rao-Hermon family then did similar service tours in Bali in 2013 (working with a wonderful social entrepreneur and midwife Robin Lim, founder of the Bumi Sehat Foundation International), and in Costa Rica in 2018 (supporting the important mission of social entrepreneur Carol Patrick , founder of the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary. While Morry helped these executive directors to build their integrated fund development plans, his wife and kids volunteered with the women, children, and rescued wildlife served by the NGOs.
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Our Unique Approach
Unlike other voluntourism efforts, SEVA Travelers believes that the process is as important as the product. Not only do SEVA volunteers strive to provide a product that the NGOs really need, but in the process, social entrepreneurs on the ground acquire the skills necessary to eventually do it themselves. For example, in the process of producing a grant proposal for the organization or project, NGO staff members learn about the ingredients of a winning grant proposal. This knowledge transfer process is an essential element of the SEVA Travelers model, whereby seasoned nonprofit managers pass the baton to a cadre of emerging social sector leaders around the world.
To be truly helpful, volunteers also need to be grounded in the unique context of the local community served. That's why each pro bono consulting project starts out with an organizational audit and skills/capacity-building needs assessment of the NGO, as well as a country profile that describes the funding landscape, challenges and opportunities, and best practices in the region.
SEVA Travelers provides the quality control necessary to ensure that each engagement is meaningful for both the volunteer and their client, and makes an impact (i.e., skills are built in a measurable way, NGOs receive a product they can use, and when used, gets results, e.g. more funds raised, programmatic performance improves, trust is built with donors, board develops/grows, etc.).
Who We Are
Morry Rao Hermón, MPA-URP, CFRE is a seasoned nonprofit manager and higher education fundraiser with over two decades of proven experience in education, workforce development and youth programs. Areas of expertise include program design and evaluation, grant writing, board development, process facilitation/planning, foundation & corporate relations, major giving, training and NGO capacity-building support.
Morry has a passion for pro-bono consulting, and has served as a skilled volunteer for a number of wonderful nonprofit organizations in the Global South. He conducts research and skills-building training workshops with social entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries, building capacity on a number of topics including strategic management, grant writing, board development, outcome measurement, and fundraising from individuals.
By day, Morry works at UC Berkeley as the Director of Philanthropy at the School of Public Health, raising money for a great cause! By night (and while on vacation), Morry spends his time volunteering for social sector organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 2019 he and his wife Sandhya co-founded S.E.V.A. Travelers (Skilled ۞ Experienced ۞ Volunteers ۞ Abroad), a nonprofit capacity-building intermediary that connects NGOs to retired nonprofit executives, marketing experts and seasoned fundraisers who want to make a real, measurable impact while traveling in the developing world.
In 2020, Morry received the Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award to continue his volunteer work strengthening the capacity of nonprofit organizations in India to sustain their operations by diversifying their funding streams and building a base of individual donors. As a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar to India, Morry visited the country three times, conducting skills-building training workshops for NGOs in both urban and rural areas of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and the Northeast states of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, and Mizoram. Over 300 social entrepreneurs, frontline fundraisers and nonprofit leaders came from all around the region to attend these engaging professional development and networking opportunities.
Afterwards Morry was invited to see their programs in action and meet the ground staff. From those 20 field visits he chose a handful of well-run NGOs with proven program models to work closely with. He helped these exemplary organizations to build their fundraising capacity and provided pro-bono consulting services including individualized coaching and training