Episode 83- Vincie Ho, RISE Travel Institute

Travel

Jun 29

There’s a lot of talk these days about responsible, impactful, sustainable, and ethical travel. That kind of travel really allows people to see some of that deep connection and interconnectivity between their daily lives and the places they visit when they go out into the world.

Sustainable travel is about much more than being ecological. Travel for a better world is about being ethical, responsible and respectful to the people and places you visit.

Travelers discover the world through their footprints and experiences adding to their list of memorable adventures. But are there actions really leaving a positive effect on the areas we visit?

Travel companies market each destination's uniqueness, which attracts us to travel there. However, it also brings in a wave of tourism and may negatively impact local communities by harming their culture and environment.

Christine feels like the magical thing about travel is actually everything. For so many women it’s just seeing the ways that we can use travel to access so many things around the world. So many topics, so many people, so many different things.

If you have been listening to Soul of Travel over the past year then you know Christine deeply believes that travel has the power to create change in the world.

So for Christine, travel has been about that deep connection and interconnectivity. It's been about being part of the human experience, being a human experience, having her life transformed by other cultures, by other peoples.

Responsible travel is about tacking the big issue of travel – its effect on communities, environments and people. Whether you want to change the world or just discover it, you want to be a responsible traveler.

This week Christine gets to talk to a someone who is a real inspiration to her.

Christine is honored to be joined by Vincie Ho, Founder and Executive Director of Rise Travel Institute on this week’s episode.

Vincie is a humane educator and social justice advocate, founded RISE Travel Institute in June 2020 with a mission to inspire responsible, impactful, sustainable, and ethical travel through education. Her work focuses on engaging young people in important conversations around human rights, animal protection, and environmental sustainability in the context of travel and beyond.

Before Vincie started working in the nonprofit world, she was a university French lecturer and linguist for over a decade. As an academic, she had the opportunity to travel around the world for conferences and take her students on international field trips. In 2010, she left academia to work in the area of refugee empowerment in Senegal, a transformative experience that motivated her to pursue a second career in international peace and human rights, as well as sustainable travel.

Vincie has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Hong Kong and a Master of Arts degree from University College London. She has also obtained various graduate certificates and diplomas from the Institute for Humane Education and New York University in the United States, the United Nations University in Japan, and l’Université de Franche-Comté in France. She is based in the Greater New York City Area.

In this conversation, Vincie and Christine talk about the experiences that led Vincie to creating the RISE Travel Institute, all of the things that you can learn in their flagship program, which focuses on sustainability and anti oppression and travel. Christine and Vincie also dive into the ways these conversations not only teach us to become better travelers but better stewards of the earth and more compassionate humans.

Join me now for my soulful conversation with Vincie Ho.

In this episode, Christine and Vincie discuss:

Who Vincie is in the space of travel and how travel showed up in her life
The experiences that led Vincie to creating the RISE Travel Institute
All of the things that you can learn in RISE’s flagship program, which focuses on sustainability, anti oppression and travel
The way impactful conversations not only teach us to become better travelers but better stewards of the earth and more compassionate humans

Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode

For more information about Rise Travel Institute visit: https://www.risetravelinstitute.org

Follow Vincie Ho and RISE Travel Institute on LinkedIn

Christine encourages every Soul of Travel listener to take at least one of RISE’s upcoming courses. They have generously offered listeners a 10% discount that you can use on their website by registering for a course and using the code Lotus10 at checkout.

A Unique Women’s Book Club Offering Deep Connection To Self And Others

Did you know that I have a book club? Actually, it's really more than a book club. It's a book sojourn. I launched my virtual book club in 2021 and it was such a powerful and valuable experience, we decided to bring it back again this year! This is a journey meant to inspire travel, create cultural awareness and offer personal growth experiences from the comfort of your home, or wherever you may be.

In 2022, each moment we spend reading is a moment that lives in our bones, reading wakes us up. Reading transports us to another world, another experience or another perspective, reading leaves us changed forever. Imagine who you will be at the end of this sojourn. Last year, women said it was one of the most powerful experiences they had!

