Servas and The Hospitality Club - hospitality exchange, peace building, intercultural understanding and more...

Bringing people together through hospitality exchange to increase intercultural understanding and strengthen peace is the common aim of Servas and the Hospitality Club. Servas has been doing it since 1949, while the Hospitality Club is much younger, founded in August 2000. Servas has a legacy of trust through personal contact: members are interviewed personally before receiving printed host lists to carry in their luggage or study in their homes. Host lists are updated by national secretaries, and many countries publish newsletters. Servas International publishes an annual newsletter in English, French and Spanish. You can be a traveller without being a host, and vice versa. All travellers pay a membership fee.

The Hospitality Club is Internet-based: anyone can register on the website, and since there are no printed lists, there is no membership fee. In the secure member area of the website, members can look at the profiles of all other members, contact other members to arrange a visit, write comments about one another and share information about their city or country. To make the system safe, the Hospitality Club uses a system of passport checks and a feedback mechanism through comments on every member.

As of October 2003, the Hospitality Club has 7000 members and Servas has some 14000 members, both organizations covering well over 100 countries.

Servas has been peace-building for over 50 years. New members of all ages are joining all the time, but you can also meet members who joined while demonstrating against the Vietnam war or living under dictatorial regimes in countries which are now free. Its founder, Bob Luitweiler, was a conscientious objector during World War II, and Servas is an NGO with rights of representation in the United Nations. New members of all ages are always welcome.

The Hospitality Club was started in 2000 and has spread quickly around the globe by making full use of the Internet. Its founder, Veit Kühne from Germany, spent a year as an AFS exchange student in the USA and is a volunteer for this large intercultural learning organization. The Hospitality Club invites anyone who would like to see the internet become a platform for a large hospitality exchange network to try it out for themselves.

Veit Kühne veit@hospitalityclub.org https://www.hospitalityclub.org
Servas Site: http://www.servas.org

Learn more - Sign up!