We are creating a traveling village
We are a Danish family of four with a big dream: To find other families and together co-create what we call a traveling village. We want to take the best of the new world (remote work, digital nomadism, traveling) and combine it with what has worked for centuries (community, families helping each other, communal meals).
This is a non-profit co-created experiment and we want to build it with you!
Background, the idea and who's behind
Before having kids we were traveling as very typical digital nomads. We wanted to have a lifestyle with a lot of traveling with kids, but we also quickly realized that it does take a village raise kids.
After having kids we have grown increasingly interested in the way we structure life, where all families live in small silos without being part of a community living nearby. When we did our first 6-month trip with 2 kids, we realized that traveling and living abroad with kids is amazing, but it also required a lot from us. Especially the social element, finding friends in a new place, is tough, but so important with kids.
This is the realization of a dream that got defined in 2017 in Nepal, when we decided to have our first child. We have discussed many ways to build this and we have come to the conclusion that we want to go all in on one trip, to make an experiment in living differently. We want to build this as one of the biggest adventures of our life.
We have studied cohousing projects to see what works in that setting and being involved early and creating the principles and the village together is something that we see brings people closer to each other. So we decided that we want to build this as a community. This is not a group trip that you buy through an agency, but a community where we take active part.
We have both our kids at home and our dream is to unschool. We really believe in the idea of learning through play and exploration and self-directed learning. We want to create a unique setting where it’s possible: In nature, with a lot of other kids and a community of adults instead of a professional daycare/school.
At the core of the village, there is a community living room. Somewhere we can meet, eat some of our weekly meals, and where activities can take place. There are a lot of challenges to this project, the biggest one will be finding multiple locations where we can all have our own home but walk to the community living room.
Below we describe the core of the idea and the next steps.
Best wishes,
Kai (4), Iris (1 – the shocked one), Michelle (32) and Nikolaj (36)
Possible to work remote
Possible to work remoteWe imagine that some will join as a kind of sabbatical, but we expect many will work remotely. It’s also the dream to try to do an experiment of something that could be a more permanent way of living, so of course, in all locations it should be possible to work remotely. Maybe we work from a local coworking or we create something ourselves.
Communal dinners
Communal dinnersEating together is the simplest way for a community to come together and research shows that the more often people eat with others the more likely they are to feel happy and satisfied with their lives. That is why communal meals will be an integrated part of our weekly schedule.
Researching successful cohousing concepts, the best of them often have communal dinners 4 times per week.
🏠 Every family with their own place
From studying cohousing projects across the world, we know that residents say that one of the most important things is the space to withdraw from the community and to be able to have privacy. That’s why every family will book their own place to live, so everyone has their own place to just be themselves.
🛖 The Community Livingroom
We need a place to meet and a place to default to. A place you go to hang out and where you casually meet other people from the community. We see it as quite important to have this place within walking or biking distance from your home. This will probably be one of the biggest challenges of the project and it can come in many forms.
⌛️ Timeline
Right now we have only two cut-off dates:
1st of January 2023: By this time we need to have found the 4-5 families that will develop the project further together.
January 2024: Departure date
There will be added more dates to the timeline, for example when we need to have arranged locations, when people can join, when the overall travel plan is ready etc.
👩👩👧👦 Founding Families and Member Families
The first step is to find 4-5 families who are 100% in on the project and where we develop it together. This includes locations, financials, and the core principles. We call these families “Founding Families”.
The Founding Families will develop the project further and afterward open the project up for Member Families. The only difference is that the core of the project will be developed by Founding Families.
The day-to-day life will be developed by us all. Maybe someone will make yoga classes, maybe someone wants to do weekly hikes, and we arrange activities for the kids. Maybe you dream of learning to surf or build in bamboo and want to create a group that does that.
We also think it would be very interesting to create different work groups with different purposes. One example could be about how we engage with the local community in a meaningful way.
👩🌾 Learning through play and exploration
This is also an experiment in living with kids differently. Where play, exploration, and self-direction are in focus instead of classrooms.
Everyone is 100% responsible for their own kids and their learning, but as a community, we create meaningful opt-in activities. We imagine that we use our collective skills and interests to create learning experiences.
🌍 Locations
The Founding Families need to decide on locations, both where and how many and the overall travel plan. We imagine enough time to settle and have a daily life and no rush. One of the strengths of traveling as a community is that it will probably be easier to go further out to locations with a little less infrastructure than mass-tourism destinations.
The first step in the project is to gather 4 founding families, which was achieved in October 2022 (The goal was by the end of 2022). The role of the founding families is to develop the project together with consensus-based decision-making.
The founding families have per October 2022 started the work that will result in member families joining. The work consists of workshops and deciding on the following:
- Values/Vision
- Timeline
- Location/travel plan
- Financial framework
- Guidelines for group process
*age of kids is by departure time
Irene, Andy and Ani (10)
We slow travel and world school (home school) our daughter. We have a long history of unicycling and have both won world titles and arranged trips and events for that community, so we have a lot of experience with non-profits. Prior to slow traveling, we were running an organic farm that won multiple sustainability awards.
