Global Leadership Adventures

For the past two summers I have went on trips with GLA. Both my family and I are extremely happy with this program and all it provides. My first summer I took a trip to the Galapagos. Our whole family was nervous that I would be going away for two weeks in a foreign country. I went on the trip and had the best experience I could have imagined. The mentors were extremely nice and welcoming. Some of our staff even lived in the Galapagos and had great knowledge of the area and answered all of my questions. I was able to call my parents at any time I wanted, something that my parents found amazing and extremely beneficial. The volunteer work was difficult yet rewarding, as we spend a lot of time cutting down tall elephant grass (an invasive species in the area). In addition to volunteering, the GLA program provided a way for us students to experience the galapagos in a way a normal visitor would not. Of course we did a lot of the tourist excursions and visited tourist locations, but we were also able to do things such as play soccer with a champion team of kids from that area. From amazing food to kayaking to swimming with sharks and sea lions, those two weeks I spent in Ecuador made me grow as a person. My parents remarked that I had not only changed my views as a global citizen, but matured as an independent teenager after the trip. The following year, after a lot of begging, I convinced my parents to help pay for another trip. This summer I went to Thailand for three weeks. It was an experience very different from my mule ridding and snorkeling in the Galapagos yet it was amazing no matter how different. In Thailand most of our time was spent in Chiang Mai, a province of Thailand. We stayed in a gorgeous hostel-like hotel that was exclusively used for GLA. We spent our time volunteering at orphanages for children with HIV or those who had been trafficked and group homes for pregnant mothers and women who have young children. The volunteer work affected me a lot as I love children and has encouraged me to do more in my community today. In addition to volunteer work we had opportunities to try exotic (spicy!) food, ride elephants, visit street markets, and even zip line through beautiful forests. My experiences on both trips were very different, yet I would strongly recommend either one of them for a high school student who wants to step out of their comfort zone and see the world. GLA gives an opportunity to see the world in a way that is often unaccessible to the typical tourist. It is an experience that allows you to immerse yourself in the culture around you and take in all that it has to offer.

Hello Everyone ! I am Max Bone. I'm a high school sophomore from Detroit, Michigan. Last summer I had the amazing, life changing experience to travel to and live in Cuzco, Peru for three weeks with Global Leadership Adventures. Those three weeks changed my life and my views forever. For parents who are reading this, trying to decide whether to send your child on a program to a foreign country, all I can say is you won’t regret it! I understand it is a scary thought, sending them off to a foreign country for an extended amount of time. I can assure you, you will be glad you did when your child returns a few weeks later tired, but smiling, excited to talk about the amazing experience they just had. GLA provides these experiences through three main ways: Community Service, Leadership Activities, and Cultural Exchange Activities. The community service changes from country to country, but I have talked to who kids who have been on 10 different Global Leadership Adventures programs in 8 different countries. They have all loved the work that they were doing, felt a strong connection to the work they were doing, and felt like they were making a HUGE difference in their host community. I am going to use my program to illustrate this. My group was building a green house out of adobe bricks in a small mountain community to help combat the increasing malnutrition rate among the youth of the Cusco region of Peru. It was amazing knowing that the work that I was doing would make a huge impact on this community for years to come. Seeing all of the hard work that we were putting in pay off and finishing 70% more than we were expected to felt so good! It helped me realize how important hard work is and how much it pays off. The gratitude that the community expressed for our hard work cannot be explained in words. The second way that Global Leadership Adventures does this is through leadership sessions and mentor groups. This is something unique to Global Leadership Adventures that no other organization I have seen does. These sessions focus on taking all that you are learning and experiencing and applying it to your life, and asking what you will do with it when you return home. These sessions also include talking about important qualities of leaders and aspects of life such as empathy, humility, service, communication and decision making. These sessions take place in both large group settings and small group settings. I truly miss these sessions, and they are one of the things I look forward to most when I return to Global Leadership Adventures next summer. The staff that Global Leadership Adventures has put together is also fantastic. They are all amazing, talented, smart, and inspiring individuals. I was able to get to know all of the staff really well; from the cooks at home base, to my personal mentor. There is also a large aspect placed on local cultural activities and fun. These included everything from getting my fortune told by a traditional practicing, Inca shawman, to hiking and camping the Inca trail, to visiting Machu Picchu to learning about traditional Inca medicine, to getting to dress up in Andean attire and performing a traditional dance ! These activities really gave me a better understanding and made me feel connected to the Inca culture, instead of just having knowledge of it. Global Leadership Adventures also does an amazing job with safety. There was not a single time during my program when I did not feel safe. GLA has a five point safety system that is followed. This system includes safe and secure lodging ( the home base is ONLY used by GLA students and staff ) , caring supervision, healthy meals and pure water, expert local knowledge, and safe and comfortable transportation. My trip to Peru last summer was a fantastic, life changing experience. All I can say to you is GO,GO,GO,GO! You will come home changed. If you have any questions about Global Leadership Adventures or the Peru program, please let me know via email at [email protected] . If you would like to see photos from my trip, please email me and I can share with you my Facebook page where you can view them. Parents, if you would like to hear from a parent whose child has gone on a GLA trip, and who is trusting them again with the safety of their kid (this time in Africa) please email and I will be more than happy to put you in contact with my parents. Thank You for your interest in Global Leadership Adventures. I am so excited for you to embark on a life changing journey !

