Across the Americas, around the world, continuous motion, living, and learning through travel. Ongoing movement is tantalizing - and it can be informative and liberating. Pico Iyer captures it beautifully in Why We Travel:
So travel, at heart, is just a quick way to keeping our minds mobile and awake. As Santayana, the heir to Emerson and Thoreau with whom I began, wrote, “There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.” Romantic poets inaugurated an era of travel because they were the great apostles of open eyes. Buddhist monks are often vagabonds, in part because they believe in wakefulness. And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed.
I've had the good fortune to meet with and learn from many, many continuous travelers over the past decade. Some of these individuals keep great websites, tweet regularly, and stay up to date on their storytelling via photos and video. I'm going to share a few favorites here, and would love to hear about others engaged in ceaseless international travel, which so many people do rightfully feel is part of building peace by pieces (when done conscientiously and considerately).
I have to begin with two wonderful individuals I bumped into first in Cochabamba, Bolivia and later in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (randomly, and yes, that's amazing). They are Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott, a traveling couple who continue to post at UncorneredMarket.com. They proclaim themselves driven by curiosity and guided by respect - and they're currently in Iran!
Dan and Audrey have developed substantial engaging content in their last 1800 days on the road. Check them out.
Additionally, you likely have seen this video (Where the Hell is Matt?) below many times already, but it must be mentioned in this blog post. And YouTube only records 40 million+ views of it, so many more billions have yet to see it. Take a quick, inspiring look:
And in this adventurous spirit, a few guys from Australia made three very short and compelling (1 minute each) films. Move:
Please let me know if you have any favorites of this kind (please share!), please remember Amizade is a great way to engage in ethical short-term international volunteering and service, and please - through videos, books, blogs, or going yourself - keep finding ways to live your dreams!
How do we work for global justice every day, from our lives at home – where we deal with bills and friends and life's daily distractions? I’ve pulled together a few resources here that help with global giving, connect us international armchair travelers with engaging inspiration, and remind me that my favorite forms of transportation have two wheels.
Justice from Home:
We have clear evidence that we can make a huge difference from home. And fortunately there are numerous resources available for those who insist – as so many of us do – that each human life, everywhere around the world, is equally valuable.
Here are just a few among many important resources. First, there’s Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save book, website, and pledge. It’s pretty simple: people are dying unnecessarily early, suffering through preventable diseases, and frequently deprived of educational tools and opportunities. We know how to change this. We know what has worked. We have records of success. We do not have enough funding.
Small, regular donations from those of us (regular people) who have disposable income will continue to change lives and ensure human freedoms. It’s astonishing. The value, each month, of two beers, two Starbucks coffees, or one big burrito from a fast food joint – can literally save not just a life, but lives. (For a longer discussion of how things work on the ground in developing countries, see my post on Millennium Development Goals from Tanzania). Here’s the short film from Singer. It's totally worth the three minutes.
Second, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn wrote one of the most important books I’ve ever read, Half the Sky. It chronicles women’s experiences, challenges, and successes around the world. The individual narratives are powerful – and the data point that 100 million women are missing around the world (due to explicitly violent and more subtle discrimination against girls) is painfully valid and overwhelming (this data comes from world-renowned economist Amartya Sen). Everyone should read their book – and then take actions that follow from it. Kristof and WuDunn assembled numerous links to important, effective organizations advancing women’s rights around the world. Women and girls rights, without doubt, constitute one of the most important issues of our time. Give to any one of those organizations and know that you are making an important difference. Here's the book in one minute and eleven seconds. It's a beautiful clip.
Third, John Prendergast and company are taking “never again” as seriously as possible with their effort to completely stop genocide and crimes against humanity through the Enough Project. What’s amazing about The Enough Project is they always tie their campaigns to actions we can take. What’s more, they have clearly demonstrated how raising our voices and making deliberate ethical purchases have helped stop murderous regimes in the past. Take three minutes to watch this video, then follow their suggestions for letting companies know that we want conflict-free electronics.
Fourth, and related to the Enough Project’s efforts, we can practice systematic conscious consumption. Corporations give us many nice things: as consumers, as employees, and as beneficiaries of positive unintended effects of product developments. But some corporations behave better than others. And all corporations respond to significant consumer pressure (It happened with slave-grown sugar and prohibition; it happened with bus boycotts during the civil rights movement; and it happened with diamond boycotts as part of ending apartheid in South Africa). Resources for advancing conscious consumption include:
The British organization Ethical Consumer, which catalogues the impacts of your purchases across a wide variety of products.
