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 listing 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 there 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 though is a very disorganized, fragmented and often frustrating experience. Our goal is to organize and improve communication and community commerce efficiency without losing the spontaneous and organic nature that everyone loves about Vilcabamba.

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 track-able bank transfers or credit card transactions.

Communit-E-Cards

The Vilca Vende platform aims to bring all of the relevant but scattered online information together into one neatly organized place. We 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 and informative ads to bring more attention to what people have to offer.

Our website is an online community bulletin board and we offer free contact cards that we call Communit-E-Cards for everyone to promote what they have to offer under the appropriate category so that people can find them easily. Communit-E-Cards can also be upgraded to include link buttons leading to a full web-page ad with unlimited text and multi-media options or to download files that could include things like menus or weekly flyers.

Communit-E-Market

Our Communit-E-Market is an online store that anyone can use to sell anything from their used personal items, to vehicles and also livestock and farm supplies similar to Facebook Marketplace except it is just focused on serving Vilcabamba. Everything featured in our store is guaranteed to be available in Vilcabamba and priced accurately. We do charge a small amount for ads but 80% of proceeds go toward community causes chosen by the person placing the ad. This can be used as a fundraising tool for community organizations and local causes. There is also a chat forum in the Communit-E-Market where people can also post their items for free.

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 to allow us to install a bulletin board on the outside of your business please contact us for more details about compensation.

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.