Community leaders, creators, travellers, partners and a small team, five years on the road together. Elev-Eight is the bridge between them, never the voice. The communities speak for themselves.
La Guajira, ColombiaGenevieve is British-Colombian. She spent two decades on the front line of international development, working with communities across Africa and Latin America.
One question got too loud to ignore: what if the most powerful thing we could build wasn't another programme of dependency, but access to opportunity?
Elev-Eight is the answer: a collective of community-led startups, set up together and handed over for good.
How it started
Motorbikes, boats and dirt roads. A boat to Arusí, a first meeting in the Sierra Nevada, fire made by hand with the Maasai. Listening first.
Ghana with Amaya for Africa, cooking with the women's group. Then Amboseli, where an IT hut opens for 750+ Maasai students.
We started with the charity model in Ghana, and some partners were the wrong fit. Lesson learned the hard way: handouts don't last. Ownership does.
We launch the School of Elevation: to see who invests in themselves, learn how to work together, and meet everyone at their own level.
From many more communities along the way, we have chosen eight. The ones with a big vision, investing in themselves. Now we build it together.
Meet the communities →Elev-Eight works with eight communities at a time. The ones investing in themselves, with a big vision of their own. The vision is theirs. Making it possible is something we do together.
Each community has one rep in the School of Elevation, learning the digital skills to turn what they know into products, journeys and stories that reach customers worldwide. The income is theirs, and so are the decisions.
A collective of community-led businesses, and the people who back them.
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
The people who connect the threads: the team, and the community leaders we work alongside. Tap a leader to meet their community.
Holds the vision and the relationships. Her job is to connect the threads, never to speak for communities.
Photographer and filmmaker. He has travelled every step of this with us, and much of what you see here is his lens.
A social entrepreneur who believed in this early and has funded some of our work.
Keeps the projects, partners and journeys moving, day to day.
Connecting the Maasai community with travellers, partners and new income.
Meet the community →
Juanca co-founded Funamos in 2017 and leads the football camp. Mónica represents Funamos online and is excelling in digital skills through the School of Elevation.
Meet the community →
Leading community-led tourism and food in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Meet the community →
El Atanquero. A creator with his own audience and a proud voice for Atánquez.
Meet the community →
A mentor of ancestral weaving, and the heart of the Dumizay family business.
Meet the community →
Yasmin's daughter. She carries Dumizay's story into the digital world through the School of Elevation.
Meet the community →
Keeping Palenque's kitchen, recipes and stories alive and earning.
Meet the community →
Letitia built Amaya for Africa as the bridge to customers beyond Ghana. Kwame connects the makers and production.
Meet the community →Nobody had done this before for a reason. Here's why it took five years.
These friendships took years, built in person, one visit at a time.
A shop, a booking, a customer on the other side of the world: none of it reaches the end of a dirt track on its own.
No more waiting for a donation, or for someone to come and help. Communities use what they already have to earn, and keep it. No more outsiders filming their culture, making the money and leaving peanuts. Sustainable income that funds their own social impact.
What's unequal is access to tools, markets and networks. That's the gap we close.
Communities shape the opportunity and keep control of what's built.
Knowledge, traditions and stories belong to the people who carry them.
People choose what can be shared, filmed, published and sold.
Clear routes between the value created and who earns from it.
School of ElevationFree, bilingual learning for community members, built around a real product. A recipe book teaches photography, design, pricing and checkout. A football camp teaches itineraries, costing and bookings.
Every lesson ends in something a customer can buy. That's how a business gets handed over for good.
The line that holds our whole community together. Come and be one of the threads.
Watch the journey
Follow the thread
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