The adventure and travel world has done a somersault since the start of 2020. It’s left a lot of us feeling a bit dizzy and pausing to consider where to go from here.
International travel is certainly off the table for some time to contain the spread of Covid-19. Yet, as we’re fortunate enough to see lockdowns start to ease in Canada, a number of us are looking towards how we can responsibly get our adventure fix this summer.
For years we’ve fallen in love with glamorous beaches, forests and mountains on our Instagram feeds that are thousands of miles away. There’s something in the exotic that tantalizes, and has made a number of us forget about the jewels in our own backyards.
The Covid-19 pandemic presents an important opportunity to search for these backyard gems – the places we can safely go to enjoy the outdoors, support local sites and small businesses in their recovery, and, importantly, not pose a health risk to those around us through being mindful and keeping space.
And yet this is also a time for us, more than ever, to realize just how connected we are to those who live across the world from us. A pandemic is a global issue, and it highlights the many global issues that both impact and unite each and every one of us. We’re talking Covid-19, the climate crisis, gender inequality, and the need for equal access to education for our next generation.
As we continue to support access to education in Cambodia at Banana Backpacks, it’s more important than ever for us to remember this connectedness and the increased impact the pandemic has had on education in countries like Cambodia where school closures have resulted in challenges to access online learning materials because of internet connectivity, and half of all students are now studying for less than 10 hours a week since the shift to home learning. New types of support are needed to ensure students and families are supported, and our next generation doesn’t suffer from their inability to access education during this challenging period.
This August will mark the launch of our newest campaign, My Backyard Adventure, to highlight places loved by our favourite local adventurers and how our Canadian grown and Cambodia supporting Kiri Collection can help support these adventures. We hope this campaign will help all of the somersaulting adventurers and world travellers out there to learn to love their local, while continuing to support their global world. Today’s global citizen may not travel the world, but they can still help change it for the better.
Anika
