“Traveling, it leaves you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller.” ~ Ibn Battuta This quote by Ibn Battuta is intensely the experience that I have on each trip with ConservationVIP. I wish I had enough page to tell you all of the speechless moments that I’ve had while traveling with ConservationVIP. The intense…
Sustainable travel is currently a hot topic in the travel industry. As CEO of Conservation Volunteers International Program, I have been thinking a lot about the sustainable travel discussions, because our conservation volunteer projects are entwined with the travel industry. ConservationVIP® organizes volunteer trips to some of the world’s greatest landscapes and cultural sites to…
Vacation [def]: An extended period of leisure and recreation, especially when spent away from home or traveling. You can probably picture the perfect vacation lying on a warm sunny beach gazing at the turquoise blue water watching dolphins frolicking in the ocean waves. You’re relaxed and peaceful without a care in the world. For me…
My first impression was the variegated greens of the trees…and the thought that this is what the forest looked like in Roman times. And just beyond the treetops, in the distance, I could see the barren hilltops. And that’s when it hit me. Here we were doing our bit to help bring the lush Caledonian…
A Human Waste Problem! Probably not the first thought that came to your mind, right? Seriously, we hikers love remote wilderness areas. But our love has an impact. At the UNESCO World Heritage site of Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, more than 150,000 visitors make an impact each year. For more than ten…
What kind of person would spend more than ten years volunteering thousands of hours for an environmental nonprofit, without drawing attention to himself and his contributions? We have such a person in our organization, and I decided this is the right time to call him out. Behind his back some people have called him John…
