mission statement
About Vilca Vende
We are real people living in Vilcabamba who dream of building a community experience that brings together the skills, abilities, passions and resources of the diverse group of amazing people from all over the world who have decided to call Vilcabamba home.
what we are about
our vision
We do not see ourselves as a website or marketing business. What we are striving to be is a community building organization with a platform that anyone can use as a tool to help organize, promote and launch their dreams, visions and skills and share them with the community of Vilcabamba. We want our online platform to be a place to connect real people together for real life off-line experiences and to help people to live the healthiest life possible supported by a strong, independent local economy. Our goal isn't to use algorithms to keep you hooked on our website wasting your life scrolling and surfing the net. Our goal is to organize community information so that our members can log on, easily find what they need, make their connections, and then get back to living their real life enjoying their community and everything that Vilcabamba has to offer. We ask for the help of the community to help us make our dream a reality and we value any ideas and feedback from our community members to help us stay true to our intentions and to improve our service to the community.
the platform
how it works
We understand that their are plenty of free online and offline options for selling your products and services and communicating with the community. What we have experienced in Vilcabamba is a very disorganized, fragmented and often frustrating experience. Most of us also are aware that nothing in life is actually free so we need to ask ourselves how we are paying for these free services?
Vilca Bucks
To simplify our bookkeeping system and to provide a way of providing discounts to our community members we have decided to use a credit system called Vilca Bucks as payment for our services. Vilca Bucks can be purchased in minimum quantities of 20 Vilca Bucks for $20 and discounts are provided for larger purchases. Un-used Vilca Bucks never expire and can be transferred, sold or traded to other community members at any time. In the future we hope to provide wholesale re-selling opportunities to participating community vendors who can then sell smaller quantities of Vilca Bucks for cash at tiendas around Vilcabamba much like they sell cell phone minutes for pay as you go cell phone plans. This way we can provide local tiendas with another revenue stream and we can keep our Vilca Vende purchases in the cash economy rather than using trackable bank transfers or credit card transactions.
Communit-E-Cards
Our platform aims to bring all of that scattered information together in one neatly organized place. We also have the same type of free chat based forums in each of our categories for anyone in our community to use for free just like Facebook, Telegram, Whatsapp etc. Our difference is that on our website we give people the choice to pay for highly visible ads that we call Communit-E-Cards so that their service, product, cause, program or event can easily be found by the people they are looking for. Communit-E-Cards can also be upgraded to include a full web-page ad with unlimited text and multi-media options, or we can also build budget friendly multi-page independent websites that are linked to from your Vilca Vende Communit-E-Card. Some sections of our website offer free Communit-E-Cards for community building things like Charity causes, education, and community events etc. The paid Communit-E-Cards are affordable and they provide the financial means for the platform to function and to allow for all of the free community building services provided by Vilca Vende.
Communit-E-Market
Our Communit-E-Market is a fully functioning online store that anyone can use. You basically just rent virtual shelf space in our attractive and organized online store to sell anything from your used personal items to whatever locally crafted product that you can dream up. Everything featured in our store is guaranteed to be available in Vilcabamba and priced accurately. Our Communit-E-Market is designed to be a tool for both primary producers and brick and mortar stores to sell their products to the community, and also as a platform for primary producers to market their products to be sold in brick and mortar stores. Future plans for a Communit-E-Market online order fulfillment and delivery service are also in the works.
Community Bulletin Boards
We are not only focusing on online community building. We also feature neat and attractive Vilca Vende branded community bulletin boards scattered throughout the town of Vilcabamba. Advertisers on Vilca Vende can also choose to advertise with full page and half page ads on our real life bulletin boards. Our bulletin boards feature glass doors to protect ads from vandalism and being torn down or covered. If you own a business in Vilcabamba and would like to partner with Vilca Vende and let us install a bulletin board on the outside of your business please contact us for more details about compensation.
Vilca News
Vilca News is a single page two sided free local news handout that is distributed to restaurants, offices and waiting rooms all over Vilcabamba. It includes business card sized ads for our featured Vilca Vende advertisers on one side and on the other side there is a featured local news article, a crossword puzzle, riddles, horoscopes, jokes and other bite sized things to read or do while you drink your coffee or wait for your meal.
Dispute Resolution
The thing that makes Vilca Vende different is our dispute resolution process. We only allow a limited number of advertisers in each category and all of our vendors and contributors commit to a high level of customer service and quality. We have "complaint forms" all over our website and if there is a dispute between anyone using the Vilca Vende platform the injured party can submit a complaint form and we will take steps to resolve the dispute. If the dispute can't be resolved in a reasonable manner the offending party will not be permitted to use the Vilca Vende platform anymore. This gives users the peace of mind that everyone they deal with on Vilca Vende has no serious complaints against them.