Ready to get 2021 started off on the right foot? If you love all things travel or if you’re a travel content creator, then you don’t want to miss these virtual events!
The Wanderful community hosts multiple weekly events focused on all things travel. It could be a virtual tour of a city or tips for grabbing the best travel deals; sometimes we chat about traditional food and other times we discuss how to dismantle oppressive systems. Wanderful is as multifaceted and dynamic as each of our globally-minded members!
Interested in joining the conversation? We’re a welcoming membership community and we would love to have you join us! Learn all about joining the Wanderful community and check out the many membership benefits, including attending events for free.
Here are our top virtual events for travelers and creators in January 2021.
Wanderful’s January Rundown
- Jan 5: Setting Goals for Your Business to Start 2021 Off Strong
- Jan 9: Conscious Traveler Reading Club: Beyond Guilt Trips
- Jan 14: Part 1: Transforming Your Life and Business from the Inside Out
- Jan 15: Workshop: Creating a Media Kit with Award-Winning Blogger, Leticia Barr
- Jan 19: How to Transform Your Travel Photos Using 5 Basic Edits
- Jan 21: Allyship in Action: Creators Holding Travel Brands Accountable
- Jan 26: How to Plan the Perfect Road Trip with Teresa of Sparkle Adventures
Virtual Events for Travel Lovers
January 9: Conscious Traveler Reading Club: Beyond Guilt Trips
Wanderful’s Conscious Traveler reading club is a community-led reading and discussion circle for our Wanderful members to be better informed and educated on how to be a better traveler.
Each month, we read and discuss a fiction or non-fiction book or reading centered around any number of topics that make us more conscious travelers, including ethical travel, social impact, anti-racism, racial justice, and the experiences and worldviews of other marginalized communities.
Our January reading is Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World by Dr. Anu Taranath. It was listed as one of Oprah Magazine’s “26 Best Travel Books of All Time”.
Description [via Amazon.com]
Every year, hundreds of thousands of young people pack their bags to study or volunteer abroad. Well-intentioned and curious Westerners–brought up to believe that international travel broadens our horizons–travel to low-income countries to learn about people and cultures different from their own. While travel abroad can provide much-needed perspective, it can also be deeply unsettling, confusing, and discomforting. Travelers can find themselves unsure about how to think or speak about the differences in race or culture they find, even though these differences might have fueled their desire to travel in the first place.
In Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, storyteller Anu Taranath begins at home, unpacking our baggage about who we are, where we come from, and how much we have. She takes us on a journey through engaging personal travel stories and thought-provoking questions, providing us with tools to grapple with our discomfort and navigate differences with accountability and connection. Yes, travel! But be mindful. Be present.
January 19: How to Transform Your Travel Photos Using 5 Basic Edits
Sometimes when we look at our travel photos, they can be a little boring compared to our real life experience. They may not turn out at all like the scene or subject that you remember seeing. When you travel, you don’t always get the perfect lighting, or select the perfect exposure settings, or even get just the right composition.
But with just a few quick adjustments, your photos can go from boring to fabulous! Diane Evans of PhotoFluent® will show you 5 basic edits that every travel photo will benefit from.
Want to dig even deeper into travel photography? Sign up for our Wanderful Academy course, Photography for Travelers!
About the Presenter: Diane is a photographer and founder of PhotoFluent®, where she teaches other travelers how to create photos they love. She does this through coaching, online training, and her blog.
She’s been studying photography for over 20 years. It didn’t always come easily to her and she came back from too many trips with bad photos. But once she figured out the technology and connected that to the creative aspect of making travel photos, she wanted to help other women travelers do the same.
January 26: How to Plan the Perfect Road Trip with Teresa of Sparkle Adventures
Dreaming about a road trip? Not sure where to start? Or how to narrow down where to go? Learn how to turn your dreams of a road trip into a detailed itinerary.
In this workshop, Teresa Willis will show you the steps to go from dreaming about a road trip to a detailed itinerary.
About the Presenter: Teresa Willis has been planning her family’s adventures for 30 years. She recently launched Sparkle Adventures, an adventure travel planning company specializing in outdoor adventure travel in the US. She is excited to share her tips for planning a road trip.
Virtual Events For Travel Content Creators
January 5: Setting Goals for Your Business to Start 2021 Off Strong
2020 wasn’t the year so many of us anticipated. For many, we have been totally derailed, especially in the travel blogging industry!
This session will give you a chance to rethink your goals and break them down into smaller, actionable and achievable steps. Together, we will get you focused and ready to move forward in 2021.