You can join us beginning in July for the last six months of this journey. Solo travel listeners will get a bonus call with me to welcome you to this experience, and set our attentions and begin to build new community!

Does this sound like the type of experience you've been craving?

Visit www.lotussojourns.com/womens-book-club to join this unique travel experience today.

To watch this interview on YouTube HERE.

Learn more about Lotus Sojourns

Looking for ways to be a part of the community, learn more here.

Find Lotus Sojourns on Facebook, or join the Lotus Sojourns Collective, our FB community for like-hearted women.

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WE WON A BESSIE AWARD! The Bessie Awards recognize the achievements of women and gender-diverse people making an impact in the travel industry. To view the complete list of this year’s winners, visit bessieawards.org.

About the Soul Of Travel Podcast

Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. In each episode, you’ll hear the story of women who are industry professionals and seasoned travelers and community leaders who know travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart-centered change makers.

The guests work in all sectors of the tourism industry. You'll hear from adventure-based community organizations, social impact businesses, travel photographers and videographers, tourism boards and destination marketing organizations, and transformational travel experts. They all honor the idea that travel is more than a vacation and focus on sustainable travel, eco-travel, community-based tourism, and intentional travel.

These conversations are meant to educate, inspire and create community. They are directed to new travelers and seasoned travelers, as well as industry professionals and those who are curious about a career in travel.

If you want to learn about new destinations, types of travel, or how to be more intentional or live life on purpose, join Christine Winebrenner Irick for soulful conversations with her community of fellow travelers exploring the heart, the mind, and the globe. These conversations highlight what tourism really means for the world.

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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor.) Vincie Ho (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing and production by Rayna Booth.

Transcript

KEYWORDS

travel, conversations, people, world, travelers, tourism, community, inspire, program, rise, excited, courses, thought, book, lotus, trips, listeners, offer, sustainability

Christine Winebrenner Irick 00:08

Thank you for joining me for soulful conversations with my community of fellow travelers, exploring the heart, the mind and the globe. These conversations highlight what travel really means for the world. Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. Each week, I'll be speaking to women who are tourism professionals, world travelers and leaders in their communities will explore how travel has changed them and how that has rippled out and inspired them to change the world. These conversations are as much about travel as they are about passion, and living life with purpose, chasing dreams, building businesses, and having the desire to make the world a better place. This is a community of people who no travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness, and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart centered change makers I'm Christine Winebrenner Irick. And this is the Soul of Travel.

Vincie Ho is a Humane Educator and Social Justice Advocate and Founded RISE Travel Institute in June of 2020. With a mission to inspire responsible, impactful, sustainable and ethical travel through education. Her work focuses on engaging young people in important conversations around human rights, animal protection and environmental sustainability, all in the context of travel and beyond. Before Vincie started working in the nonprofit world, she was a university French lecturer, and linguist for over a decade. As an academic, she had the opportunity to travel around the world for conferences and take her students on international field trips. In 2010, she left academia to work in the area of refugee empowerment in Senegal, a transformative experience that motivated her to pursue a second career in international peace and human rights as well as sustainable travel. In this conversation, Vincie and I talk about the experiences that led her to creating Rise travel Institute, all of the things that you can learn in their flagship program, which focuses on sustainability and anti oppression and travel. And the ways these conversations not only teach us to become better travelers, but better stewards of the earth and more compassionate humans. I really cannot speak highly enough of the work that Vincie and the RISE Travel community are doing and encourage every Soul of Travel listener to take at least one of their upcoming courses.

They have generously offered my listeners a 10% discount that you can use on their website by registering for a course and using the code Lotus 10 at checkout. I'm so excited for you to get to know more about Vincie and RISE Travel Institute. Join me now for my soulful conversation with Dr. Vincie Ho. Welcome to the Soul of Travel. If you are a regular listener, you know that this is a really exciting day for me. I probably mentioned RISE Travel Institute in at least 50% of my episodes. So today I am sitting down with Vinci Hoe, who's the founder of RISE Travel Institute. And I'm just so excited to finally get to bring you into this space to talk more about your journey and your work in industry.

