Changemaker Travel

Welcome to our very first episode of the changemaker travel show. So I wanted to take this first episode as a bit of an opportunity to introduce myself and just talk a little bit about what changemaker travel actually is and how it kind of fits into the broader humanitarian change makers network.

And I thought the best way to introduce myself and kind of tell you a little bit about my story and how I came to love travel is to redo a chapter of our social change handbook, the change maker in you. So this is the chapter called experience the world. One of the most pivotal events in my journey of becoming a change maker happened on my first solo overseas trip at the end of 2013, about a month prior, I graduated from high school and began an incredibly underwhelming transition into adulthood.

The highlight of which was schoolies, the Australian tradition where high school leaves celebrate with a week long holiday at the end of their final semester of high school, it’s kind of like spring break by. and a dodgy house party by night. Nevertheless, I’d decided to take a break instead of going straight to university.

The following year, I decided against my previous plan to study environmental science at university. After the sobering realization that I could pursue a career and have a positive impact in the world in an area that I was far better suited towards than the natural sciences, I just needed to figure out my next.

As it turned out, the inspiration for my next step came with an unexpected and last minute invite to a conference in Hong Kong. In December of 2013, the conference was organized by the Y M C a of Hong Kong with the theme youth’s determination to transform the world. And I was sponsored to go because of the work I had done for my queen guide.

I received an invitation and an offer for an expenses paid trip minus the money I needed for last minute flights, which would double the normal price. When I booked to the bond Christmas Eve to leave on the 28th of December. I dubiously paid for them with all of the savings I had left from working two casual jobs in high school, I took a financial risk spending.

Most of my savings on those flights when I was only three months away from turning 18 and was planning to move away from home. But it turned out that taking this trip would be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I announced to my parents, that I was heading to Hong Kong in a few days while my mom was skeptical.

She knew I was far too independent to be stopped from going. I had traveled overseas a few times with my family, but never on my own. I had no idea what I was doing and I hadn’t really thought much further than the flight. I remember reading a blog about catching a plane for the first time that said all I had to do was focus on following the signs throughout the airport.

I was so nervous up until the point when I boarded the plane. But once I found my seat, I was so excited that I couldn’t even concentrate on watching a movie. I browsed to the airlines music selection and listened to a one Republic album. On repeat to this day, I have a ritual of listening to that same album whenever I’m flying to a new destination, because the songs stir the exact feeling of excitement that I experienced on that first solo.

once I landed, I made my way to the hotel where the conference was held, navigating a foreign city was difficult. As I looked out the window of my bus, I was quite startled by the contrast of large shopping malls sitting amongst cramped side streets of apartments and restaurants for the first three or four years, I traveled, I never purchased a local SIM card because I was always on a super tight backpacking budget, which meant travel without maps, Google translate or access to realtime location.

Local public transport information. I honestly dunno how I did it because these days I can’t get around any country without being able to look up where I am. If I get lost. When I arrived at the hotel I checked in and registered for the conference and spent the evening making friends with other young change makers who really made the trip.

Incredible. I met so many young people from around the world who were taking action in their own communities to make a change. And they all shared. From their own cultures and traditions, which only made me want to travel even more. If that wasn’t enough to inspire me to travel the speakers and workshop hosts from across the world, shared a common theme at the conference, as they spoke about the incredible things they had accomplished in their industries, as they talked about their youth and addressing local and global challenges, their stories invariably pointed to travel and adventures.

as one speaker said, if you want to change the world, you have to experience it. First. I scribbled that sentence down in my notes. And at that moment, something inside me must have clicked. I knew that no matter where the next few years of working or studying would take me traveling would be a priority. I strongly believe that travel has the power to change the world because it has the power to change people and people change the.

There’s not a doubt in my mind that my trip to Hong Kong and every other trip that followed changed me in some way and made me a better change maker. There are a few fundamental things you should develop to have a positive impact on the world and the communities that you are working with, understanding different political systems and awareness of different culture.

Knowledge of history and a deeper connection with both humanity and the natural world. Since that is the essence of what you seek to serve as a change maker, travel takes all of these things and serves ’em to you on a silver platter with a side of adventure, emotions, challenges, friendships, and memories.

It gives you firsthand experiences beyond what any classroom screen or book could ever provide. Travel allows you to experience other cultures, new cuisines, etiquettes, and lifestyles, which can help you understand diversity and be more empathetic in your work as a change maker at the same time, you’ll understand how despite differences.

