The story begins in 2017, while I was studying Team Entrepreneurship at the University of the West of England in Bristol. There was an endless brainstorming period on finding a social project, that could have been aligned with my coursework and at the same time fulfilling my aspirations. The more ideas I had, the merrier the passiveness to initiate a single project. I knew only one thing…my aim was to compose creative artefacts on a daily basis that could benefit our society.
Social media wasn’t my preferred channel for publishing artefacts. I was feeling discouraged to share experiences within my comfort zone audience, and in the sequel, the impact could have been limited to my social media friends. I was constantly thinking “What a waste of time?! A Greek, who will keep posting to his greek social network, his experiences in the UK? What will be the impact…?”
One day, a push notification from Google appeared on my smartphone regarding the Local Guides community. After a brief search, I felt relieved with my future project choices and ready to kick-start something. Something creative, something small, a habit that could have a positive impact both for the community and myself, a channel to post my daily artefacts, while stepping out of my comfort zone!
The exact same day, I started rating restaurants where I had recently visited. I was still feeling shy to share my thoughts on why I have given them that rating because I was afraid of being seen and judged… Day by day, I start taking sneaky and amateur photos from the places I was visiting. I started adding them next to my ratings -no words- simply photos.
Later on, the detailed reviews badge was keeping me back from going to the next Local Guide level. That challenging badge forced me to start writing detailed reviews from my new experiences. The audience engagement scaled, the progress was exponential! From a hundred views, I climbed into thousands! I started experimenting on the ways I was writing my reviews, participating in photo classes, adding some videos, and all that led me to develop my authentic review style…I had finally found my voice! I committed to the project and I summarised my Local Guide project mission statement as “My job will be to connect people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than before, and more able to get where they’d like to go”.
I treated my Local Guide account as a gratitude diary because it brought mindfulness to my daily life. It allowed me to start taking a step back to recognize people’s efforts, rewarding them, promoting shop owners that deserving it and sharing my admiration for places that were making my days more delighting and interesting. It allowed me to express myself, to deep dive into new tastes, and to suggest places more efficiently by stepping out of my shoes and thinking what can make my reviews interesting, attractive and valuable to my potential readers.
Local Guides program introduced me to the art of giving relentlessly, I started answering tourists’ questions that were visiting either Bristol, Bath or even tourists that were visiting Athens, which is my Greek hometown. I was so passionate to help all of them, that I was using Google translate with the purpose of understanding their questions and responding in foreign languages, for their convenience.
I was so passionate about my contributions that this commitment aligned with my dream to travel the world. During my time at the university, I decided to raise money and join a volunteering expedition at a remote village in Fiji, I became a volunteer teacher for a month. And they’re all connected!!!
My journey to Fiji helped me understand that I am keen on spending my life travelling not simply as a tourist, but absorbing knowledge from each destination until I feel like a local there. Eating like a local, spending time with the locals, dancing with the locals, listening to their stories, trying diverse cuisines, and acknowledging the cultural diversities.
This experience let me understand that my dream of being a traveller of the world, manifested into being a Local Guide of the world. Local Guide is the channel to spread the word; for the relationships, you have built with a local community and share places that took your breath away and changed your mindset. By doing that, you may help someone craft his/her next journey, and you may contribute to someone’s expedition to be as remarkable as I was considering mine.
After Fiji, my other half, @user_not_found and I visited Hong Kong, Iceland, Jordan, Beijing, Thailand, within a two years period. There is a constant healthy “battle” on who has contributed the most to Local Guides during that time.
However, I keep having her as my muse during our newly explored places, even if she doesn’t know sometimes, where her photo has ended up…
For me, journeys are like a university of life. They are giving us lifetime experiences, we are making news friends, we evidence the local life, all those lead us to thrive and see the world from a different angle.
What does the Local Guides program mean to me? Local Guides program is my tool to research the places that I am going to visit based on the local guides’ perspectives. Plus, a scalable channel to share my own experiences, and possibly inspire independent travellers to evidence diverse local perspectives across various world destinations.
All in all, this program helped me understand my values, find my authenticity and understand that “My life is not about me. My life is about the lives of everyone I touch. And the sooner everyone realizes this, the better off we’ll be as a society.” My Local Guide goal isn’t to be at the top 1% of Local Guides in my area, it is to be 100% impactful on my readers’ travelling decisions and experiences 
Ευχαριστώ - ไหว้ - Namaste - Thank you