04:00

Thank you so much for having me, Christine. I've been waiting for the safe ALL really excited to be on this field. Thank you.

Christine Winebrenner Irick 04:09

I'm so grateful and I can't wait for our listeners to have the opportunity to hear this conversation. And see I'd love to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are in travel right now.

04:24

Sure. My name is Vincie Ho. I am originally from Hong Kong and currently living in New Jersey, United States. I am the founder and executive director of RISE Travel Institute's thank you so much Christine for being such a great cheerleader. And yeah, and introducing us to your listeners so I'm really grateful. Yeah, so my background actually has nothing to do with tourism or travel. I used to teach as a fan track for the The University of Hong Kong for many years, and academia was what I thought I would spend the rest of my life doing. And I was also a researcher in linguistics, I had my PhD in linguistics and phonology, which also has nothing to do with Provel. But I will have to say that because thanks to the fact that I was, you know, in education, I had a lot of time to travel around the world and also occasionally go on field trips or research trips with students. So that probably kind of paved the way, set the initial How should I put it, like, planted the seed in me, and then one of a lot of trips, like solo trips on my own. And I'm going to go into details, you know, of some of them, which kind of led me into the sustainable travel space where I'm right now. Yeah,

Christine Winebrenner Irick 06:03

Thank you. And I find it interesting that you mentioned some of your past career and education that doesn't really necessarily connect to travel. However, I feel like the magic thing about travel is that actually everything, that's the travel, like, I don't think that you can pull it out of anything, which, for me has been the magic of these conversations that I've had with so many women is just seeing the ways that we can use travel as a way to access so many things around the world. So many topics, so many people, so many different things. And I think we'll definitely through our conversation, learning more about the work you do at RISE, really allow people to see some of that deep connection and interconnectivity that I'm referring to, where where I would love to start is to really understand for you, not only how travel began to show up in your life, but how it also started to show you this passion that you have for creating more conscious travelers and connecting social impact and travel. What did that look like for you and your travel journey and what kind of started to create those awarenesses. And, like those moments that ended up being what led to rise as you reflect back on your travel journeys?

07:27

Sure, so I started traveling overseas. When I was really young, I had the privilege to travel with my family, outside of Hong Kong as I grew up. But back in the days, it was mostly organized tours, you let just as many mass tourists, we would go to one place, take pictures, like you know, go to the best restaurants and you know, experience what we call the local food, and then that was pretty much it. So in my early days of travel experience, there wasn't much thinking involved in terms of like, you know, my own impact on the local communities on the destination until I started to study in France, like, you know, I spent a year studying, studying abroad and like traveling abroad, traveling by myself and started to realize how much I did not know like how ignorant I was as a person and like through traveling to, to places like Berlin, for example, was really my first contact with what it means by you know, understanding contemporary history, and like how that implies the power that is still like impacting the lives of many people. So I had, firstly, awareness and then like, very quickly, I became like super politically minded and I was like so interested in politics and started to realize, you know, there are so many sufferings around the world and I wanted to, I wanted to do something to help and then I started to look into voluntourism, and I registered for I mean, I signed up for trips, going to go into Kenya going to run, they're going to all these places. And then, when I was in Rwanda in 2011, I was placed in an orphanage. He started to work there. Put me at work. And I just realized everyday I wasn't really applying to any particular role. I wasn't being helpful and I wasn't helping anyone or like the children that I was supposed to that I thought I would, I would be helping. And I still remember one day one of the kids was saying ache and I had to

10:02

with other caregivers in the orphanage, we had to rush that kid to the hospital. But like, even at the hospital, I could not do anything because I didn't speak the local language. And I wasn't able to communicate with a kid, I just basically wasn't able to do anything. And I think that period of time really gave me a wake up call, that despite the best of intentions, I did not understand the impact of myself being there, like not only that I wasn't being helpful. The other thing is like, you know, when I was leaving, I was already bonded with the kids. And it was like the departure was really hard for me. So like, imagine how, how harder it would be for the kids. And, you know, all the volunteers just keep coming and going and like, what emotional toll would those visits have on the children.

