Voyaj

Yasmine El Baggari, a native of Morocco and California based, is the founder of Voyaj, a global platform that connects people from around the globe for one-on-one meaningful exchanges to foster global understanding and peace. 

For the past four years, Yasmine’s reach includes research at Harvard University, and the U.S. State Department as a Youth Moroccan Ambassador to the United States. Her work has appeared in BBC, National Geographic, NPR, Forbes, and the Huffington Post. Yasmine has also received the Glamour Women of the Year Microsoft's Made Achieving Award, Hampshire College’s $60K Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, two Ingenuity Awards and a number of others. Recently, she was invited to the White House as one of the 100 Most Influential Travel Bloggers, and on Forbes 30 Under 30's list as one of the most inspiring and promising entrepreneurs in Africa. 

I’m committed to bringing humanity together in authentic ways by breaking down established stereotypes and misconceptions and eradicating loneliness, and separation between cultures and at a global level. 

Voyaj, a global platform that brings people together for virtual cultural exchanges and face-to-face experiences anywhere in the world. Our mission elevates humanity by  creating a more peaceful, caring world and connecting people for meaningful interactions that will foster global understanding and trust.

Not only do we create and engage global communities for a better world, we connect mission-driven individuals based on shared values; prompting deeper conversations to encourage vulnerability, empathy and trust. At Voyaj, members within and across communities can create, offer and share experiences that will build meaningful bonds and expand world-views and perspectives in our interconnected world. 

The world is currently facing a challenging interaction between conflict, pandemics, natural hazards, displacement, and lack of human engagement. The shocking images of millions of migrants increase divisions between cultures. Ignorance and xenophobia are further fueled by extremism and terrorism. This is critical to be solved right now because underneath every problem in the world are conflicts between people and groups. Therefore, people from different countries, industries and sectors must come together and engage with each other to adapt to the rapid changes and thrive at the societal, economic, cultural and political level.

Investing in meaningful human connection as part of the solution can yield tremendous results. First, connecting people within and across communities to avoid problems of loneliness help facilitate all forms of beauty, possibilities and impact. Second, being able to safely bring people together across groups is basis for avoiding all sorts of conflicts and misunderstandings. Finally, supporting this is also addressing solutions to racism, war, classism, violence, and economic inequality. More than ever, people are seeking connections that are like minded and like hearted.

Voyaj is a global platform that also uses a technology platform to connect people virtually and face-to-face to bridge cultural differences. We support different organizations and institutions – from universities to corporations and nonprofits – to engage, match, and connect their members and their global networks. Voyaj’s goals include building a world of learning and collaboration among individuals across borders, genders, age, and background; offer safe environments for the exchange of ideas and cultures; facilitate effective interpersonal communications; procure tools for self-awareness to bridge cultural barriers to create a kinder world; and collaborate to empower each other to become dynamic global citizens.

Our global collaborations have included institutions such as the World Bank Group, The World Innovation Network (TWIN), OCP Group of Morocco, Microsoft, YouNoodle, George Washington University, and the U.S. Department of State. Each of these collaborations has yielded meaningful cross-cultural relationships, cooperation, and co-creativity. 

We just completed the first version of our Voyaj mobile application (iOS and Android) and have started to pilot it with a few select communities including the U.S. State Department YES Alumni program, Composers Breakfast Club, and a PBS Show on Human Connections.

With Voyaj, members of different communities are more connected and engaged. Below, we offer three examples of communities we have been working: 

1. WeMENA 

I was a key partner of the WeMENA program, an initiative funded by the World Bank Group to encourage more gender-inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystems in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region). WeMENA accelerated 200 women-led companies in Casablanca, Byblos, Beirut, Ramallah, Amman, Cairo, Alexandria, and Tunis. Female founders were supported with skills training, mentoring, and funding to startup or expand. Voyaj was responsible for identifying the women across the MENA region. planning the convening event in Casablanca and, specifically, designing a program to engage the community and build meaningful relationships. We offered $150,000 in grants to 3 of the winners. 

2. MorocCanDo

Engaging the Moroccan Diaspora – with OCP Group (working to support sustainable agriculture in Morocco) to engage a community of 300+ Moroccan professionals, students and research experts to explore ways to give back to Morocco and our African continent, build relationships, and build networks for future global collaborations. 

3. Amideast 

We are collaborating with Amideast to engage the YES Alumni across all over Africa, the Middle East and North Africa and Asia. 

Elevate Prize’s goal to elevate understanding of and between people through changing people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors aligns with ours as we continue to partner with people and globally diverse communities and groups across borders.

I recognize that the world as it is, and the system as it’s currently designed requires a lot of change and a greater global connectedness. This is why, during this unprecedented time in recent history, we must effectively bridge technology with one-on-one, authentic cultural exchange, which is a powerful tool to bridge divide and create a deeper understanding between people and communities at large.

Throughout my undergraduate studies, I had a personal dream to explore and understand the American culture first-hand across all 50 U.S. states. This journey took me exactly 7 years where I travelled by greyhound bus on my own. I also had the opportunity to meet with and home-stay with 250 American families.

