Big Five – FeedDear Advisor Partners,
We are always looking for signs of what 2022 will look like. Sure, there have been some twists and turns to start the year, so perhaps the signs are not as clear as we would like. However, after the amazing letter from our CEO in last week’s blog, a love letter to the industry if you will, we thought we would share our first video of 2022. We want to share some of our successes with you since, in a large part, you were responsible for them.
Our commitment to being socially responsible and traveling with meaning was scaled up as business started to pick up. It’s actually the most important achievement for us, beyond any key performance indicator, because our commitment to helping those in need is what keeps us grounded. In 2021, we launched three new sustainability projects under our GIB 5.0 umbrella, and every complete Big Five journey supports one of these projects automatically. To read more about how GIB 5.0 works click here. We helped launch Kipi the robot, which was deployed to the poorest parts of Peru to bring education to communities that lack even basic internet connection as a form of fighting drug trafficking. Thanks to your help, we launched a clean water project in Guatemala partnering with EcoFiltro, putting us on track to provide over 2000 children in Guatemala with clean water for two years starting in 2022. Our long-standing support of Ereto Primary School accelerated into high gear, thanks to your generous contributions, that allowed us to grow this school from 20 children over 8 years ago, to more than 300 children as of January 1, 2022. We restarted our funding of the Jetwing Youth Development program in Sri Lanka partnering with Jetwing Hotels to provide hospitality training for inner-city youth and those born in conflict, in order to offer a viable future. We shifted back from poverty alleviation to micro-entrepreneurship for Andean women in the Sacred Valley of Peru through our partnership with Awamaki. Providing equitable wages for these women through weaving, we even contracted them for the handmade bracelets so many of you received at the travel conferences we participated in from Virtuoso Travel Week to ILTM.
We have so much more planned for 2022 on the horizon. That however starts with some levity and a possible sign of good times…my injuries. In fact, we created a video for you just to make you smile. Happy New Year everyone! We are looking forward to taking on 2022 with you, even if I am typing left-handed these days.