There are also many things that people have in common that bind us together regardless of our cultural differences. You may have learned about ancient civilizations and major events in history that shaped the world as it exists today, but there’s something extra special about experiencing firsthand, a historic landmark, visiting museums and galleries, and getting a taste for a group’s history through your own eyes.

It’s also much easier to learn about empires, historical figures, conflicts, and changes that have occurred throughout history. When you get to explore them. when you travel, you don’t just get a taste of what the world was like in the past. You also get to experience it as it is today, you gain an understanding of the current political situation, the natural environment, economic situation, and social structure of a place.

When you visit yourself often the way we perceive the world and the way other people live is influenced by what we see in the media. But visiting a place, lets us experience it firsthand without any prejudice or biased. traveling into nature allows you to experience just how wonderful and resilient the natural world is when tackling issues like climate change or environmental degradation, it allows you to fully appreciate what you are working to protect and save.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of travel as a form of education is that it helps you learn about yourself. Travel helped me realize the things I truly love the skills I have and the person I. With a limited understanding of yourself. You’ll never be able to truly tap in. When I returned from Hong Kong and my dad picked me up from the airport, I told him about all of the people I’d met, where they were from and how I wanted to visit all of their countries.

He laughed at me in a slightly patronizing tone and said, ah, mate, you’ve caught the travel bug. Unfortunately you’ll probably never get to travel to all of those. Probably not, I thought, but at least I can try and I can proudly say that I’ve never stopped trying I’ve packed in almost every continent studied abroad and will likely reach my goal of visiting 50 countries by the time I’m 25.

Didn’t know about COVID when I was right. That one, lucky for me, I’m one of those people who are motivated by naysay.

I must stop and acknowledge the privilege that I’ve had in being able to visit so many countries, being an independent young person and being able bodied being cisgender white and a female with an Australian citizenship puts me in a position of privilege as well as offering me relatively easy access through most borders.

I often think back to when I was 17 and finishing high school, because I never had any plans to travel. The. At that point, travel wasn’t even on my radar at all. And it was only because I was offered a sponsored trip to Hong Kong that I was able to go and therefore, discover my love for travel. There are young people around the world, engaging in advocacy and taking action in their own communities.

Doing far more impressive work than what I had done for my Queens guide award, who get hardly any recognition, some lack, the opportunities that I had to attend an international event like that in the first. If you ever find yourself with the opportunity and means to travel, my advice is to go for it. I can tell you now that the only trips I’ve ever regretted were the ones I didn’t go on just because I’ve been privileged enough to travel so much.

Doesn’t mean it’s been without hard work either. I’ve had to opt for 24 hour bus rides across Peru because a one hour flight wasn’t within my. . I was scammed by a travel agency in India, which meant I had to cut my trip short, or I wouldn’t have had enough money in the bank to pay for my rent back in Australia while I was gone in Greece, I walked for an hour and a half at 3:00 AM on a poorly lit street with a 20 kilo backpack from my guest house to the airport because the taxi would’ve been too.

On a trip to Croatia with my youngest sister, I ate baked beans on bread for lunch and hiked up for two hours on a mountain while my sister ordered lunch and a drink at a waterfront restaurant and caught the cable car to meet me at the lookout because she had a much larger budget than me. I’m not saying that you have to rough it or sacrifice comfort or safety.

If it’s not something you wanna do, but I don’t wanna give off the impression that my youth has been filled with glamorous overseas trips. You also don’t need to travel overseas to benefit from travel. You can explore new parts of your own country or even city to begin to understand how other people’s lives may vary from your own and where any common ground.

You don’t need to travel to the developing world to experience poverty. You can likely find examples of injustice or inequality in your own neighborhood. Visiting a country is also not the only way to experience its culture. Find people who are willing to share stories, customs, or food with you from their culture.

You may not live near the most picturesque landscapes, but I’m sure that you can still find natural wonders in your own region that have creatures worth protect. So after I made that commitment to myself that I would travel the world as much as I possibly could. Over the next few years, I also continued to learn.

