MovingWorlds is a social impact organization addressing the global talent gap. The online platform and community connects people who want to travel and volunteer their expertise directly with social impact organizations around the world.
You can lend your talents in basically every different sector. From accounting, to web design, from social media marketing, to business and sales strategy, to IT training, to video editing, to SEO specialists – MovingWorlds offers amazing opportunity at startups and organizations all over the world to lend your talents. MovingWorlds maintains quality by selectively sourcing professionals and organizations who then interact through the online platform to find each other for “Experteering” engagements.
Both “Experteers” and “Hosts” also have access to MovingWorlds exclusive training, resources, and planning guide to help ensure safe, high-impact engagements. In addition, forward thinking corporations can leverage the same platform to create and manage worldwide skills-based volunteering programs for employees. To dateMovingWorlds Experteering Professionals have contributed more than 15,000 hours of service between 150 organizations in more than 50 countries.
Below is a Q&A with Mark Horoszowski, Co-Founder of MovingWorlds.
Can you explain what Experteering is and what it means from your perspective?
It represents the giving of your most valuable assets – your time, brain, and heart – to create social good. Literally, it’s the combination of the words “Expertise” and “Volunteering”
Take us back to that meeting in Buenos Aires with Derk when Moving Worlds was fist contemplated. What were some of the subjects you guys talked about?
Derk and I met at the end of a year I spent volunteering my skills around the world. We connected at a social enterprise networking event of our mutual passions to support local social entrepreneurs. I vividly remember Derk asking me
Are there many people like you doing this… looking to volunteer their real skills around the world? If so, that’s great. I’m so tired of field organizations asking for money when they need accounting systems first. The right volunteer could really do more than money…
And that was the birth of the idea.
You guys took a year to really research the volunteer landscape and develop great partnerships. During that year what was some of the important things that you learned about the industry?
In some ways I feel like we’re still researching it. We’re always learning more about the different influencers and constantly asking the question: How can we add more value?
What we learned was that there is a lot of skepticism about overseas volunteering. Either its deemed ineffective, labelled as “voluntourism”, or considered “colonialism”. We learned to embrace these concerns and align stakeholders to make sure that we built something useful for all players, even the people that were originally the most outspoken about this concept.
When you quit your job to experteer around the world for a year what were some of the skills you brought with you that helped startups and non-profit organizations build their brands?
By the time I took my gap year, I already had a decent amount of experience in accounting, marketing, business development, and management. But I think the most valuable thing I ended up bringing was industry connections and insights.
Simply put, just by virtue of being from somewhere else and a different industry, I had a different mindset and ideas about how to solve problems.
So much of the value in Experteering is sharing skills, insights, and tools to help people be more effective after you leave.
What are some of the countries that Moving Worlds members can experteer at? What countries did you experteer in when you did it for a year?
I had Experteered in Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, USA, and Argentina… but our Experteers have been to over 50 countries and come from over 30. We are striving to be a platform for people from everywhere that want to go anywhere.
Would you say Moving Worlds is on a mission to innovate the way people volunteer?
I think many people AND organizations have not fully explored the power of volunteering. We typically see that organizations don’t involve volunteers in many ways that they could — to help develop leaders, to come up with new ideas, to solve major challenges, and to upskills staff.
We also see that people tend to not value their own skills enough and instead default to offering manual labor or offering to teach a language they speak. We’re trying to bring awareness to the fact that one of the leading barriers to progress is a lack of access to talent, so by Experteering, you can really catalyze impact in areas that need it.
At the same time, all our research shows that when you go Experteering you also develop your own skills and capabilities in a remarkable way. We’ve got to talk about that on really cool platforms like Forbes and Harvard Business Review. And that’s the essence of our MovingWorlds brand – when you create change, you will be changed.
As a member of Moving Worlds what are some of the perks that can be expected when joining the community?
Most importantly, we guarantee to find you an inspiring, skills-based project that connects you with awesome local benefits (like a free place to live) in exchange for your skills. But more so than just matching you and saying goodbye, we guide you through a planning process and have a support team standing by to help you through your journey if you need it.
Grant is the founder of Causeartist, one of the most influential impact business platforms in the world. Since 2013, Causeartist has been read in over 150 countries. Grant has personally interviewed 700+ impact entrepreneurs from around the world, highlighting innovations in ethical fashion, climate change, ethical technology, impact investing, and sustainable travel.