And then let alone the money that I found on this trip, which could have been gone to support other more likely to fail more development projects, for example. So I think that was probably the turning point where I started to really think more about how my trips will impact other people whether or not like you have the best of intentions, that doesn't matter, you have to really think about what the people like how your visit would affect the communities and the and the environment and the place you visit. Rather than just focusing on what I want to do as a traveler. So I think that was probably what motivated me into unlearning what I thought meaningful travel should be like, and I also wanted to take this opportunity. It's so timely to talk about this today.

So LinkedIn reminded me that today is the ninth year anniversary of my connection with Eliza Raymond, one of the cofounders of good travel. And I really want to bring her up today because even like 10 years ago, when I was doing all of this, you know, going on these long tourist trips in Rwanda, I was connected with her and I think it was probably the, the same time that she also wanted to move away from like, she was working with the company that placed me in the placement and and she was also moving away from that kind of like modified voluntourism. And she has set up a new social, social good business to really shift the focus away from voluntourism to long term sustainable impact, you know, on tourism destinations, so, so yeah, I just really wanted to say that it was actually her who brought me into the space and like, kind of like seeing her grow. And me growing with her. It's just, you know, one of the best things that happened in my life, so I wanted to thank her as wonderful as the kindest person that I've ever met in my life, who inspired me to get on this journey.

Christine Winebrenner Irick 13:38

Hey, listeners, it's Christine. Did you know that I have a book club? Actually, it's really more than a book club. It's a book sojourn. I launched my virtual book club in 2021. And it was such a powerful and valuable experience, we decided to bring it back again this year. This is a journey meant to inspire travel, create cultural awareness and offer personal growth experiences from the comfort of your home, or wherever you may be. In 2022. Each moment we spend reading is a moment that indoors in our bones, reading wakes us up. Reading transports us to another world, another experience or another perspective, reading leaves us changed forever. Imagine who you will be at the end of this sojourn. Last year women said it was one of the most powerful experiences they had. You can join us beginning in July for the last six months of this journey. Solo travel listeners will get a bonus call with me to welcome you to this experience, and set our attention and begin to build a new community. Does this sound like the type of experience you've been craving? Visit Lotussojourns.com/women's-book-club to join this unique travel experience today. Now let's hop back over to our soulful conversation.

Thank you for mentioning her. And I've also been so lucky to connect with her and have had some amazing conversations. I think that's one thing about this space and travel, and especially these conversations that have been slowly happening for years, but are really intensifying. This community is kind of unlike anything else. And I think we'll definitely talk a little bit about that near the end of our conversation. But it's, I think, something that's really important to how all of this is evolving. And it's so different. I think, when you look at things from a business mindset, like, I don't feel like this movement is evolving in the way that many businesses have evolved. And it's definitely more of this really passion and purpose driven in organizations and companies that are leaning towards starting to create more responsible and mindful travel programs. And the other thing that I wanted to mention, really looking at this from a business perspective, a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs, or business owners or people interested in getting into an industry.

RISE was started in 2020. So much like my business, which started in 2019, was like this perfect moment, you at least knew you were in the pandemic, when you started your business, I didn't know that it was coming around the corner. However, the podcast came out of this time, and I think that this was the same energy that I think maybe both you and I witnessed. And so I would love to talk a little bit about it, I think this also will bring in like this community as well. Like, why was this the right moment, in the middle of a pandemic, the right time to start a travel program like this?

17:02

Absolutely, well, I have to be completely transparent with you, I started rise in the middle of the pandemic, it's, you know, because first of all, I as a, as an avid traveler, it was also the first time in a long time that I didn't, I didn't get to travel. So I had a lot of time. And finally, to really put my dream project into reality. So because I had always wanted to, to build a curriculum on sustainable education, sustainable travel, education, and I just never found the time.

So it was the best timing. But I also think, strategically, it was also the best timing, because everyone was four months grounded, and we saw that for 2019, the really bad impact of mass tourism has on, you know, all the most popular destinations around the world. So I just thought, you know, what, since we can travel anywhere anyway, you know, this is the best time to, to all get educated. And, you know, for us to share resources with people who want to do it who want to do it more mindfully but don't have the tools to. So yeah, and also, I would have to add a little bit about why in June 2020. In June 2020, i Not sure if you still remember, it was at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in united in the United States.

