The idea that travel can be educational and positively influence international affairs motivated the first Reality Tour in 1988.  Global Exchange’s Reality Tours are not designed to provide immediate solutions or remedies to the world’s most intractable problems, nor are they simply a kind of voyeurism. Rather, Reality Tours are meant to educate people about how we, individually and collectively, contribute to global problems, and, then, to suggest ways in which we can contribute to positive change locally and internationally.

Reality Tours offer participants an opportunity to journey to other countries to examine a situation first-hand, to see beyond what is communicated by the mass media. By joining us on one of these delegations, participants have the chance to learn about unfamiliar cultures, meet with people from all walks of life, and establish meaningful relationships with people from other countries.
 
For decades Reality Tours has promoted experiential education and alternative, sustainable and socially responsible travel as a way to empower our participants while promoting the local economy and wellbeing of our hosts. Relationship building is essential to this transformation. Every tour seeks to establish people-to-people ties through introducing participants to local individuals that most travelers would never meet on their own. These ties, we hope, will also prompt participants to examine their own societies and inspire learning, sharing and advocacy after the tour is over.
 
Reality Tours offers over 100 delegations a year to over 40 destinations that address contemporary political, economic, environmental, and cultural issues around the world.
You can begin your search for a tour by country, date, or issue.
 
Global Exchange Reality Tours can also custom design a delegation for your school, place of worship, workplace, or professional association. If there’s a country you want to visit or an issue you would like to explore and you can put together a group of 6 or more people, please contact Malia Everette, Reality Tours Director (External Relations) at 800-497-1994 ext. 233 or malia@globalexchange.org.
 
Join us on an educational adventure that will change your life!