Join Lottie Reeves for this event to learn:
- How to set bigger picture goals that are aligned with you and your brand
- How to break these down so they aren’t overwhelming
- How to use your goals to set weekly tasks that keep you on track and moving towards your bigger goal
About Your Host: As a partner of Female Travel Bloggers Lottie is experienced in setting up, growing and establishing a blog. She is passionate about bloggers seeing themselves both as business owners and as women in the tech industry and not ‘just’ as a blogger. Lottie connects and supports bloggers through the highly engaged FTB Facebook community.
As a trained teacher, Lottie is a natural coach and having lived all around the world in apartments, a caravan and now a narrowboat, she has a solid understanding of running a location independent business as well as living the LI/Digital Nomad lifestyle.
January 14: Part 1: Transforming Your Life and Business from the Inside Out
In this jam packed three-part series, you will get insight into how to transform your life and business from the inside out.
Whether you are a 9-5er and want an all in one solution, an influencer who wants to learn to monetize like a boss, or a brand looking to scale, your lifestyle and entrepreneur goals will be in the palm of your hands once you attend this series.
Each part will be engaging and hands-on to use our perspectives as travelers and entrepreneurs to transform our businesses. Throughout the series, we’ll cover 12 themes in health, wealth, and business so you can create a life and business that you love.
In Part 1, Katrina Julia will cover the following:
- Jump starting your life and business
- Unleashing inspiration
- Going from clutter to clarity
- Taking the time to transform
- Increasing alignment, clarity, vision, and results
All those who attend live will be entered to win a free month in the mastermind! Or if you watch the recording within one month of the live date, tag @fitlifecreation, @sheswanderful, and @limitlessglobalgirl on social sharing what you learned and you’ll be entered to win as well.
About the Presenter: Katrina is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, athlete, traveler, lifestyle brand and content creator, retreat host, CEO, and community builder who can share perspectives as a traveler, creator, and brand.
Katrina is creating a life and business she loves and is transforming her own health, wealth, and business along the way while helping others #CREATEIT.
She has traveled to 27+ countries, led retreats in Cuba, Costa Rica, and more, created online courses, and has worked with brands like WeWork and Airbnb. In her work connecting with influencers, she has generated 3000%+ ROI and helped 15,000+ create a life and business they love.
January 15: Workshop: Creating a Media Kit with Award-Winning Blogger, Leticia Barr
If you’ve been meaning to create a media kit or update yours, now is your chance!
During this interactive workshop with Leticia Barr, you will have a chance to put together information about your following and blog metrics into a media kit that you can use to share partnership capabilities in this new year.
About Your Host: Leticia Barr founded her award-winning Tech Savvy Mama site based on personal and professional experience. Since 2008 she has combined her knowledge of child development, psychology, education, technology, and parenting to provide useful advice for families about the technology tools that have become a part of their lives. Her depth of knowledge about technology and education has allowed her to work with brands as a digital correspondent, spokesperson, and ambassador.
Always a teacher at heart, Leticia often consults for brands, educating them about the social media space. She also enjoys mentoring fellow bloggers to help them achieve their professional goals and sharing her wisdom by speaking at conferences.
January 21: Allyship in Action: Creators Holding Travel Brands Accountable
Are you a travel or culture creator who wants to push for a more equitable travel industry, but don’t know where to start or how? Are you working with a brand that just isn’t doing enough to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion? Do you want to practice your allyship in all facets of your work?
Whether you’re currently working with an existing travel client or partner, or just about to sign a new contract with one, there is always a way for you to leverage your position to push for a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment. From demanding transparency for a brand’s hiring policy to negotiating for a more diverse campaign, we can and should clarify what we as creators expect from our partners and clients.
But those conversations aren’t always easy or straightforward. In fact, they’re incredibly uncomfortable and complicated. We know because we’ve been there ourselves and there is simply no “one-size-fits-all” solution to push for equity.
Join us for a conversation with Erin Sullivan of @erinoutdoors, Emily Scott of @twodustytravelers, Eileen Cotter-Wright of @crookedflight, and moderated by Wanderful’s Justine Abigail Yu to discuss how creators, especially those who identify as white allies, can navigate these tough conversations. We’ll discuss what these conversations with brand partners have looked like, how these relationships have moved forward (if at all), and the importance of aligning ourselves according to our values.
As travel and culture creators, we have the power to use our platforms to amplify the voices of those who have been historically underrepresented. We hope this conversation will show, in concrete terms, what allyship can look like in action to achieve just that.
*Please note that this panel intentionally highlights the voices of white creators as a way to alleviate, however minimally, the burden that has all too often been placed on Black, Indigenous, and creators of color to push for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This is a FREE event, open to the public. It is an example of a Wanderful event that you otherwise would only find in our member community. Learn more here about becoming a Wanderful member where you’ll have access to daily events like this one all year round + so much more!