And anti oppression is really something or like social justice and anti oppression, there's something really close to my heart. And I just thought that, you know, it is important to talk about issues. And as you felt earlier, the best way to talk about these issues would be, you know, through the lens of travel, right, like, you know, using travel to connect people to understand all these interconnectedness of issues. And using travel as the context to, to address these issues to bring awareness to people around the world. And that was why I chose to start rising in the middle of the pandemic.

Christine Winebrenner Irick 19:28

I remember when I first started seeing posts on LinkedIn, and I remember seeing, you know, this program, and I'm like, wait a second, and I approached it and travel sustainability like there were all these words that just definitely piqued my attention. And there were also ways that I had maybe been showing up in my mind about travel but really didn't know how to get it from these feelings or observations that I had had into action. And, and I just remember thinking who are the brave souls that are doing this, especially right now because like you've said this was in the the height of, of this time where we're having these intense conversations and where there's also a lot of resistance to conversations, because now we're not sure what we can say and what we can't say and how we should say it and who we can have conversations with. And I just really, this is where my, my fan girl of this organization started.

But I really reached out to everyone on LinkedIn, who had any association and I was just like, I don't know what you're doing yet. And I'm so excited. And I'm just letting you know, I'm watching. Because I just was so curious to see how this was going to evolve. And I just, I have really, really enjoyed seeing all the people who have shown up to create the content that you are offering. It's just been, again, this community is something amazing, and I'll let you speak to that, because I'm sure they're near and dear to your heart. But as someone witnessing this journey, I just have just felt really proud as an industry to see this happen.

Like, I think it was also a time where the tourism industry was really getting run through the mud. It was part of why I wanted to create the soul of travel. It was like I knew people were doing better than this in travel and their stories were being told. And I really just wanted to tell those stories. And so I think we kind of both jumped in from this same place. Like it seemed a little crazy. But I feel like it was kind of this same energy that we latched on to in different directions. And absolutely. Around the same time I read and I have next to me while listening, the podcast won't know. But beyond guilt trips, which we'll also get into. But I remember I got into like page three of the five page prologue. And I was like, this is the pin I've been waiting for. And again, like LinkedIn, I connected with a doctor I knew turned off and I was like, Can three pages into your book and it's already changed my life.

22:13

It's kind of like to me she loves to joke about how much she wished the book was there for her when she started to travel, which is so true. I mean, which is why we have chosen her both to be our tech for our fashion certificate program at Rice trouble Institute. This is so important. Yes, and I just really wanted to applaud, you know, your efforts in gathering or like just how many great minds you've attracted to your podcast and your community. It's just, it's also amazing to watch as well in the past couple of years. So thank you so much. Yeah, for people listening, you'll

Christine Winebrenner Irick 22:59

notice there's some mutual love, I've been like, really fan girling over Vinci forever. And we finally got to meet in person not too long ago, which was really great given that this zoom world we've been living in. So yeah, so I would, I would like to start to talk a little bit now about the flagship program, that was your pilot program in the certificate and sustainability and anti oppression travel. So you, you know, partnered with a few people to start to get this to take shape. And this is really your first offering? How did you find these pieces that became the building blocks of your program? And can we talk a little bit about what those are and why they're really important to travelers when they're starting to understand how they can create impact with their travel journey?

23:53

Absolutely. So just to give you a little bit of a background, before I started to rise, I actually did a graduate certificate program in humane education, with the Institute for humane education. And the framework that we are using at ride was pretty much inspired by that program, which emphasizes a lot on systems thinking or using systems thinking to understand the interconnectedness of issues around the world, whether it's social justice, animal justice, or environmental justice. And basically I've always said that even to my mentor, the Institute for humane education, that what ride is doing is a privilege , like putting that learning into, you know, into the context of travel. So, as I was conceptualizing the lecture program, or the pilot program in 2021, it was essential for us to, first of all, define what sustainability really means, how holistic it could be, rather than just focusing on as many people would assume that it's only about the environment. Whereas sustainability is really about how we sustain, you know, the well being of the planet, including communities, biodiversity and local and global environment, right? So, we just sat at an angle and expanded that into a program of 10 sessions, focusing on the first part on our relationship with the world, our privilege and power, our intersectionality, and how that interacts with the rest of the world, and how the power dynamics play out as we travel.

