For several years, I’ve felt an ever-stronger calling to organize travel programs that are transformational and life-changing.

That’s why I started the WOW! Travel Club a decade ago, and that’s why I’ve been involved with organizing travel programs to the developing world for a non-profit called Dining for Women.

This kind of travel is quite different from what I’d been doing for most of my career, which has involved booking corporate groups to the poshest, most upscale lodging at the world’s most desirable destinations and arranging unforgettable activities for high-achieving employees who were being rewarded and honored for their stellar performance. As much as I have loved staying in places like Villa d’Este on Lake Como, the Ritz in Madrid, or Dromoland Castle in Ireland, I have always had a soft spot for what I consider to be more authentic travel to places where most American travelers have never ventured.

Given the 8-month Southeast Asian backpacking journey that got me started in this career – and appreciating how that experience transformed my life for the better – I’ve long wanted to offer such travel opportunities for others. I’m finding that I’m a bit ahead of the trend!

A January 3, 2017 article in Vogue entitled, Why “Transformative Travel” Will Be the Travel Trend of 2017,  the author writes that “transformational travel” is the next evolution in the industry. She writes, “It has similar elements of experiential travel, but taken a step further—it’s travel motivated and defined by a shift in perspective, self-reflection and development, and a deeper communion with nature and culture.”

Our culture is so fast-paced and device-driven, I think many people desire to unplug and reconnect with their relationships, with nature, and with themselves. I found this can best be done in a non-Western culture, when there are opportunities to experience strange societies and interact with people much different from ourselves, offering a completely unique perspective onto our own lives and lifestyles that cannot be discovered in any other way.

Indeed, a doctoral student named Michael Bennett researched the elements of adventure travel that lead to deeper transformations. He identified a three-phase process consisting of the departure, the initiation, and the return—the “hero’s journey”—where travelers venture into the unknown to learn wisdom from cultures and places outside their own, returning home to implement this knowledge, ultimately changing their lives and the lives of others around them.

I’m looking forward to developing more and more transformational and philanthropic travel opportunities in the future for my leisure division, the WOW! Travel Club, as well as for Dining for Women, for whom I am in a bidding process to become their chosen travel company for all future travel. (Keep your fingers crossed for me!)

In the process of preparing my proposal for Dining for Women, I’ve recalled two different programs from years ago of which I am extremely proud. Both incorporated some forward-thinking aspects of social responsibility – and both were extremely well-received by our clients and the participants. Both projects were responsible, sustainable and much-needed by the local community.

In 2005, we took a corporate incentive group – a group of a radio station’s top advertisers – to Myanmar when it was just opening up to tourism. We learned about an opportunity to have an elementary school built – from ground up – for only $5,000. We approached the client, who was very receptive and approved the additional budget allocation. Over the course of several months, the school was built and a permanent stone plaque was engraved with the names of all the advertiser customers on the trip. During the course of the program, the group visited the school where they were greeted by all the students and teachers with balloons and wide Burmese smiles.

The other event of which I’m extremely proud took place on the Big Island of Hawaii. For several years, we’d been organizing the annual Hawaii Conference for a group of California’s most prestigious and high-powered civil trial attorneys. Every year, they met at the beautiful 5-star Mauna Kea Beach Resort, where they enjoyed golf and spa and beach and pool each afternoon. At their insistence, the itinerary was unchanged year after year – because everyone enjoyed the routine and familiarity of a consistent itinerary. For me, the self-anointed ‘creative queen’, it was a bit excruciating to not be able to mix things up a bit. But in 2009, I researched an idea that had been simmering for awhile. I approached the elected President, who approved of my concept, as long as it was presented as an “optional” activity. I assured him that nobody would be pressured into participating.

I had contacted the Kawaihae Transitional Housing Facility which had a cluster of manufactured homes on a scrubby patch of sun-swept arid land beside the highway, several miles from the lush, tropical paradise of Mauna Kea.The program provided up to two years of temporary housing to homeless families, providing skills training, education, and support services to assist in their path to self-sufficiency and permanent housing. There were 24 resident families living there, housing 104 people, of which 54 were children. My idea was to build raised-bed vegetable gardens for the families who otherwise had no access to fresh produce.

We got the hotel to provide refreshments, local nurseries to donate trays of vegetable seedlings and enlisted Master Gardeners from the College of Tropical Agriculture from the University of Hawaii to supervise. We called it the Lokahi Garden Project – “lokahi” being a Hawaiian word meaning harmony and balance. We ordered custom t-shirts and water bottles imprinted with the logo we’d designed. The only unknown: would I have any volunteers from this prominent group of trial attorneys willing to give up their precious pool time and get their hands dirty?

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the convoy of rental cars that the valet staff had delivered to the front driveway. There must have been 20 of them! At the appointed hour, the mostly male attorneys – whose billing rates were reputed to be many hundreds of dollars per hour – and their spouses/significant others piled into their cars and took off with the maps I had provided for them. It was a magical afternoon: watching them build planter boxes, shovel dirt, dig holes, transplant seedlings, “massage the root balls,” sweat and laugh – working side by side with the local residents. My participants were hot, dirty, and tired – sporting smiles as sincere and wide as I’d ever seen.

I documented this event in a YouTube video: 

As the song sung by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo‘ole so famously says, “Well, I see trees of green and red roses, too – I watch them bloom for me and you – And I think to myself, what a wonderful world . . .”

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