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MEDEA BENJAMIN CO-FOUNDER AND FOUNDING DIRECTOR GLOBAL EXCHANGE Global Exchange (GX) is a human rights organization that offers more than 50 educational trips in 23 countries. They call their trips "Reality Tours" and participants meet with community leaders, local grassroots organizations and government officials typically inaccessible to travelers. Tour themes range from the legacy of Gandhi in India to post-war Afghanistan, and explore how US policy affects global politics, the environment and social/economic justice. GX WAS FOUNDED IN 1988. How DID IT START AND HOW HAS IT EVOLVED SINCE THEN? My husband, Kevin Danaher, myself, and a friend, Kirsten Moller, got together to create an organization that was very multifaceted, very activist-oriented, and would simply take Americans out of their narrow box, expose them to the broader world , and get them excited and inspired about being change makers themselves. There's an incredible flurry of activity in this office and an evolution that is happening constantly. We get people from around the country calling to say it would be great if we could start going here or there. Someone came in recently and said we should go to North and South Korea now that it is such a conflicted place. So we' re going to do that. Then there's our interest in following world events. When there's a crisis in a place like Venezuela, we try to put a delegation together to go to Venezuela. We're always looking at what's happening around the world and wanting to give people in the US a chance to learn about it firsthand . BEFORE THE CREATION OF GX, WERE THE THREE OF YOU INVOLVED IN LOCAL OR GLOBAL ACTIVISM? Kevin was a professor at American University and was very committed to long-term education; Kirsten came from a labor background. She was a welder-a woman who broke into the men's trade and was really kind of hands-on, lets-get-the-job-done, kind of person; and I had been frustrated by working for a lot of bureaucratic organizations like the UN. I had seen a lot of pain and suffering around the world and wanted to react to it without the constraints of a big bureaucracy. WHAT IS THE EDUCATIONAL COMPONENT OF GX? We knew early on we wanted an organization that was doing long-term educational work. We wanted to provide experiential learning opportunities, as well as written educational materials, so we started the travel program, to take people outside of the US. Although we soon realized that we also wanted to do those kinds of experiential trips here in the United States. It was a false dichotomy to say "let's get people out of their normal everyday lives and take them out of the country." We realized it was more appropriate to say "let's get them out of their normal lives and put them in other situations"-that might be learning about migrant workers in the US as much as it might be going to South Africa to learn what's changed since apartheid. For us, education is getting a very diverse perspective on reality. We call our trips "Reality Tours." If you're going to a country like Haiti for example, where go percent of the people are poor, and don't have access to a good education, then go percent of the perspective you hear should be from those people, with maybe 10 percent from the elite, or from international observers. How DO YOU CHOOSE THE ORGANIZATIONS YOU DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS WITH? It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of community building, learning from each other, a lot of compromise on both parts, and a lot of cultural sensitivity . We often have to push our partners to show the negative things in their country. We work with the kind of people that travelers would probably never get to meet on their own. This includes government figures, "WE DESPERATELY NEED TO SHOW THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE AMERICAN ... THAT THERE ARE MANY OF US WHO LOVE THE REST OF THE WORLD AND THINK GLOBAL DIVERSITY IS A POSITIVE THING. WE'RE ALREADY PLANNING A TRIP TO IRAQ AS SOON AS IT'S SAFE TO GO THERE." MEDEA BENJAMIN, CO-FOUNDER + FOUNDING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL EXCHANGE heads of international agencies, and most importantly grassroots organizations and local activists-people with very little funding and oftentimes little training who manage to do amazing things in their lives. We hope our participants can find the same kind of inspiration. Do YOU EVER FIND IT HARD TO ACCESS CERTAIN ORGANIZATIONS OR COUNTRIES? Yes. In Cuba it's hard for us to have meetings with dissident groups. We do it occasionally, but not on every trip . I just went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi women. In that kind of situation it's hard to break away from government minders. It's often hard to have frank discussions about political situations, so we have to be sensitive and we certainly don't want to put our participants at any risk. We know we're living in a volatile world, and have to be careful about where we go and when we go, but we also try to push the envelope. YOUR WEBSITE ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO TRAVEL DESPITE THREATS OF TERRORISM. WHY MIGHT EDUCATIONAL TRAVEL BE MORE IMPORTANT NOW, GIVEN THE WORLD'S CURRENT POLITICAL CLIMATE? We desperately need to show the positive side of the American people, we need to show that there are many of us who love the rest of the world and think global diversity is a positive thing. There are so many misconceptions in the United States about the world. When I went to Iraq in February I realized the misconceptions I had. I had seen so many pictures of Sadaam Hussein shooting off a rifle that I figured Iraq would be an intensely oppressive police state where it was very hard to interact with people. I didn't realize what a vibrant society it really was. There were 30 theater performances going on while we were there, as well as poetry readings everyday, and musical concerts every evening-a 3,000-year-old history that had not been erased by Sadaam Hussein. I was blown away by how incredibly friendly and helpful the people were, and how understanding they were about the differences between governments and people. AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, YOU OFFERED A TRIP TO AFGHANISTAN FOR THE FAMILIES OF VICTIMS. WILL GX's INVOLVEMENT WITH THE MIDDLE EAST CONTINUE TO GROW? Definitely. We're already planning a trip to Iraq as soon as it's safe to go there. We have been doing a trip to Palestine and Israel on a regular basis, although it was put on hold during the recent war. WHAT IMPACTS DO GX TRIPS HAVE ON PARTICIPANTS? Oftentimes these trips have changed their lives. Some participants have come back and changed their career and lifestyle . TAKE A TRIP TO REALITY DISCOVER AFGHAN HERITAGE Visit sites that reflect the art and culture of Afghanistan and learn about the role art continues to play in Afghan life. HAITI: CULTURE OR RESISTANCE Learn about Haiti's history of US occupations, the Duvalier dictatorship and the rise of the Lavalas movement and subsequent coup. ZIMBABWE + SOUTH AFRICA: LAND, HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT Learn about the current land debate. the HIV/AIDS crisis. the pitfalls ofneo-liberal development, and what grassroots activism one these issues. CONTACT GLOBAL EXCHANGE 800-497-1994. www.globalexchange.org/tours 24

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