Global Citizenship
The days between Christmas and New Year’s offer a peaceful pause after the busy days of the holiday season. During this calm interlude, festive decorations still glow, emails slow down, and everything moves at a gentler pace. This is an ideal time for reflection, expressing gratitude for the past and looking forward to the new year with hope. It’s also a frequently overlooked opportunity to support our communities, as many needs persist even as the holiday excitement fades.
This episode of World Footprints explores how culture is experienced, preserved, and challenged through movement and art. From walking the length of Israel’s coastline to preserving Eritrean identity through visual expression, and revisiting the humanitarian themes embedded in Dr. Seuss’s illustrations, this conversation highlights how storytelling shapes our understanding of place, history, and humanity.
I remembered The Lip Bar from their infamous 2015 "Shark Tank" rejection—the moment Kevin O'Leary called founder Melissa Butler and her creative director "colorful cockroaches" and told them they'd never succeed. As someone who loves bright colors and wears lipstick—probably the only makeup item I've ever worn throughout my life—I'd been following the brand's journey. When I found myself in Detroit a decade later, I knew I had to visit their flagship store, especially since my favorite color is fuchsia, and I was determined to finally get their Playmate shade, which is often out of stock online.
Explore the hidden risks of voluntourism and the complex history shaping conservation in the Galápagos Islands. Intercultural educator Lena Papadopoulos and researcher Dr. Elizabeth Hennessy reveal why responsible travel requires deeper awareness, community-led action, and a clear understanding of the islands’ past.
Six and a half million acres. That’s the size of Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, one of the most ancient and biodiverse places ever documented and the last place on Earth where Sumatran rhinos, tigers, elephants, orangutans, and sun bears roam freely together.
A new kind of volunteer tourism has entered the travel industry with an innovative approach; Volungearing, conceived by TribesForGOOD, taps an individual’s skills to pair him or her successfully in the social impact sector.
Madagascar’s Nosy Be was recently identified as a hotspot for whale sharks, which could boost the island’s ecotourism to rival the likes of global whale shark hotspots in Tanzania and Mozambique. One woman – the lead author of the study that identified Nosy Be as a feeding hotspot-- has now introduced a code of conduct to protect the sharks, enhance tourists’ experience and ensure any income to the island generated as a result is sustainable.
The Golden Triangle region of Northern Thailand sits at the intersection of three Southeast Asian countries along the Mekong and Ruak Rivers: Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar. A visit to this area is an incredible way to learn about the culture, history, and traditional arts of the region, which have been created over centuries by talented artisans and craftsmen.
From the heart of Brooklyn to the depths of the Amazon, two cultures stand as guardians of tradition. Join World Footprints as we journey into Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhoods with guide Frieda Vizel, and deep into Ecuador’s rainforest with Latin Trails’ Marcel Perkins to meet the Huaorani people—communities preserving their heritage against the tides of modern life. 🌍✨
From long, uncomfortable trips to challenging accommodations, humanitarian travel isn’t typically glamorous. Massachusetts-based social documentary photographer and Capture Humanity founder Matilde Simas recently traveled to Imvepi Refugee Settlement in Uganda to explore the ways that children are exploited due to war.
Spanning 3.5 billion acres across the southern hemisphere, buffeted by the deadly Southern Ocean and raked by sub-zero polar winds all year long, Antarctica remains an unclaimable landmass under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. In 2001, while serving in the US Navy, Travis McHenry came across an article about how Antarctica remained unclaimable by any nation. What seemed like trivia to many served as a fascinating discovery to him.
The regions of Biobío and Araucanía, which lie somewhere in the middle of the 2,653 miles that stretch from Chile’s top to bottom, are nevertheless known as “the south.”
