Global Exchange is a non-profit human rights organization working for global political, economic, environmental, and social justice. Since our founding in 1988, we have worked to increase the US public’s awareness of global issues while building progressive, grassroots international partnerships. The idea that travel can be educational and positively influence international affairs motivated the first Reality Tour. Global Exchange's Reality Tours are not designed to provide immediate solutions or remedies to the world’s most intractable problems, nor are they simply a kind of voyeurism. Rather, Reality Tours are meant to educate people about how we, individually and collectively, contribute to global problems, and, then, to suggest ways in which we can contribute to positive change.
Reality Tours offer participants an opportunity to journey to other countries to examine a situation first-hand, to see beyond what is communicated by the mass media. By joining us on one of these delegations, participants have the chance to learn about unfamiliar cultures, meet with people from all walks of life, and establish meaningful relationships with people from other countries. Most important, Reality Tours give participants a new vantage point from which to view, and affect, US foreign policy. Reality Tours promote socially responsible, intentional, an educational travel as a way to replace feelings of apathy with a sense of empowerment. Relationship building is essential to this transformation. Thus every tour seeks to establish people-to-people ties through introducing participants to local individuals that most travelers would never meet on their own. These ties, we hope, will also prompt participants to examine their own societies. We organize several types of socially responsible and educational study seminars; fact-finding, solidarity, and activist delegations; and customized tours for academic, business, religious and professional organizations. Join us on one of our 100 transformational journeys a year to over 35 destinations and learn about vital contemporary political, economic, environmental, and cultural issues around the world.
