Richard Webb / 2010 National Awards Honoree
Richard A. Webb
President and Founder of ProWorld
"I am honored to have been selected as one of the National Award nominees for the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, especially when there are so many amazing people doing so much good work as U.S. citizen ambassadors. This award honors and celebrates international volunteerism as a powerful vehicle for grassroots international relations, and will not only help to raise awareness among U.S. volunteers but will also increase the number of communities we are able to help worldwide."
Born in Lima, Peru, Mr. Webb holds a B.A. in History from Vassar College and a MBA with a focus on social enterprise from Oxford University. Following his undergraduate studies, Mr. Webb enjoyed a brief career as a professional soccer player in Hong Kong, after which he began to pursue his interest in grassroots development work with Visions Service Adventures, a summer community service program for teens. During Mr. Webb's time as a recruiter for Visions he witnessed firsthand Visions' model of utilizing volunteers to meet development needs of poverty-stricken communities. This experience helped to shape the vision and model upon which Mr. Webb first incorporated ProPeru Service Corps in 1998.
In the spring of 2000, Mr. Webb led the first group of ProPeru volunteers, college students from the University of Pittsburg. In the years that followed, ProPeru expanded to include ProBelize (2003) and ProMexico (2004) – eventually changing its name to ProWorld Service Corps to better reflect the geographic scope of the company's volunteer experiences. ProWorld now has operations and offices in seven countries, matching both individual volunteers and university groups with community projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Keenly interested in the potential for effective development work with volunteer participation, Mr. Webb has served on the executive committee of the International Volunteer Programs Association (IVPA), and is a regular presenter on volunteer travel at NAFSA. In addition, as the co-founder of The ProWorld Fund, a non-profit organization being developed to work in conjunction with the existing ProWorld enterprise, Mr. Webb also seeks to push the bounds of what is possible through private and civil sector collaboration. Specifically, Mr. Webb is focusing on an alliance between these sectors to generate carbon credits for fuel-efficient stoves being installed by U.S. volunteers in Peru.
Over the past decade ProWorld Service Corps has injected millions of dollars into local economies and facilitated thousands of cross-cultural experiences for Americans and foreign communities. Through ProWorld, Mr. Webb is committed to demonstrating that Americans traveling abroad can cultivate enormous good will while engaging in and financing valuable small scale development projects. Still learning every day, Mr. Webb enjoys being inspired by the ProWorld team and the individuals in the communities in which it operates. Spending between four and five months a year on the project sites, Mr. Webb enjoys the additional perks of his work such as the opportunity to practice photography and getting his hands dirty at the work sites.