Through the new Reach the World Travel Club, Gohagan — with 40 years of leadership in affinity travel for alumni associations, museums and cultural institutions — is marketing five trips to cruisers keen to share their experiences virtually with students in real time.
‘It’s a perfect fit,’ said Reach the World board member John Delaney, senior advisor, Virgin Voyages.
First up is a Rhine River cruise aboard Amadeus Brilliant, departing in May. Imagine a classroom in middle America that’s studying medieval architecture asking travelers on that cruise to photograph elements of a castle in a kind of educational scavenger hunt. Later, from the boat, passengers will connect in a live call with the students to describe what they saw and share their pictures.
Better than a textbook
This engagement ‘makes the kind of learning you would normally do through a textbook 100% better, more personal,’ according to Reach the World’s Timothy Jacob, director, traveler and explorer programs. One silver lining of the pandemic is the US investment into virtual learning ‘so today, when we go to schools with an opportunity to go live to a riverboat in Germany, almost everybody says yes.’
Jacob dubbed Reach the World Travel Club members ‘traveler-educators.’
‘You don’t have to be an educator to have an educator spirit,’ he said, ‘and anybody can be trained to translate their zest for travel and their lifelong learning into something kids can use.’
Great Lakes, Amazon, Galápagos and Greece-Ephesus cruises
A former teacher, Jacob helps craft the curricular connections for each trip. Future Reach the World Travel Club journeys include a Great Lakes cruise aboard Ponant’s Le Bellot that could impart information about freshwater ecosystems, lighthouses and the mechanics of locks. An Amazon River expedition in Peru aboard Zafiro will enable travelers to share what they learn about the everyday lives of people in the rainforest and they can buy a local handicraft to deliver to the school after the trip.
A Galápagos expedition on Silversea Cruises’ Silver Origin can help students learn about endemic species, a unique ecosystem and natural history, while a Greek Isles and Ephesus trip on Ponant’s Le Bougainville will give the chance to talk about Greek mythology, temples and living history.
John Delaney fostered the first cruise connection with Reach the World and serves as a member of its board
The Greek Isles and Ephesus trip will be hosted by Delaney. When he was president of Windstar Cruises, he fostered the first cruise connection with Reach the World, a 56-day ‘Grand Caribbean’ voyage where crew had virtual exchanges with classrooms about their work and interactions with local cultures and the natural world.
‘It took me 30 minutes in a classroom in the Bronx to become a believer [in Reach the World], seeing these kids queuing up over and over to ask questions,’ Delaney related.
(Besides his work with Reach the World, Delaney’s involved in building cruise curricula for hospitality colleges and this month he participated in Seatrade Cruise Global’s ‘Tomorrow’s Talent Today,’ a program that explored cruise career opportunities.)
Content kids love
The Gohagan-crafted trips are ‘all great examples of the kind of content kids just absolutely love, and with education goals,’ Delaney said.
Gohagan — led by cruise industry veteran Ted Sykes, CEO, Certares Homecoming — created Reach the World Travel Club mailers and is handling reservations.
‘This was a pure give-back by Gohagan,’ Delaney said, ‘to donate a percentage of the sales from these five cruises, to have Reach the World staff on the ships to get their guests involved in the journey and create the content and interaction with the classrooms.’
Pre-departure virtual training is available for those who wish to become a traveler-educator. Onboard activities are planned that are ‘fun, easy and optional,’ Jacob said. These will be available every day, with three to five live calls a week with classrooms.
Sharing the benefits of travel with all people
Reach the World was founded by Heather Halstead, who started this work when she was 22 and in college. A pioneer of virtual exchange, she sailed 25,000 miles around the globe equipped with an early satellite transmitter, connecting her journey to third grade classrooms in low-income public schools in Harlem.
Halstead’s motivated by the guiding principle that ‘Travel and global engagement have a broad set of benefits, and we need to do everything we can to share those benefits with all people, instead of just with the affluent and globally-connected sectors of society.’
At left, students at Lincoln School in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey interact with their Reach the World traveler in El Salvador. At right, a live event for K-12 students from an expedition ship in Antarctica, part of the Endurance22 misson that found Shackleton’s Endurance
She shared a couple stories illustrating Reach the World’s impact. A third-grader learned that ‘people all around the world face the same struggles I do.’ The child was dealing with housing insecurity. ‘I have never forgotten how much it meant to her to feel a part of a global community,’ Halstead said.
Another child said: ‘At first, I had no reason to care about the rainforest. Why should it matter to me? I live in the city. But after Reach the World, I found a reason to care.’
‘Cascading waterfall of positive effects’
And Halstead said Reach the World benefits for-profit travel companies, too — it supports the development of their brands, makes customers happy, drives deeper meaning from travel and contributes to social good.
Jacob added: ‘We’ve seen, time and again, this exposure of younger students to travelers leads to a cascading waterfall of positive effects: Curiosity about the wider world, interest in college attendance and study abroad, awareness of scholarship opportunities to study abroad, compatibility for jobs at multinational corporations. All these things that are part of our globally connected world begin wth early positive experiences.’
He said it’s Halstead’s mission to someday have enough travel-educators in the field that schools can contact Reach the World with requests such as ‘We’re learning about the great pyramids. Can you connect us with someone who’s standing right there? And the answer will be: Absolutely, next week.’
In 2025, the hope is to double Reach the World Travel Club’s trips to 10.
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