Frequently Asked Questions


What are Reality Tours?

The idea that travel can be educational and positively influence international affairs motivated the first Reality Tour in 1989. Reality Tours was founded on the principles of experiential education and are intended to educate people about how we, both individually and collectively, contribute to global problems. We then suggest ways in which we can contribute to and facilitate positive change. Global Exchange's Reality Tours are not designed to provide immediate solutions or remedy the world's most intractable problems, nor are they simply a brand of voyeurism.

Reality Tours offer participants an opportunity to journey to other countries to examine a situation firsthand. This gives the individual the chance to understand the issues beyond what is communicated by the mass media. By joining us on one of these delegations, a participant will have the chance to learn about unfamiliar cultures, meet with people from various walks of life, and establish meaningful relationships with people from other countries. Most significantly, Reality Tours endow participants with a new vantage point from which to view and affect US foreign policy. We hope to also prompt participants to examine related issues in their own community and society.

For over 15 years we have promoted alternative, educational travel as a way to replace feelings of apathy with deeper understanding and a sense of empowerment. Relationship building is essential to this transformation. Thus every tour seeks to establish people-to-people ties through introducing participants to individuals and communities that most travelers would never meet on their own. These ties, in many cases, are the result of building symbiotic programs between host communities and Global Exchange. We aspire to facilitate new relationships between these contacts and our new participants, be they individuals, universities, or membership associations.

Today we offer a variety of educational programs that address contemporary political, economic, environmental, and cultural issues around the world.

How are Reality Tours related to Global Exchange?

Global Exchange is an international human rights organization dedicated to promoting political, economic, environmental, and social justice. Since our founding in 1988, we have increased the US public's awareness of global issues while building progressive, grassroots international partnerships. Global Exchange pursues these goals through five program area: Political and Civil Rights Campaigns, which complement the traditional human rights' organizations observation and monitoring work with activities aimed at directly empowering grassroots human rights movements within our target areas of Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Middle East; Economic Rights Campaigns, which struggle for the elimination of sweatshop abuses, monitor corporate behavior, and challenge global rule-makers such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund; Fair Trade, which helps build economic justice from the bottom up through the sale of handicrafts that generate income for artisans in over 37 countries; Public Education, which produces books, videos, articles, and editorials and organizes educational workshops and nationwide speaking tours that bring community leaders from around the world to the US to educate citizens on critical global issues; and Reality Tours, which educate the public about domestic and international issues through socially responsible travel.

What sort of trips do we sponsor?

We organize several types of socially responsible and educational study seminars; fact-finding, solidarity, and activist delegations; and customized tours for academic, business, and professional organizations.

Reality Tours offer participants an in-depth look at the reality of a destination country through interactive observation of the host society. Depending on a particular trip's theme, participants might learn about one or several of the following subjects: the country's history, politics, economy, religion, government, health care, agriculture, education, and environment, all while participating in exciting cultural activities. We also arrange and sponsor delegations focused on women's, veteran's, professional, youth, and other interest groups' issues, or focused on a particular event such as election activities, international conferences, and festivals.

Through both formal and informal interactions, our participants come away with an enriched understanding of the hopes, struggles, and accomplishments of the people with whom we meet. Our diverse programs often include meetings and visits with community organizations, government officials, journalists, scientists, university professors, doctors, writers, artists, musicians, dancers, environmentalists, and representatives from religious and human rights groups. Each delegation has the unique opportunity to travel to various cities, towns, and villages to speak with local individuals involved in contemporary sociopolitical issues such as sustainable development, gender discrimination, armed violence and conflict resolution, human rights, and the impacts of economic globalization.

We are currently organizing trips to Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, California, Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Ireland, Jamaica, Laos, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine/Israel, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Turkey, and Vietnam. We also organize customized tours to a wide variety of countries.

Who can participate?

Our standard, pre-designed educational seminars are open to anyone who has a genuine interest in learning about the destination country and who demonstrates adaptability and sensitivity toward different cultural realities.

Our fact-finding, solidarity, and activist delegations are designed in the context of existing programs and are targeted to specific audiences with the qualifications and level of engagement that makes them eligible to work with our host communities.

We also offer customized tours. The content and orientation of these trips are specifically designed for the participants. In the past, we have arranged tours for academic institutions, membership organizations, religious groups, and professional groups. For more info about our custimozed tours, click here.

What about travel to Cuba?

For more information on travel to Cuba, please click here to visit our Cuba Program site.

How do we prepare participants for their experience?

Before a tour departs, we encourage participants to educate themselves about the destination country and the issues that will be addressed on the trip. We send each participant a general information packet, a recommended reading list, and an educational outline. During the tour we not only arrange dialogues with the host organizations and individuals with whom we meet, but through formal meetings participants also have opportunities to share experiences and observations among themselves.

What is the long-term impact?

Our participants return home with an enlightened perspective, an expanded worldview, and a sense of how they each can communicate what they have learned to their family, friends, community, and nation.

When a tour returns, we send participants contact lists of the groups we met with, as well as additional information about other organizations or campaigns involved in issues addressed on the tour so participants can stay involved after their return. Our alumni regularly: write articles, op-eds, and letters to the editors; make presentations to their friends, families, schools, unions, churches, and community groups; produce radio shows and videos; give financial aid to grassroots groups they have met with; volunteer with organizations they have visited or new ones they discover after the trip; invite people that they met abroad to the US; and create follow-up customized tours.

Similarly, it is our mission that the people we meet with in destination countries benefit from the Reality Tour experience. Many past participants donate time, technology, medicines, books, and money to the groups they met with when abroad. After traveling, other participants have supported cooperatives in destination countries by purchasing and importing local, often hand-crafted, products. In some cases, local organizations and individuals benefit from the publicity, new local interest and renewed local support the tours generate.

Most important, both participants and hosts benefit from the opportunity to share philosophies, experiences and programs. Innovative and exciting ideas travel from the host countries to participants' home countries. For example, participants on past trips have learned about Cuba's widespread use of organic agriculture, the unique community organizing strategies of landless peasants in Brazil, and sustainable development practices in India.

Reality Tours' knowledgeable staff maintains continual communication with the people we visit in destination countries. We ask the organizations we meet to evaluate the experience, and we then incorporate their desires and constructive criticism into our future trips. We only meet with those individuals and groups that have invited us, and we return only if the experience is deemed mutually valuable. Additionally, because we attempt to minimize our impact on the local environment, our tour groups usually stay in locally owned lodgings, employ local guides, and keep as much revenue as possible in the host country.

How are we funded?

Reality Tours charges people to participate in our study seminars, though we offer financial assistance to selected recipients. Any money we generate is used to grow, create future programs and add new destinations. Our Reality Tour fees generally include all transportation within the country, double room accommodation, trip guides, translation of all programs, admission fees, reading materials, two to three meals daily, visas, program fees, and an experienced trip leader. Trips range from $850 to $3,000 and last from seven to 14 days. In all cases, unless otherwise stated in the specific information for each tour, participants must purchase their own airfare to get themselves to the host country and obtain a visa independently.

How can someone contact Reality Tours?

Global Exchange Reality Tours
2017 Mission Street, #303
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: 415-255-7296
Toll free: 800-497-1994 ext. 261
Fax: 415 255-7498
realitytours@globalexchange.org
For a full directory of individual trip coordinators click here.