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Servas Open Doors
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Servas Open Doors is an international, non-governmental, interracial peace association running in over 125 countries by volunteers. Founded in 1949 by Bob Luitweiler as a peace movement, Servas International is a non-profit worldwide cooperative cultural exchange network bringing people together to build understanding, tolerance, mutual-respect, and world peace. It works toward world peace by encouraging individual person-to-person contacts.
Servas means "we serve", in the sense of "we serve peace", in the language Esperanto. The organization was originally called Peacebuilders.
It operates through a network of Servas hosts around the world who are interested in opening their doors to travellers, and, 'on the other side of the coin', many open-minded travellers who want to get to know the heart of the countries they visit. Travelers and hosts must be interviewed annually; travelers write a letter of introduction annually, as well.
Servas International has consultative status as a non-governmental organization with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, currently with representation at many of the UN's hubs of activity.
There are over 20,000 Servas 'open doors' scattered throughout almost every country in the world.
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Unlike other hospitality exchange networks, Servas makes a clear distinction between travellers and hosts. Cost for hosts is minimal, but travellers have to pay more, partly to receive address lists for the countries to be visited (depends on the country branch policy in the 10US$ up to 85 US$ per year for 'international travellers' and free to 50 US$ per year for 'domestic travellers' ).
President- Gary Sealey from Canada
Peace Secretary- Nandasena Amarasinghe from Sri Lanka
General Secretary- Pramod Kumar from India
Vice President- Mary-Jane Mikuriya from USA
Treasurer- Ömer Özkan from Turkey
Host List Coordinator- Anna Flamini from Italy
Servas International is a federation. Each country has its own rules and structure. Diversity is quite complex.
Some Web pages of Servas member countries:
Germany
Italy
Turkey
France
Denmark
Brasil
Spain
Poland
Canada
Norway
Japan
Hungary
(Each National Servas Country can have its own website, usually reachable from the main international site.)
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