Adventure tour operator Explore Worldwide has announced the launch of the Explore Foundation. The foundation’s mission is to positively impact the lives of communities worldwide by supporting grassroots projects that target poverty, increase access to education and healthcare and promote conservation.
A registered charity, the Explore Foundation is managed by an independent Board of Trustees, but benefits from Explore’s huge community of overseas partners and contacts to help identify and support projects in countries that Explore customers visit.
“A Foundation has been a long-standing goal of Explore’s, and it has been several months in the making,” said Michael Edwards, Managing Director of Explore.
“We’re incredibly proud of what we do at Explore, but launching a Foundation is probably one of the single things that we’re most proud of in our 41 year history. We’re a company that puts purpose alongside profit, and we know that travel can be a real force for good in the world. This is the very exciting next step in our sustainability strategy, and it’s going to be absolutely core to what we do in the future.”
Supporting projects and initiatives in the countries it visits has been a part of Explore’s modus operandi for many years, and the Foundation is launching with two projects that Explore has worked with for several years: Lone Buffalo in Laos and One Bike in Tanzania.
In Laos, Lone Buffalo has created a program called Develop Together, which aims to give Secondary school students (in which only 3% of young people are in attendance) access to learning opportunities and expert workshops to encourage them to reach their full academic potential.
Set at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, One Bike is a social enterprise that uses bicycles to empower and improve the local community through education, environmental awareness and promoting sustainable tourism.
100% of all contributions received goes directly to supporting the work of these initiatives on the ground.
“The Explore Foundation has a really important role to play in bridging the gap between travellers and the lives and communities of the places they visit,” Edwards said.
“We know that 87% of people think it’s important to give back to communities they visit, so being able to facilitate communication and education between these groups of people is a huge part of it.”
To celebrate the Foundation launch, Explore will be matching all One Bike donations in July up to the value of 25 brand new bikes. With an initial donation of 50 bikes already provided by the Foundation, they hope to fund 100 new bikes this month alone.
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