I figured out, uh, by actually purchasing a book at an airport for a trip that sociology was something that I wanted to study. And then I eventually went on to, uh, do a double major in sociology and pH. For my arts degree and also a bachelor of global studies, the bachelor of global studies had a compulsory overseas component, which I also thought was really important because something I had noticed in a lot of the classrooms that I was in was that we were talking about all these important topics like global health and, uh, development and environmental sustain.

and sometimes you could just tell that other students were so far removed from these concepts, that they had these very kind of like narrow understandings and definitions of them that had kind of come from maybe what you might see in the mainstream media. And so I’m really glad that the degree had a compulsory overseas component and it was that overseas trip that I did for my global.

Uh, degree that really kind of catalyzed, I think the early stages of my career while I was studying in Canada, I was selected to attend a conference at the United nations headquarters in New York. And from there I really kind of dived into the world of social change professionally. I started volunteering and getting involved in activism.

And a year later when I was finishing my two undergraduate. I kind of needed a way to put everything I’d learned over the years together and kind of conceptualize exactly what I’d learned about social change. And it was really important for me to do this, not only for my own sanity, but because at that stage, I was also getting invited to speak at events and particularly for primary and secondary schools.

And I wanted a way to kind of really clearly communi. Uh, the different types of social change and how young people can bring them about. And that’s, what’s led me to start the humanitarian change makers network, teaching our framework for social change, which is in essence, a theory of change that kind of helps people understand the four main types of social change and how they can bring them about, and the humanitarian change makers network kind of just very organically evolved from.

I started a blog for it because I kind of knew that I wanted it to be bigger than just myself. I didn’t want it to be like a personal brand type thing. And since then we’ve got our handbook, which, uh, teaches this theory of change. We run workshops and we partner with different groups and organizations.

We have a solutions focused news platform, the changing times. We also have a podcast network now, which this podcast is a part of. We are in the process of setting up our video platform, changemaker B, we have so many exciting things happening. And recently we made the decision to really niche down and set up separate initiatives.

Something that was kind of always a struggle was the fact. being an organization that is about empowering people to create social change and engage in social change meant that we wanted to be reaching and teaching everyone regardless of what issues they are passionate about at this moment, because we believe that if you can build, uh, your change maker toolkit, you’ll be able to apply the skills and things that you learn to any issue that might come up now or in the future.

and it was just really hard to kind of message and reach people in that way. And so what we’ve done is instead we’ve focused on setting up separate initiatives that also allow us to kind of focus on other theories of change that we teach and use those as kind of a way. really reach a target, a section of our kind of target audience.

And so one of the ways we are doing that is with change maker travel. So I decided to put my gosh, I feel so old when I say this, but almost a decade. It’s 2022. And that first overseas trip happened at the end of 2013 when I finished high school. So looking for kind of a way to put those years of travel experience.

Um, to use, I guess, and kind of inspire other people to travel other change makers, to travel, um, as a way to kind of broaden their change maker toolkit and doing so in a way that just to be very transparent, uh, kind of allows us to generate income. being able to fund the humanitarian change makers network has always been probably the most difficult thing and the most challenging aspect of it.

And so the reason I decided to, um, start a lot of these initiatives as well is so that they can all be used to fund the impact work that we do with the humanitarian change makers network. So with changemaker travel, for example, we have a whole bunch of different partner. booking.com hostile world, way away.

Get your guide rental cars. O we have all of these different partners. And by using those services through our referral links on our website, we can earn a small commission and that commission will essentially. Go back into funding, the impact work of the humanitarian Changemakers network and all of the proceeds from changemaker travel, just like all of our other initiatives, uh, go directly to funding the impact work of the humanitarian Changemakers network.

Um, but I guess the bigger picture goal is to kind of inspire people in the same way that I was inspired. When I heard those words. If you wanna change the world, you have to experience it first. And I genuinely believe that my experience abroad and traveling the world has taught me probably more about social change.

My PhD has taught me. I do not think any other way of learning compares to actually getting out there and experiencing the world. And I want to make travel something that is more accessible to young people, regardless of their background, their budget or their abilities. I wanna make sure that we are traveling in a way that not only minimizes negative impact.

Really kind of actively seeks to have a positive impact on the places and the communities that we visit. And then, like I mentioned before, really using travel as a way to educate ourselves and to have impact. I think that travel gives us so many soft skills that kind of help us to broaden our change maker.

Okay. So, yeah, that’s what, uh, kind of inspired me to start changemaker travel. We are officially launching on world tourism day 2022, and I’m really looking forward to kind of just using this platform to not only share my own stories from around the world, but share the stories of other young change makers.

And to inspire you to get out there and travel and experience the world. And of course, to support the work of the humanitarian change makers network.