Responsible Travel: A Skillshare Class and SlideShare Presentation
This week I offered a class with my friends Kit & Matt through the new group/learning platform SkillShare. It’s a phenomenal concept: anyone can be a teacher and offer up a skill they have and any of us can be student and pay for a class on topics as varied as Knitting for Beginners and How to Bootstrap your Startup.
Kit, Matt, and I offered a class on traveling around the world responsibly. Kit and Matt presented about the 6 month round-the-world trips they both took and answered questions on how to book your travels, reintegration on return, the most important things they wish they had brought (and what they wished they had left behind), etc. I followed up with this presentation below about how to have a positive impact when you travel.
I edited the slide deck a bit to make it stand alone without a presenter, but it is the bulk of what I spoke about. I have realized through 5+ years of living in Cambodia that even though not everyone is looking to “give back” when they travel during the planning stages of their trip, many times once they land in a place, they get interested in trying to “help”. In other words, it’s not just important to share the lessons of responsible traveler’s philanthropy and volunteering (and the dangers of orphanage tourism) with those people looking to engage in those things, but also to share these concepts with your average traveler and it is often times not until they get to their guesthouse and see a flier about volunteering that they decide to try it out. We had a great group out at the beautiful Studiomates office for this class (and many thanks to Wanderfly for their support, for their awesome trip planning platform, and for joining in the event as well!) Take a look at the slides if you are interested.
The best part about the class was that it was a chance for like-minded people to get together to talk about a common interest. It’s a way to meet interesting people and have an instant connection with them – so I would highly recommend a Skillshare class to anyone! While learning the basics of photoshop or learning how to be better at reading people, you also get the added benefit of meeting other interested and interesting people in your city. Check it out!