Tree Hugger is also a great site, particularly in respect to the environment.
And the movie and movement Call and Response has developed a systematic accounting of each of our (it hurts to write it) "slavery footprints," which is an estimate of the extent to which slave labor is involved in the production of your products. Their estimate is based on data from the US Department of State, Freedom House, Transparency International, and other reliable organizations. The Call and Response trailer provides some quick data on and context for the current, real global problem of slave labor (that exists in the US in large numbers too):
Fifth, we can be part of or support ethical international connections. This is a favorite of mine, and I think it’s actualized best through an organization where I sit on the Board of Directors, Amizade Global Service-Learning. Amizade connects community-driven development projects with volunteers from around the world. There are a few things that make Amizade stand out:
It is deeply committed to community-driven principles, and has been since its inception in Brazil in 1994.
In a field increasingly distorted by private sector travel groups interested in making a quick buck off of something they call service-learning, Amizade is a nonprofit organization with clear ethical commitments, and
Amizade has given substantial time and effort to developing programming that encourages all of its volunteers, students, participants, and community members to think about and act on what it means to be a global citizen long past the end of a brief volunteer experience.
You can support Amizade by volunteering with them, organizing a group volunteer experience, or by giving this week, when every gift is matched at a 100% match rate (until Nov. 7, 2011)! Also, if you commit to giving $10 or more per month, there's an additional, one-time match of $50! Please consider giving to simultaneously advance community-driven development (this means water systems in Tanzania, classrooms in Bolivia, and much more) AND develop peace by pieces, by connecting people across cultures.
Here are two inspirational minutes on Amizade below (great clip!). But don't let that distract you. You've read this far. Take action. Give to one (at least one) of these important initiatives today. You get the most bang for your buck with Amizade this week (because of the match through the link above), but - more importantly - give somewhere. We're building a better world.
Where, you may ask, is the inspirational international arm chair travel and mention of motorcycles? It turns out this will be a series. Those posts will come soon.
Please share your additional resources by responding below or sending them my way otherwise. And if you agree that supporting these efforts is important, please re-post, re-tweet, or otherwise share! Thanks for reading!
The data is clear: without systematic reflective guidance, students' international education or service-learning experiences can lead to haphazard or even negative learning outcomes. Time and again, this has been demonstrated through articles in the Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, and via John Dewey's historic concern that learning without reflection can be miseducative, reinforcing stereotypes about others. But how can one support reflective practice and reflective learning (particularly in experiential immersion programs)? That's the topic of a guest blog post I did recently for Melibee Global Education Consulting: Reflection, Reconsideration, and Reconnection: Moving Beyond Re-entry. Please take a look and please share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing (or reading) them.
International service is popular and accessible. One might—at first glance—imagine this is a good thing. Yet the risks are extreme, for individuals in the communities “served” and for those who engage in service.
Last week the NY Times ran Budget Excursions for Volunteers in their Travel Section. The article, from the title and throughout the text, takes the wrong angle. If you're interested in "doing good" while on vacation, there are a set of crucial questions to ask long before considering cost. These questions include:
Can the organization demonstrate long-term relationships in the community?
Can the organization demonstrate clear and systematic processes for (a) getting and (b) listening to community direction on several important questions, from selection of the volunteer project to and through project evaluation?
Is the organization clearly cognizant of international development history and aware of potential macro-effects of volunteer groups (for example, the possibility of displacing local workers)? How does the organization address these challenges?
Can the organization articulate its theories of development and community partnership?
Is the organization a transparent and accountable nonprofit organization or does it use another organizational model (business or less-than-transparent nonprofit are two common structures that offer less clarity for volunteers curious about where the funds go).
There are other important questions to ask - many of which will be mentioned in the blog post I'll have on Monday on the Good Intentions are Not Enough blog. I hope you'll share your thoughts about the issues raised here and the post there once that goes up on Monday.
My apologies for the lull in posts: travelling around the world, moving across the country, starting a new job, and addressing a whole set of family changes and challenges keeps a person busy! Thanks for the notes in the interim. If you like the content and conversation here, please follow the conversation by inserting your email on the right --- or re-post or tweet! Thanks for reading!
