Travel Opportunities for Underserved Student Communities

Consider, for a moment, an enclosed room. With no windows and no doors, a person living inside that room may assume that this is the whole world. They may assume that the customs and culture within the room are the ways of the world. They may even assume they cannot leave the room. 

Now consider underserved, insular communities. 

For many young people, their neighborhoods and their communities can represent a metaphoric version of the enclosed room. They can read about other places or see them on television, but without resources and financial support, and economic security, they can hardly hope to visit them. 

What do we lose when we cannot travel outside of our communities? What do we gain from experiencing new cultures, customs, and environments? 

If you’ve had the privilege of traveling, you’ll know the answer to these questions. Travel and immersion in a new environment can be a life-changing experience that dramatically shifts your perspective on the place you live in. Travel opens doors within our minds, building previously unseen pathways of thought and understanding. 

In a globalized world, we believe it is every young person’s right to go out and explore it. Sadly, wealth disparity and hardships keep many from ever purchasing the ticket.

In this article, we’ll explore some opportunities for underserved youth to step out of their current environments and engage more thoroughly with the world around them. 

Our Environments Shape Who We Become

First, let’s talk a bit about how travel can change us. 

Whether we like it or not, we are all products of our environments. What we grew up around influences the decisions, both conscious and unconscious, that we make as adults. This can work in both directions. 

Think about a food you ate all the time growing up, like, for example, lasagna. 

Once you become an adult and start making your own food, you might develop a different relationship or preference with lasagna. You might decide that you ate it too much as a kid, and now the smell of ricotta makes you feel sick. On the other hand, you might decide to make lasagna often as it reminds you of your home and your childhood. 

By the same token, people can push against or embrace the realities of their upbringing. In either case, they are being influenced by their environment.

When communities are underserved and are underprivileged, those conditions can impose limits on the people that grow up there. For most people, we can only imagine what we can see. That’s why representation can be so powerful. If we see people who look like us and talk like us and grew up like us doing something — be it traveling, going to school, or succeeding professionally — we can start to imagine the same thing for ourselves. 

Leaving our environment, even if only for a temporary visit, expands our horizons and imaginations. 

Leaving our bubble enriches our lives. Perhaps most importantly, it creates change within us when we return home.

What Travel Opportunities Exist for Underserved Student Communities?

For underserved youth and young adults, those travel opportunities are few and far between. 

Whether due to financial need, family obligations, or any other reason, many young people from underprivileged communities can feel limited to their environments. 

The good news is that there are options. Many organizations are working hard to create youth travel education programs specifically designed for underserved communities so that the participants and their families never have to struggle to put together the money to pay for them.

Some organizations are free for all accepted participants. Some run scholarship opportunities, but either way, there are avenues towards low-cost travel and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Below, we’ll outline some of the different types of trips and activities available to young people.

International Volunteer Programs

Here’s a simple fact we know to be true. Doing good for others makes us feel good. So often, young people from underserved communities are used to being considered victims of their environments. Volunteering offers a valuable perspective shift.

Immersing yourself in a new culture and helping them build a school, set up a clean drinking water system, or working one on one with kids in afterschool programs, can teach us so much about our community and ourselves. 

International travel opportunities like these help underscore the idea that we are all global citizens: citizens of the world. That birthright entitles them to every opportunity to travel, explore, and use their individual skills to help people and make the world a better place. These organizations can be short-term programs or even last for the academic year.

There are a few organizations that take care of the cost of travel, accommodations, and food stipends for these types of trips. Look for one in your ethical international volunteering in your area. Perhaps you can partner with your school and faculty to send a group of eligible applicants on the trip of a lifetime. 

Group Therapy and Life Skill Programs

For many young people, violence, aggression, and bullying can feel like the only natural outlet for the stress and tension they’re feeling inside. It’s well-documented that experiences of trauma and violence can lead to unsafe behaviors for the victims. In response to the pain, they may act out, show little respect for the rules, and indulge in self-destructive activities. 

We can hardly blame underserved youth for reacting this way. With no or very little access to counseling and mental health therapy, it can feel impossible to process pain and trauma. 

That’s why mentorship programs and peer-to-peer therapy are the focus of so many organizations working in urban communities. The first step to solving a problem, after all, is talking about it.

We know for families who are struggling with money, therapy can feel like indulgent and unnecessary expenses. Again, there are both national and local organizations that are seeking to break down the barrier, so everyone can access affordable or free mental health resources.

For those that need more intensive coaching, consider checking out Life Skill Programs. These programs are focused on providing recipients with structure, accountability, and goals. These are critical lessons to learn before entering adulthood, especially when you’ve faced instability or trauma during your childhood.  

Wilderness Retreats and Adventure Camps

There is a big gap in experience when it comes to nature. For something that is purportedly free and available to everyone, there are so many kids within dense, urban environments that have had little interaction with the great outdoors. 

Those that have experienced the transcendence of long hikes or stunning mountain views know how powerful nature can be for the soul. 

In the summer months, when school is out, parents may not have the resources to provide their kids with oversight or activities, consider summer camps or wilderness retreats.

There are a number of organizations that are working towards making camps more accessible for underserved students. There are also camps that specifically help undocumented teens, so they don’t have to worry about their status prohibiting them from these opportunities.

Dionne Ybarra, who runs The Wahine Project, a girls day camp for surfing, says that these encounters with nature can be uniquely valuable outside of the camp: 

“We see that overcoming their fear in the ocean in a very extreme way helps girls overcome their fear in everyday life. When they face it and catch a wave for the first time, this helps them become more confident in school and in their communities.”

OLASTEO Excursions

We’d be remiss not to talk about our own excursions, as we’re passionate about travel here at OLASTEO. We believe that immersive experiences, led by listening and engaging with other people’s stories, can have a significant impact on our high-school students. In fact, we know first hand that they do. 

We’ve traveled to Poland to learn from Holocaust survivors to Washington D.C. to learn about the history of our nation’s founding. Soon, we’ll be going to Selma to learn about the fight for equality and justice within the United States. 

These experiences are all about exposure. It’s not just about history. We also engage with the local culture and cuisine. We hear from community leaders about how to become an activist. We walk away from the trips changed — year after year.

You can learn more about our excursions here.

Cultural Understanding and Broadened Perspectives

We believe that every young person has the right to explore the great, wide world around them. We’re committed to breaking down borders and barriers that prevent underserved youth from doing just that. 

Thankfully, we’re seeing more and more organizations join us in that cause. The gates are still up, but the more we can chip away at them, the more young students can gain valuable perspectives as global citizens. 

Sources:

The Importance of Exposing Underprivileged Youth to Travel | Chicago Defender

Why Cultural Understanding Is So Important When Traveling | Society19 UK