So with that, we'll move on to looking at indigenous communities and what indigenous tourism should be like, then we move on to animals and tourism. What is the ethics of, you know, partaking or participating in active tourism activities that involve animals? And we Okay, so at RISE Travel Institute, we don't tell people what is right and what is wrong. What we really want to do to be able to do is to incite people to ask the right questions, so that they make the most thoughtful choices on their own. And very often we dive so deep into topics into issues that allow students to explore the gray areas, like you know, whether or not we should bike hot elephant, right elephant riding, or whether or not we should buy a car, the certain tourism activities. So what we really like to do is to explore gray areas and, and keep asking questions and inspire our students to ask questions. And then we move on to climate change, impact of climate change on tourism, and how tourism has contributed to climate change. And you know, this two way relationship. And then we also move on to some other, more practical issues, like, you know, how to photograph communities that we encountered during our travels with mindfulness and intention, things like that.

And then like, beyond the flagship program, now we're adding short courses based on themes and also destinations. And some of the themes include how to, you know, like how to tell your stories in the most thoughtful, responsible and ethical way. And so we just have this short course that came out last week by Jonah Haugen, the founder for that, and she's just, you know, like, the thought leader in that space, right, and we're so lucky to have her and also, like, we have been so fortunate to be able to gather these amazing people, like scientists, academic, industry leaders, and, you know, just to build this curriculum together with us, and I just can never find them enough. So yeah, I don't know why, like, within one year and a half rise has the good fortune of gathering amazing people to form this community. And I think it's probably because our mission and vision really resonates with people. So like, they have a lot of faith in us even before our pilot program was launched. A lot of people were already, you know, really kind of waiting for what we have to offer.

28:44

And, yeah, so now we are, you know, in our second year of operations, we are adding, we're like working really hard to expand our curriculum, and hopefully we will have more offerings, that would resonate with even more people, so that we can, you know, really cultivate a global community of mindful travelers that would you know, who would travel in such a way that benefit destinations around the world?

Christine Winebrenner Irick 29:12

Yeah, I just keep thinking that the reason that those people all came as we were waiting, like, I just know that as soon as I said, I can't be the only person that saw that and went, Yes, like, I just, whatever this is, I'm ready for it. I also felt like this is kind of how my podcast started. Like, I emailed a few people. And I thought, This is what I really want to do. These are the stories I want to tell. This is the picture I want to paint. I think people aren't really talking about this outside of our bubble, which, you know, I really forget that, that it's a bubble. And I remember going to an event when I launched my business right before the pandemic and it was the first big travel event I've been to in a long time. It was certainly the first mainstream traveler. I've been to and I don't even know for a very long time because it's not where I typically operate. And it was this real like awareness and awakening to the fact that there is so much work to do like, because I'm so immersed in educational travel, sustainable travel, impactful travel, like that has been my thru line since I started showing up at this event.

And you know, they were like, oh, yeah, we have this great section for like, responsible travel, adventure travel, eco travel. And I was like, Oh, great, amazing. Put it there. I'm like, do you have anything for women only travel? Oh, do people do that? I was like, Okay, well, we'll talk about that later. But so he takes me in and there's like this, like, two half rows for our section. And like, there's also someone selling books and vacuums and like giving massages, and I thought, oh, no, like, I thought we'd become so much further than this. So my answer to why they've come is because it's so needed. And we have been waiting. And you know, much like when I read this book, and beyond guilt trips, I think, many of us who have traveled in this way for much of our lives, or who maybe had a sense of it, we didn't know, we didn't have words for it. We didn't have language for it. Yeah, there's been a huge evolution in language across the board in the last two years both in travel, but just in, in consciousness raising.