Hello everyone, my name is Dylan Sanders, and I hail from New York City. Last summer, I attended a Global Leadership Adventures program entitled Costa Rica: Nature's Kaleidoscope, now renamed Empowering Rainforest Communities. At the time, I was coming out of freshman year in high school, and all traveling I had ever done was with family or friends, never alone. Over the course of that year, now disillusioned with sumer camp, I had been searching for something new and exciting to do, and GLA fit the bill perfectly. Upon discovering the organization, doing loads of research, and talking to many a contact over the phone, I decided to enter into a program, and I was not disappointed. The staff at GLA are great people, they're extremely helpful, almost always reachable, and really kind. They made preparation really easy, and had loads of useful materials to help me learn about my destination, as well as prepare for journeying alone, living without family, etc. When in Costa Rica, I can most certainly say that I had just about the best two weeks of my entire life. After recovering from the initial shock of living in the middle of the rainforest, in extremely rustic living conditions very different from my New York City, I came to love the place, and quickly grew to think of it as my home. This was the first time I had traveled alone, and more importantly lived with complete and total strangers for any period of time, and so I had no clue what to expect. By the second day, however, we had already developed strong bonds, and a great game of soccer in the pouring rain only helped to strengthen them. Over the course of the trip, these bonds between all of the students as well as the mentors only got stronger, and by the end of the program we had come to resemble a massive family, all of whom loved one another. The service we did was incredible as well. We first worked planting trees in deforested areas to support the green tunnel project, a project that worked to build and expand on the lush rainforest so as to grant many animals their homes once again. Along with this, we also did service at a local school, installing signs and playing with the local children. In the second location we stayed, we worked to clear and build trails in the dense cloud forest, to serve explorers and scientists to come after us. Although hard, our service was extremely rewarding, and also extremely fun. Along with service, the program was full of amazing activities and excursions. We hiked through the forests, swam in waterfalls, climbed an active volcano, and ziplined through the canopy, along with many other amazing experiences. On the topic of safety, I have never been in more capable and safe hands as GLA. The organization as a whole has developed a 5-point safety plan, and works to uphold it's values constantly, making sure that every part of the journey is as safe as it is fun. On my program specifically, there were two extremely capable and amazing mentors who helped to make the program as safe as it could possibly be, while keeping it exciting and amazing. All in all, if you want to experience something unlike any other, something amazing and exciting and fun, I advise that you make sure to do a GLA program. No matter where you choose to go, you will not be disappointed, and I assure you that you will have the time of your life!