Staff Story

Rebuilding REI

Home Office, Staff Story l

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REI’s Strategic Thinker’s Forum Helps REI Move Toward a More Focused Corporate Identity, With More Work Yet to Come!

Question: When you put a lot of gifted and experienced people in the same room for nearly three days straight, what comes out at the end?

Answer: A lot of great ideas!

That is what happened on December 1-3, 2010, at REI’s Strategic Thinker’s Forum. REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, called together twenty “strategic” REI and non-REI staff to discuss and think through the identity of Resource Exchange International.

Poverty Series: Disaster and Poverty Relief in Indonesia

Breaking News, Indonesia, National Stories, Staff Story l

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REI’s staff in Indonesia grieve about the recent volcano eruption and continue their work of fighting poverty.

On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Mount Merapi erupted, spewing hot gas and debris that killed 35 people. The eruptions continued into Friday, forcing 50,000 people to stay in temporary camps outside the radius of the blast. Those in the camps couldn’t even use the water to clean the food because it was so full of dust.

Breaking News: Part 1 of Roderick’s Around-the-World Adventure!

Breaking News, Djibouti, Egypt, Home Office, Staff Story l

Image: Breaking News: Part 1 of Roderick’s Around-the-World Adventure!

REI’s CEO reports on his recent round-the-world trip visiting REI staff in Africa and the Middle East.

REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, just returned last week from a round-the-world trip to visit REI staff in East Africa and the Middle East. He was joined by REI’s Regional President for East Africa and the Middle East, Rick Heupel, and together they visited REI’s staff in Djibouti and Jordan—and boy, were they excited about what they saw.In Roderick’s words, “Nothing substitutes for being there!”

Revolution in Kyrgyzstan

Krygyzstan, National Stories, Staff Story l

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One REI staff family’s experience of a local revolution.

“11:45PM: Wake from a light sleep. Dogs are barking. Check the street. A car is stopped 200 meters up the road. Watch as it drives away. The two pedestrians who were there half an hour ago are gone. No glow of flames from the fields across the street or the village across the fields. No sound of crowds. Back to bed. 1:30AM: Wake up and check the roads again. 3:00AM: Wake again. It would be a beautiful spring night if not for the adrenaline.

“About a month before, I’d written a letter to send to friends and family at home to tell them about our work in Kyrgyzstan. The new English curriculum and books were on schedule to be completed and printed for the local language school that we run, and we were six months ahead of schedule on our other business goals.

Then the revolution came and changed everything…”

There’s No Place Like Home

Staff Story l

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Some REI Staff Share Their Experiences of Homesickness

Cardboard boxes piled around the living room, the sound of duct tape coming off the roll, leaving a kitchen that you’ve loved to cook in: our REI staff are familiar with the actions of moving.

But the actions are not the difficult part. It’s the emotions that bite. When you move, you miss whatever you are leaving behind.

Sometimes our staff get homesick….

Life in Djibouti: An Expatriate’s Diary

Djibouti, Staff Story l

Image: Life in Djibouti: An Expatriate’s Diary

Learn about Djibouti from an REI worker’s perspective.

Rachel and Tom Jones, along with their kids, have lived in Djibouti doing REI work since 2004. Read her story below as she reflects on what she’s learned as an American living in Djibouti over the past six years. To read more of her reflections on Djibouti, check out her blog.

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Being an expatriate in Djibouti is an opportunity to learn to live all over again.

I stepped off the plane in 2004 and thought I knew something about living in east Africa. I had already finished a teaching stint of eight months in Somalia where I had learned how to tell goat meat from camel meat, how to ignore machine gun fire and how to explain English idioms to non-native English speakers. But Djibouti is an entirely different place and I soon realized that I’ve only begun to learn.

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