Maybe We're Not for the Algorithm.

I keep thinking about that old saying: "if you want a large audience, appeal to idiots". Harsh? Probably. But some days, when I scroll through some pages and see which videos get thousands of likes, I can't help but wonder.

We don't get thousands of likes. Sometimes we get very few. And yet, almost every time we actually have a conversation with a family who understands what we're building, there is this immediate sense of recognition. Of complete alignment. Parents regularly tell us they wish they could attend themselves. And perhaps that's because what we're doing doesn't fit neatly into a 15-second reel.

We are not taking school, moving it to another country and putting children back inside four walls with laminated numbers and letters on the walls. We are not offering a weekly field trip and calling it place-based learning. We are not claiming to "give back to the community" simply because families rent houses, eat in restaurants and spend money locally. And we're not interested in pretending we're something we're not because a particular label happens to be more marketable.

What we are building is immersive, raw and real. And real doesn't always mean perfect. Sometimes it's messy, unpredictable and uncomfortable. Sometimes plans change, things don't work, children get tired, frustrated or challenged. That's part of it. We trust children. We put them in real situations, with real people and real responsibility. We don't sanitise every experience, manufacture every outcome or step in to make sure everything looks perfect. We give children space to navigate uncertainty, to make mistakes, to ask difficult questions, to work things out and to discover what they're capable of.

Children learn directly from the places they're living in. From local artists, farmers, conservationists, craftspeople, scientists, teachers and community elders. They work on real projects. They ask difficult questions. They get muddy. They make things. They listen. They contribute. They learn from people whose voices deserve to be at the centre of their own stories. It isn't always neat. It isn't always Instagrammable. But perhaps childhood and learning were never supposed to be. This is how we believe it should be: raw, human, imperfect and real.

And yes, we charge for it. Because local experts should be paid fairly for their knowledge and time. Because we bring experienced facilitators to live and work alongside our families. Because our programmes are filled with genuine, place-based experiences, not as an occasional add-on, but as the very foundation of the learning. And because there is a huge amount of work, planning, research and relationship-building that goes into every single day of our seven-week programmes.

We don't go on a field trip once a week. The place itself is the classroom. The reality is that our budgets are incredibly tight. There is no huge profit margin hiding somewhere. We pay ourselves modest salaries, and the costs involved in creating this kind of programme are enormous: facilitators, accommodation, travel, transport, local experts, workshops, materials, activities, partnerships, planning and months of work before a programme even begins.

When we talk about giving back, we mean something tangible. Paying people fairly. Hiring locally. Listening before deciding what a community needs. Creating meaningful partnerships. Supporting local organisations. Working alongside schools and communities, like our partnership in Pisac with a traditional local school, where exchange is based on relationships rather than saviourism or social-media content. Maybe this kind of thing is harder to explain in a reel. Maybe nuance doesn't get as many likes. Maybe we could grow faster if we made everything shinier, simpler and more palatable. But we don't want to appeal to everyone. We want the families who read this and think: Yes. This. This is what I've been looking for...