For me, that's where my heart is, like reading this book. I was like, I remember thinking, I shouldn't be taking these pictures. This doesn't feel right. I don't know why, but it doesn't feel right. And I remember, like, everywhere I traveled, noticing that indigenous populations were the ones that we're at, you know, the lowest caste. And we're really like, I was like, how did this happen everywhere, like my mind just kept trying to understand this. And you know, this is 2025 years ago, I didn't have any understanding of colonialism or anything. And as I start to read this, I'm like, Well, this makes the most sense. And so I'm so excited for travelers to now have this language to be able to express what they're seeing, express what they're feeling, and know how to make better choices. But I can tell this resonates for you. So how, how have you seen that unfolding?

32:31

That I think like in the last two years, the industry has made a great shift towards, you know, mainstreaming for maybe it's, maybe I'm still dreaming about I mean, we are like, we have to admit that we're in a pretty niche industry. But like seeing a lot of more mainstream events, talking or giving the center stage, to speakers talking about sustainable travel, or ethical travel is something really encouraging because like, you know, a few years ago, it wasn't like that at all. And people, people love to talk about travel, because they want to see what is in there for them. Right, you know, like, going to all these travel events, getting the best deals, and, you know, learning how to monetize their blogs and things like that. And it was pretty much all that we cared about, like, you know, at least at events, I went to travel events that I went to a few years ago. But now, I feel that the tourism industry is really making a lot of efforts in shifting the conversation towards how to build a more regenerative future for tourism, and really cultivating I mean, educating travelers and also coming up with tools that can facilitate that, right? Because if, like, travelers may have the best intentions to travel more sustainably, but if they don't have the tools and know how to do that, right. I also think that, as you said, we, especially at RISE, want to be able to provide that language for people to be able to talk about it.

And we believe that we are just, like opening the door for them into a new world where they can continue the journey of unlearning and learning and discovering, because we're basically providing them or our students or travelers with a way of thinking so that in the future, they would be able to like, you know, investigate or like research what would be best for, for the communities and for the environment and things like that. So, yeah, I think we really want to be able to provide that tool. And also when Ryan When we first started, there have already been a lot of initiatives in the industry, but a lot of them were focused on tourism professionals. And, like, you know, the eye, and sustainability and things like that there have been programs for tourism professionals in hospitality and for operators. But then I just felt that that was like a systemic approach to offering education to travelers, so that's how we started the concept of building a curriculum. Now, there are so many blog posts and like resources out there on the internet to actually, you know, in news articles, and like talking about how to travel more sustainably, but you know, really having a platform where people can come and get, you know, like, have more information and like access more resources on the particular topic, it's something that we want to be able to do advise,

Christine Winebrenner Irick 36:04

Thank you for making that distinction. Because I think that's one thing that is really amazing that this is so traveler focused. And I do know that you've attracted a lot of industry professionals, but because we're travelers, right, so I think it's, it speaks to us, it's not separate, it's very much a part of our identity. And so I think that it's really great that this actually can kind of transcend that barrier. Because I think a lot of that resistance comes from, you know, your everyday traveler doesn't, like you said, doesn't have access to this information. They don't have the master's degree in sustainability and travel that I have, you know, they're, in fact, if I say that I have that they're like, Don't even talk anymore, because I'm really confused by what you just said to me. I mean, not everybody, but I'm just saying, you know, in general, even telling my friends what I do. And so I think it's so, so, so important to create conversations that travelers can come into.

And like you said, where it's not like, this is the right way, this is the wrong way. It's like, okay, here's the information. And I have a sociology background. So it's like, so right up my alley, I like really want people to look at it from this wider perspective, like you said, from a systemic level, like really see, and then you can make the decisions that are aligned with your values that are aligned with that, but no, and I think the other part of this, that has been hugely important, looking at both this and then, you know, culturally, in the United States, the conversations we've been having is addressing the fact that it's really hard to have these conversations because when one you have an awareness, and you know, better you have to reflect on decisions you've made in the past, and that reflection can really be uncomfortable. How have you guided students through that process? How have you helped them to kind of reconcile those things?