We believe that educational travel contributes significantly to your personal well-being and is critical to the well-being of society. Travel is fundamental to understanding other cultures and perspectives and to being an educated citizen in our contemporary world.
“Traveling abroad, particularly for extended periods of time, tends to encourage increases in the trait of openness to experience. This is especially likely when pushing beyond your comfort zone to make friends with people from the country you’re visiting.”*
At the same time, perhaps you’re concerned about how air travel affects climate change. A web search for “carbon offsets” yields over 10 million results. There are a lot of resources out there. We’ve curated some of them here in case you want to consider offsetting your impact of global travel on the climate.
The Climate Trust is a non-profit formed in 1997 that manages carbon offset acquisition programs and projects for organizations seeking to reduce their carbon footprint. They combat climate change by funding and managing projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbonfund.org urges you to reduce what you can, offset what you can’t™. You can make a tax deductible donation or support one of their carbon-reduction projects.
Terrapass strives to explain carbon offsets and fund projects to diminish the impact of your own GHG emissions.
Treedom was recently featured by Positive News as an enterprise that can not only help you offset your carbon usage, but is also helping local farmers make a real difference in their lives.
Note: The above recommendations are offered without endorsement by St. Olaf College. Other options are available.
*The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations, by Jaime Kurtz