Newsletter
BeWelcome Newsletter - Happy New Year 2025!
Dear anonymous,
2025 is the Year of the Snake in the lunar year cycle, and a new year for adventures, making new friends and traveling this unique planet of ours.
2024 was full of activity on BeWelcome, the largest free hospitality community in the world. In this newsletter, we share some highlights and photos, and how you can help keep BeWelcome going and growing. The main highlight is that many of you continue to enjoy using BeWelcome for travelling or hosting.
Enjoy the read!
Table of Contents:
- Help Make BeWelcome More Visible – Call for Articles
- 18th Annual General Assembly in Bern, Switzerland
- Thanks to the Volunteers
- Donation Campaign 2024/25 launched
Help make BeWelcome more visible – Call for Articles
Do you enjoy writing, have your own website or travel blog, or know someone who does? Then you can help BeWelcome become more visible globally as the best free couchsurfing alternative. This will rank us higher in internet searches and get our English language Wikipedia article back. For details, check out the Community News.
18th Annual General Assembly in Bern, Switzerland – New Board of Directors Elected
For most of you it is just a formality, but for BeWelcome it is the core. The website is run by a non-profit association called BeVolunteer. Once a year, volunteers come together for a General Assembly to discuss and vote on relevant topics for the year. The 18th edition happened in November 2024 in Bern, Switzerland. We are happy to announce the 2024-2025 Board of Directors:
- Chairman: Marcel @Marstr
- Secretary: Gabriel @gbenouville
- Treasurer: Frank @thorgal67
Left: New chairman Marstr rehearsing as a statue for his first speech ;) Right: view from our meeting location
Underneath: Board of Directors 2024/2025
The 2024/25 BeWelcome Donation Campaign
The donation campaign for the year 2024–2025 was launched in November, after the General Assembly of BeVolunteer. In the last financial year we just came short of our target by 50€, and this year BeWelcome needs 3,445 Euros to cover our real costs, mostly to pay for the servers.
We are transparent about our finances which you can find here: budget 2025.
Donations are best made by bank transfer, or through HelloAsso as they do not take any fees so that your full donation supports BeWelcome.
"Volunteering is the most important support anyone can give to BeWelcome - maybe even more important than donating money", says treasurer Thorgal67.
If you like our community and you would like to contribute, there are three ways to do it:
- Join our volunteers!
- Make a donation or
- Actively use and promote BeWelcome
Thanks to the Volunteers
Without the volunteers behind the scene, BeWelcome would not exist. BIG thanks to all who spend lots of free time programming, running the servers, keeping BeWelcome safe or answering support requests.
Some photos of 2024
We Wish You a Happy New Year!
May you always have happy travels and enriching encounters!
We hope you find connection and friendship through our network of friendly hosts and guests.
The BeWelcome Volunteers
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