Dear Adventure Women,
While we enjoy bringing you news of our upcoming adventures, as well as sharing happy memories from your trips even during challenging times, recent events have left us all with feelings of sorrow, grief, anger, and frustration. Given our overwhelming sadness about what is taking place in our country today, we feel it is necessary to take action to address the pain and heartache communities of color are facing today and every day.
Our thoughts are with George Floyd, his family, and the long list of lives lost. Hatred, discrimination, bias, and injustice have no place in our society. We believe that black lives matter, and we stand in solidarity with everyone advocating peacefully to end racism as we hope to create a more just and equal society.
As a company, we’ve always believed in and promoted a culture of respect, inclusion, kindness, and equal treatment of all people including each other, our guests, our Ambassadors, our guides, and all of the people we meet along the way. Inclusivity and respect remain the pillars of our core values as a company. Through our travels, we’ve seen the power of connecting with people of all different backgrounds, and know that through conversation and compassion, we can all learn to be better allies. By confronting our own histories, we will be able to be even more compassionate as we travel throughout this very diverse world.
We can all do better, and we as a company need to do better. We recognize the privilege within the travel industry, and that we all have blind spots and implicit biases. We need to work toward a future where we can all help to effect change in the fight against racism. We are committed to being part of the solution. Now is the time to listen, reflect, examine, and educate ourselves.
If you’d like to join us in being part of the change, there are many ways that you can make a positive impact by visiting organizations like Color of Change or the NAACP online, frequenting black-owned businesses in your neighborhood, taking the time to listen and talk to black leaders in your communities, tuning into Podcasts, signing petitions, and voting.
May our hearts, minds, and actions be focused on ending systemic racism and healing in America.
“It’s not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” -Audre Lorde
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