Transformational Lessons from Quarantine: A Creative Travel Contest for a Better World

As adventurers and change-makers, Global Family Travels’ team understands how frustrating it is to stay indoors during this quarantine period to help prevent COVID-19 from spreading. Thank you for doing your part, as well as to those on the front lines!

This is a time of great transformation and learning on a global scale for all of humanity in many facets of life, and the lessons from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and quarantine have the potential to make our world a better place. During these changing times, we invite you to participate in a creative contest from your window and to share how you would reimagine travel in a post-pandemic world that would contribute to greater compassion, dignity and caring for our planet and its global citizens.

Honoring Transformation during this Uncertain, but Sacred Time

This time of “home retreat” is changing humanity on a global scale in many spheres of life; from family dynamics, people’s livelihoods, civic engagement, politics, health systems, and more. It is also steering us to take a hard look at what we value most in life. Granted, this transformation is taking place through much discomfort, and we are growing in ways that some of us have yet to understand. Certainly, the virus is reminding us that we are all equally affected by it, despite our culture, religion, occupation, financial background or ethnicity.

We are also witnessing the transformation and natural healing of Mother Earth itself as a result of the virus. Our water and air quality is cleaner, as witnessed from the expansive views of the Himalayas that haven’t be seen in 30 years from North India and Nepal, as well as other cities around the world.

With more time for self-reflection, many people are using this sacred time to connect more deeply to what’s inside, to rethink about our relationship with Mother Earth and our relationship with it and with each other through renewed perspectives. For some, it has also been a time of creating deeper bonds with family, or cultivating compassion to support friends or neighbors who may be going through grief, or economic despair during these trying times.

Lessons from the Virus

While the outbreak of the Coronavirus has countless negative effects, from people’s livelihoods, health and food security, the virus is also here to educate us. It is here to help accelerate us to a higher understanding which involves a greater response to life, to our communities and to reclaim our connection to the natural wonders of our planet.

In a message from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama on Earth Day, he shares: “Our mother earth is teaching us a lesson in universal responsibility. This blue planet is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life; its future, our future. Indeed, the earth acts like a mother to us all; as her children, we are dependent on her. In the face of the global problems we are going through it is important that we must all work together.”

Therefore, allow yourself during this sacred time we have to be teachable, and to allow your experiences during quarantine to enlighten you and your own journey, and more importantly, your own potential. For it is our individual and collective potential that will help reshape our interconnected planet, and foster creativity and birth new ideas. Even in the very “act of living, laughing and loving, we can be creative by being fully present and alive in the moment” … this is just one act in unleashing our evolutionary potential.

Creating from Quarantine: Travel Contest Details

Global Family Travels operates on the belief that community-based travel experiences can inspire travelers to take responsibility for the challenges and opportunities facing our increasingly inter-connected planet. Therefore, we invite you to explore your creative side and participate in an art contest to reimagine travel from your window frame of quarantine, showing how your dream trip could contribute to making the world a better place; and maybe even incorporate some of the lessons from these uncertain times.

This contest was inspired by one of our travel partners, the Ladakh Arts & Media Organisation (LAMO) in India, which just finished a similar exercise called “Your Window is Your Frame." You can see some of the submissions from their contest on the LAMO Trust Facebook page.

Global Family Travels will honor the top three contest winners with discounts of up to $500 off one of our 2021 trips! We will also give runners up the opportunity to develop their own dream trips which contribute to making our world a better place! See contest details here.

Feel free to draw inspiration from some of the framework we use to create our trips:

• Global Family Travels’ three pillars of Learn, Serve & Immerse

• Frame the trip around important United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), such as gender equality or supporting quality education.

• Develop a trip around the support of a local or global non-profit you know of doing good work in the destination you want to travel to. Here is a link to our own travel partners which allow us to authentically engage with local communities. 

• Transformational Travel Council (TTC) guiding principles, in which you’re engaging intentionally in a new setting, impacting the community and environment you encounter when you travel, but simultaneously learning and growing.

Below are some of Global Family Travels' more recent trips that build in these goals or principles into our adventures:

• Alaska: Learn, Serve & Immerse in support of literacy

• Peru: Social Impact Trip to the Sacred Valley, supporting the communities with both Quality Education (UNSDG#4) and Gender Equality (UNSDG#5)

• Bali: Global Classroom Trip in support of several UNSDGs, Clean Water and Sanitation (UNSDG#6) and Life Below Water (UNSDG #14):

• India: Empower Girls on a Trip to India (Feb. 2021), supporting Quality Education (UNSDG#4) and Gender Equality (UNSDG#5)

• Discover India with Heart on 8- Limbs of Yoga Retreat (this is a Transformational Travel Council (TTC) trip, encouraging travelers to use the journey as a chance to grow, learn, and transform their lives.

Art Exhibit & Follow our Social Media

An exhibit showcasing the top entries will be held later this year in the Seattle area, so join our mailing list to stay informed about it! We will also be posting entries on our social media pages, so please follow us to see them or search #TransformTravelContest or #BetterWorldTravelContest :

• Global Family Travels' Facebook Page: @GlobalFamilyTravels

• Global Family Travels on Instagram: global_family_travels

• Global Family Travels on Pinterest: gfamilytravels

• Global Family Travels on Twitter: @GFTFamilyTravel

• Global Family Travels on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-family-travels/

#GlobalFamilyTravels #TransformTravelContest #BetterworldTravelContest #GetCreativeBeatCovid19