Visit Autopooling.com to car pool in Lebanon.
It is often true that through hardship people naturally become more resourceful. Carpooling first became prominent in the United States as a rationing tactic during World War II. It returned in the mid 1970s due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis and it has gradually declined in the US starting from the early 1980’s to 2004. Recently however, carpooling, the act of sharing rides with more than one passenger in the car , has been on the rise again: probably due to rising oil prices and the economic downturn. Riders have started carpooling services in Egypt. In Lebanon hiking petrol prices, worn-out public transport services coupled with Lebanon’s legendary bad traffic and increasing environmental awareness have pushed a group of Lebanese students at the environmental club in the American University of Beirut (AUB) to practice carpooling concepts by creating the country’s first carpooling website Autopooling.com.
Originally it was only intended for students at AUB who would commute to the university, but it was soon evident that the need for this service was so great that the website was made available to everyone. The nice thing about this system is that it also ensures passenger safety through the “companionship request” and “Facebook Integration” systems where a person wishing to carpool needs to send a “carpool” request which needs to be approved and then the potential “carpoolers” can see each other’s Facebook profiles and verify information before sharing a ride.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WXD6RRaXQk [/youtube]
The motto of the concept is simple “Save money and fuel, reduce traffic, meet new friends, pollute less.” The current 2000 users of autopooling in Lebanon will no doubt grow, especially since the creators are planning an application for smartphones, but how cool would it be to have a Middle East version of autopooling? Someone should get on it!
Other sharing is caring concepts:
Warm showers: hospitality for touring cyclists – all the cyclists out there know how much this means to have a place to go to where you can shower, eat and get some clothes washed after weeks of cycling!
Couch surfing: the famous couch and bed offers , great for cheap travelling and meeting locals!
WWOOFing: worldwide volunteering on organic farms and smallholdings
Author: Linda Pappagallo
Linda's love for nature started when at the age of eight she discovered, with her dog, a magical river in the valley of a mountainous region in Lebanon. For four years Linda and her dog explored along the river, until one day she saw construction scrapers pushing rock boulders down the valley to make way for new construction sites. The rubble came crashing into the river destroying her little paradise, and her pathetic reaction was to shout at the mechanic monsters. Of course that was not enough to stop the destructive processes. As she continued to observe severe environmental degradation across the different places she lived in the Middle East and Africa, these terrible images remained impressed in her mind. However, environmental issues where not her first love. Her initial academic and career choices veered towards sustainable economic development, with particular interest in savings led microfinance schemes. Nevertheless, through experience, she soon realized a seemingly obvious but undervalued concept. While humans can somewhat defend themselves from the greed of other humans, nature cannot. Also nature, the environment, is the main “system” that humans depend on, not economics. These conclusions changed her path and she is now studying a Masters in...