Nritya, Kiran and Sakshi (2)
We have roots in the US and India. We are both PMs (Nritya in Ops and Kiran in Tech) currently on sabbatical and have just begun a year of slow traveling across the world with our one-year-old (Sakshi). We are curious about how we can reframe our relationship with work, society and life.
Leheng, Nanna and Eigil (4) + baby on the way
Nanna is self-employed as a yoga guide and postpartum counselor. Leheng is studying innovation and process engineering, and has experience with start-ups and developing concepts. Our son Eigil is 2,5 years old and is soon becoming a big brother when a new baby arrives. Together we love to travel and discover alternative ways of living.
Nikolaj, Michelle, Iris (2) and Kai (5)
We are both self-employed, big travelers who used to travel full-time. Unschooling our two kids and originally got the idea to Worldschooling.com in 2017. Lots of experience starting companies and being self-employed, mainly online.
The Core Principles
The core principles here were the original principles.
The founding families are now developing them further.
#1 We travel 4 months with departure in January 2024
#2 Together we create activities for the kids. There is no traditional daycare or school.
Get Involved
You can get involved in 3 different ways:
1) Take the leap and join as a Founding Family FULL
2) To show your interest in becoming a Member Family (we will then get back to you first, when we are ready to open up for members)
3) Sign up to get email updates on the progress of the project
Contact us at nikolajastrup@gmail.com, on Twitter or Instagram.
FAQ
Worldschooling is an educational movement where families live, learn and develop through traveling.
There are more and more communities growing based on self-directed learning, alternatives to school and simply a more holistic way of looking at life.
One of the biggest challenges with nomadic living, especially with kids, is the social element and this is an experiment in trying to solve that.
This is an experiment. There are lots of unknowns and stuff we haven’t figured out. We initially started with 12 months, but most of the feedback we got was to make it shorter. 4 months is enough time to make it a real adventure, to really try to live differently, but also a timeframe that many people can commit to.
We are not sure. Of course, the focus will be to have rather few locations as the logistics go crazy when changing locations. More time in every location will also give us more time to engage locally, to really settle and have a day-to-day life. This is an experiment in creating a traveling village, so we want to do more than 1 location, but the Founding Families will decide how many. Our initial thought is 2-4 locations.
The Founding Families will decide everything regarding locations. In the initial feedback, we have received nature has been the biggest driver. We also believe that when we travel as a community, it will be easier to go places a bit away from the most touristic path.
We want to create a super simple framework for the financial side of the project. First of all we want every family to book their own place, because everyone have different needs and budgets.
We will collectively have to pay for community livingrooms + communal meals. We will try to make this as simple as possible.
We, the four funding families, have decided on the following definition: A village needs all types of families and while the Traveling Village will be kid centric, all types of families with or without kids are welcome.”
It’s important to note that this is not a travel agency. No one will create a day-to-day itinerary. We are simply a bunch of families traveling to the same places at the same time and committing to a community.
That said, the idea to worldschooling.com came when we were running Refuga, a company that did workations and trips for entrepreneurs. We traveled with 500 entrepreneurs from almost 50 different countries. During the project we arranged trips to Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tanzania, Russia, North Korea and Panama. So we will of course use our experiences from that time, both in planning and community.
There are no fixed rules, but we strive to have kids in the age 0-12 years old. We know this is important for many, which is why we are pro traveling quite a lot of families.
There are no applying or specific requirements or qualifications needed. First of all we need to gather a small group of Founding Families and here it’s all about chemistry.
Rather than approving people, we want to build a project that is so special and so cool, that it attracts people who are somewhat like-minded.
We know from experience that when a lot of interesting people are put together, interesting things start to happen.
We want to create the frames, but the community will create all the day-to-day content.
First of all, it’s important, especially with kids, that we have a normal day-to-day life with a lot of time and freedom to just be a family, for privacy, and so on. This is why everything will be opt-in.
We need a setting where it’s possible for people to work, where we help each other with learning experiences for the kids and where it’s easy to stumble into other people from the community. We hope there will be created small “study groups” where people decide to learn something together, there will be people arranging yoga, hikes, meetups on different subjects and much more.
This is an experiment and we want to go all-in on community and one adventure of a life-time. Worldschooling.com can probably develop to a lot of things down the road, but our only focus is just this adventure.
We are planning this quite a lot in advance, so we can slowly get the word out organically and so we have better chances with booking locations.
Of course, not everyone can commit so far in advance and we know that a lot of people would probably like to follow a long before eventually taking the final decision.
We will create a small email update every month where we will give a status on the progress, where we are right now and the families who are showing interest.
Made with 
, hot 
and crazy kids in the background