~Mercela Fernandez

Colombia

Your Big Year was what I called a Eureka moment in my life. 

It showed me that when you think doors are shut, incredible opportunities can come if you believe they exist. 

I was looking for a way to travel an make an impact in the world not as a backpacker but as a meaningful traveler. I didn't really know how to do this but I was in a life moment where I had just decided to take a nonconventional path towards alternative education and I wanted to Believe that the world could be my classroom. 

Your big year appears in my life as a light in my journey. Eight months of challenges and connections and an incredible week in San Francisco, where the real revelation happens...a group of people traveling together could actually make an impact in the communities they were visiting. It could become a learning journey. 

A month after your big year the big aha moment happened when in the middle of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, visiting the Tarahumara tribes the idea was envisioned...it's going to be called ON BOARD it will the metaphor of a school bus using traveling as an engine to learn. 

Finally, the world could be a classroom and traveling will become a transformative experience. 

Today I am the founder of ON BOARD because Your Big Year was that catapult in my life to start asking myself more questions and wanting to answer them by creating what I thought was nonexisting yet. 

I became an entrepreneur and although it hasn't been an easy journey I am extremely convinced that after YBY every year can be my big year if I live living my passion.  I discover the truest meaning of traveling with YBY!