The Backstory
The Star Throwers program was inspired by The Starthrower by Loren Eiseley. In reading it, we remind ourselves that every vacation rental professional has the capacity to change his or her corner of the world.
While walking along a beach after a storm, an elderly gentleman saw a boy in the distance leaning down, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one back into the sea.
He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish back into the ocean.”
The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”
To this, the boy replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
Upon hearing this, the man commented, “But do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
The boy listened politely as he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it back into the ocean past the breaking waves. “It made a difference for that one,” he said.
In the same way that there are some 2,000 species of starfish living in the world’s oceans, Star Throwers do not fit a one-size-fits-all description. That we are throwing stars is what matters: not how or where we are throwing them.We ask you to join us on this journey — to let our paths converge and to look — not outward at big listing sites or government entities to solve our problems — but rather inwards at our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves. We ask you to join us in throwing as many starfish back as we can.
Our Rationale
As progressive vacation rental business owners, we made four realizations:
1. Every great destination has its share of local challenges; The dunes that need cleaning; the graffiti that needs removing; the aspiring professionals that need training; the marginalized youth that need attending. And also that…
2. Our financial livelihoods are tied to our community’s problems (for better or worse). The healthier our communities are, the more profitable our businesses become (and vice versa). But increasingly…
3. The institutions traditionally responsible for solving our community’s problems are breaking. In some cases, they’re downright broke. And the big corporations that should, fundamentally, be more involved are (both literally and figuratively) headquartered elsewhere. And so…
4. We, the Star Throwers, the true ambassadors of our industry and our destinations, ask ourselves the question, “If we don’t solve these problems, who will?” This question becomes our personal and professional identity; the pillar of our ethos; and the fabric of a better society in which we live.
The Star Throwers are a group of vacation rental professionals who want to change the status quo by directly solving our community problems (aka. Throwing Stars). Unwilling to let others’ actions (or lack thereof) determine how we live our lives or run our businesses and refusing to let others mine our goodwill, We, the Star Throwers invite you to help us in throwing back as many stars as we can.