The amazing gift I received in all this was, and still is, the personal transformation and caring that can be sparked, when we humans share cultural knowledge, one-on-one, face-to face, while forging personal connections. It is then that the Voyaj vision of bringing humanity together has become my mission.

Voyaj has been informed and inspired by transforming interpersonal exchanges I experienced as I traveled alone. Additional visits to more than 40 countries further confirmed the positive impact that warm hospitality, curiosity, and open-mindedness of people from every corner of the world can inspire.

The Voyaj team consists of 8 dedicated, talented individuals based in San Francisco with diverse profiles and experiences from Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Monster and PayPal. As engineers, designers, psychologists and technology experts, we are committed to leveraging our skills and talent to create a global platform that will bring people together and humanize cultural exchange. 

My journey began when, at age 17, I was selected to join a delegation of thirty Moroccan exchange students for a year in the United States as a Youth Exchange Student Scholar in the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program. This experience was a turning point in my global perspective. Through the YES program and visiting all 50 U.S. states, I learned to embody cultural exchange in my every day life, to break down stereotypes, and new skills about volunteerism, community service, and citizen responsibility.

Having been part of different communities such as the U.S. State Department’s YES program, Amideast, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers and having lived in both the United States and Morocco, I discovered that fostering meaningful human connections across cultures is a really effective way to create change, peace and global understanding which can contribute to solving global challenges in our interconnected world.

At Voyaj, we often ask: where do we want to see the world tomorrow? How can we be the change we want to see? Our mission is our daily touchstone– to foster deeper and more meaningful human interactions. Our current global climate demands that we bridge cultures, cultivate understanding, and together become dynamic global citizens. Our approach is simply to create a platform that exceeds borders and brings together people from around the world to exchange, collaborate, support one another and drive positive change all over the world.

Over the past 5 years, we explored different ways of enabling cultural exchange. Having partnered and learned with major organizations such as the World Bank Group, the U.S. State Department, Microsoft, TEDxCincinnati, this idea of “experiences” came through as the most impactful and scalable path. Partnerships helped us understand and validate our model. 

Having also traveled to 40+ countries and all 50 U.S. states, I have built a strong global network that will make it possible to achieve our mission. Over the years, I have built a strong team with diverse experiences and perspectives, and have been trusted by companies and communities from around the world with members in 60+ countries - Travelers, Entrepreneurs, Composers, Students, Women, CEOs, etc.

Because of all of this, we are well-positioned to deliver this project.

I will never forget the day I was denied entry at an airport security and could no longer participate in a Startup competition where I was one of the top 10 finalists. I am still thinking about what I now feel was a traumatic experience. Because I am Moroccan? Because I am an unmarried woman working to break down stereotypes about different cultures globally?

I had set on the quest to break down stereotypes in the West and my identity was coming back to haunt me in this region of the world. Suddenly, it seemed easy to break down stereotypes about me in Kentucky, or rural Arizona. Not in this one country where I realized that I could not travel, express myself, and live in sum.

But life would carry its course and it would build my resilience. I would continue to face fear at airport security but, as my networks were broadening and deepening, the reception would be more and more hospitable. Realities had not changed, my influence and exposure had grown. It would be one of my first important growth lessons in life and it gave me so much strength and courage to continue on my mission.

As a 15 year-old Moroccan in a cyber café in my home of Rabat, technology connected me and my passions to the great possibilities of the larger world. While we didn’t have internet at home, fortune found me as I waited, acutely aware, for any and all opportunities to understand and expand the life I knew. 

Just recently, after 10 years abroad, I returned to Morocco to be close to my family. Once again, Technology allowed me to stay connected to the world and continue to work virtually with my team. Furing Covid-19, I have been conducting a series of trainings on how to build meaningful relationships and offer why interpersonal connections across cultures and perspectives are essential to our success as individuals and communities. Besides deepening the ties between community members, I gave insights on how to create opportunities out of the current global crisis, forming new friendships and having impactful conversations both online and in person. More than ever, I have a deep belief that I belong to the planet and just recently advanced to the next stage of Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut program, so why not become an Earth Ambassador one day.

At the core, we are building a values-based technology and an online/offline approach to connect people from around the globe for one-on-one meaningful cultural experiences. With our mobile apps (iOS & Android), we aim to create socially-minded algorithms that match people based on commonalities and differences to foster cultural exchange and to break down stereotypes.

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- World Bank Group: connecting women entrepreneurs across the MENA region 

- A PBS show connecting viewers from 150 countries 

- US Department of State’s YES program: connecting up to 10,000 members from across Africa, MENA and Asia 

- TEDxCincinnati: connecting locals together

- Composers Breakfast Club: connecting composers from around the world

Our aim is to build our user base by partnering with existing communities and generate membership fees at $100/user/year.

So far, we have generated over $500k in revenue as we partnered with different communities and companies across the world. 

I would like to partner with organizations, universities, and communities from anywhere in the world.