Kevin Richberg boarding the Alvin Submersible.
“It’s about sending a written invitation across great distances”.
The 30 Postcards Project is a world-wide video series based on contributors who share an aspect of where they live, or a place they love via hand-written postcards. At the outset of the project, Kevin promised to travel to the origin of 30 of the postcards and to share the story of each place. The idea, which was crowd-sourced through Kickstarter in 2011, consists of mailing a handwritten postcard from anywhere in the world where you have a story to tell and sharing what you love about where you live with the rest of the world. Participants can write about “vacation spots, your home, a place you love or a place to avoid”. Kevin has received 7,000 entries from around the world, so far, and continues to receive more postcards each month. “30 postcards was started from a very simple idea that I had while listening to an NPR program about the individual who started Post Secret” (Frank Warren), explains Kevin. “Instantaneously a seed was planted in my mind that if people were willing to send their secrets to a complete stranger, it would be so much easier for them to send something that made them smile, something positive, something postcards were, in fact, designed to do.” By now, he’s filmed over 150 individual stories from all over the world (last count: 56 countries in the past two years) via The 30 Postcards Project. “It isn’t about there being 30 postcards out there. I had originally set out to pick 30, and I’m glad it evolved from that. The 30 Postcards Project “was something that gave it structure, and that structure was needed in the beginning. I brought the postcards with me, and captured far more stories than I set out to – and that was just in Europe.” For example, Ulm is a relatively large city in Germany that few have heard about or even know exists – but the city’s claim to fame is it’s crowning glory: the highest medieval cathedral tower in Europe.
Photo: Kevin Richberg
“It was on a postcard, and I was going from Zurich to Munich to film something purposeful in Munich, and I stopped in Ulm and did this story (about the Ulm Minster cathedral) based on a postcard, right on the spot.“
Climbing the Ulm Minster (Photo: Kevin Richberg)
As little known as Ulm may be to the unseasoned traveler or amateur geographer, The 30 Postcards Project has a similar anonymous quality. Kevin has actually met very few of the original postcard sources because, as he describes: “people are not terribly thrilled about putting their contact information on a postcard – it’s just not something that people usually do – so very few came with contact information.” As this works, he went to the Maldives to do a lengthy piece on climate change. It was one of the very first postcards he received, and one of the first places he picked to visit.
The postcard said, in short: “I am sure you must have heard about the effects of the sea level on this tiny nation, so I guess this is your chance to come and visit before it is…” (the postage barcode covers the rest, but you get the idea).
“Educate, Entertain, Inspire”
I couldn’t help but wonder if Kevin Richberg was the typical college grad who took “backpacking through Europe” or a “driving tour around the U.S” to the extreme. But he puts it simply: “It’s easier than people think, and that has become my mission now with the ongoing 30 Postcards Project – we educate, we entertain, we inspire.” What separates Kevin and the project from a lot of what you see in mainstream travel outlets (i.e. Discovery, Travel Channel) is that these mainstream outlets focus a majority of their efforts on entertainment, which Kevin describes as creating “an atmosphere to make it look like it is much harder than it actually is, which I take an enormous issue with because we are sold and more money is made for the outlets making money through the entertainment side of travel – entertainment means this is something you can’t do.”
![Maldives 1[3]](https://syracusenewtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Maldives-13.jpg)
Samantha Brown, (a television host for the Travel Channel) is the perfect example of Kevin’s issues with how travel is presented. “She spends 10 minutes of her 30 minute show showing you around her hotel”, he says “which I think is the most incredibly absurd thing – and she lauds herself for how she saved 100 Euros on a 400 Euro/night hotel by going in the off season.” That tip alone offends Kevin, “she thinks that 400 Euros is unattainable for x number of people but 300 Euros is right on the mark.” But he doesn’t just unabashedly bash the industry or other well-known professional travelers, instead he takes his mission to heart. “I personally have stayed in a $10,000 per night resort in the Maldives and have stayed in a $6 dollar hostile in Taiwan which I wouldn’t recommend to slugs and roaches – and everything in between – and only when you are willing to present that spectrum will you reach 95% of the people who can actually do something with this.”
The truth of travel is everything in between.
Kevin has never made a verbal or written agreement that he would ever show anything but the truth, and oftentimes the truth scares people more than traveling to exotic locations. So he’s only partnered with businesses “that agreed carte blanche to be represented in the way I saw them and I’ve always been honest about what I saw” – and while there’s “no crying in travel” – a postcard can lead to unexpected truths like Kevin’s near visit to Inta Wara Yasi – a controversial “wildlife refuge” in Bolivia that allows paying “volunteers” to walk big cats. After spending $5000 of project money and weeks of planning to get to Inta Wara Yasi, Kevin and crew had the rug pulled out from under them and asked to “leave immediately” by the president of the organization. Apparently a postcard can get you there, but the truth will still set you free.
Far different from the lion sanctuary Kevin visited in Zambia – which takes tourist dollars and puts it into lion conservation, or the same with the Cheetah walks in Tenikwa, South Africa, the difference is that Bolivia’s version “is some woman’s personal zoo, these are her pets – who collects money from travelers to spend time with her big cats – it is not open to the public, it is not open to tourism and it involves dangerous animals, lots of money and no vetting.” The New York Times did a piece and came out with a “we smell something isn’t right here” feeling and that’s what they published – and Kevin plans to release his version of this experience later this year.
