Chamber President Leads International Effort

Travis Kumph volunteering in Peru. Courtesy photo.

Travis Kumph is known in the Monadnock Region for his commitment to improving local communities as philanthropy coordinator at Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough and president of the Jaffrey Chamber of Commerce. However, he also takes a global view of stewardship by helping to lead FNE International in Boston, a nonprofit enacting education and sustainable development projects in Nicaragua and Peru.

Kumph was first exposed to international humanitarian efforts as a freshman at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He attended a spring break alternative trip to Peru that had a “transformative impact” on his world view, prompting him to travel extensively in South America and Peru over the next four years to volunteer. “When I was growing up, I didn’t see poverty in New Hampshire,” says Kumph. “But after experiencing firsthand what poverty really was, I realized that there actually is a lot of poverty in my own community. It’s not just third world countries that struggle with issues surrounding education and access to health care.”

After graduating in 2010, Kumph connected with Michael Cipoletti, a fellow Stonehill alumnus who spent time in college volunteering in Nicaragua. They used their shared knowledge of global volunteering and the issues facing South America to launch FNE International (fneinternational.org), with a mission to “facilitate, network and empower sustainable change, specifically with regard to health, housing and education,” according to Kumph.

Michael Cipoletti working with local artisans and trip participants as they learn about artisan work. Courtesy photo.

FNE is run by a 10-member volunteer board of directors, including Cipoletti as executive director; Melissa Faulkner, a science teacher at Weymouth High School in Massachusetts, as president; and Kumph as VP. The nonprofit engages communities to assess their most significant needs and connects them with American volunteers who raise the funds for a project and help complete it during an eight- to 10-day trip.

Volunteers are typically college students participating in spring break alternative trips. FNE has partnered with more than 40 high schools, colleges and universities across the U.S. and organizes about 40 trips annually. Projects range from providing a family with a male and female cow to coordinating a mobile medical unit in Peru's isolated Cuzco region.

FNE’s housing efforts in Nicaragua have been its most significant venture, according to Kumph. Volunteer groups raise $2,800 to cover the cost of building supplies for a house, and to date, those efforts have funded the construction of 300 homes. Volunteers pay for their own airfare. Homeowners are partners in the projects and are required to provide proof of land ownership, be present at the construction and pay back 25 percent of building costs, interest free.

Kumph acknowledges that some spring break alternative trips have been accused of “voluntourism,” where excursions overtake the actual impact volunteers have on the local community. FNE aims to avoid this by delegating appropriate project duties. With its homebuilding projects, for example, volunteers raise the funds and do manual labor tasks like dig the foundation and lay concrete, but all construction is overseen and completed by certified construction foremen. After working in the mornings, volunteers spend afternoons engaging in an educational or cultural experience.

Conval High School students sift materials for a stove project. Courtesy photo.

In the past several years, Kumph has organized trips with NH schools and organizations to bring his experiences back home. He’s organized an annual trip with students from Conant High School in Jaffrey for the past four years, launched his first trip with students from ConVal Regional High School in Peterborough last year and is now planning a trip with members of the Jaffrey Chamber of Commerce. His goal is to inspire volunteers to apply their community development experiences to issues in the Granite State.

“We want to inspire these kids to think about their impact on the world, whether local or abroad,” Kumph says.