Global Buddies: Building Bridges for Change in the 21st Century

The idea for Global Buddies originated from my experiences traveling with my now-ten-year-old daughter to countries in Africa and Asia, starting when she was five. My work with UCLA’s Global Center for Children and Families took me to South Africa, China, Thailand and other places, where my daughter and I spent time in a number of impoverished communities.

While I worked, my daughter occupied herself playing with the local children. As we returned to one South African township over the course of several years, I observed a remarkable friendship form between my daughter and a young African girl. They negotiated their divergent backgrounds and cultures to make a deep connection, finding ongoing delight in each other’s company.

It was easy to see how much my daughter was gaining from this friendship – learning to enjoy unstructured time, play without special equipment, and become comfortable in an environment very different from what she knew at home. She responded with real joy to a culture in which, despite their poverty and hardships, the children seemed happier and more content than those in the U.S.

I could also see how beneficial the friendship was for the African child. She was learning that the world was much bigger than her own small community, and having the experience of being a valued friend to a visitor from another country. She was developing a sense of herself as someone who lived in a global community, with all kinds of connections and possibilities open to her.

I started Global Buddies to make these kinds of experiences available on a larger scale to children and families around the world. I wanted to turn people’s natural urge to travel into something that would provide a deeper, more meaningful experience for travelers and locals alike.

Talking with parents in my own circle, I knew that many wanted their children to have a larger experience of the world. I also knew that families wanted to travel in a way that let them really get to know people in the places they visited. They wanted to be welcomed into a community and experience the real life of a place, not just have superficial tourist interactions. And they wanted to visit communities where personal relationships matter more than material wealth.

I began developing community partnerships to bring groups of families to engage with local families they would never get to know otherwise. In many places, poverty, culture or geography cuts local residents off from travelers. While “reality tours”—which take visitors through impoverished communities—are increasingly popular, they do not give residents and travelers the chance to really get to know each other and share meaningful experiences as equals.

The kind of exchange Global Buddies offers seems to represent a new model of community development. By fostering ties between communities based on personal relationships and direct connections, we are bringing together small efforts by a lot of people to make a large difference in the world.

Global Buddies arose from my personal relationships with Women for Peace in South Africa and UYDEL in Uganda. As we expand to additional destinations, we seek a network of partners and local liaisons to help sustain the personal, long-term relationships our approach requires.

We need partnerships that help raise our profile within the travel industry, to market trips more widely. As we offer more trips, we need to increase outreach to fill them. Filling trips to capacity will then help to spread our innovation further, as it will increase personal referrals and let us begin offering scholarship assistance to low-income families.