This year, FLYTE, our nonprofit, celebrates its five-year anniversary! We launched it within the summer of 2015 with nothing quite a desire to assist kids see the planet , discover a love of travel, and learn the sensible applications of their education.

In the past half-decade, we’ve sent 70 students to 5 countries everywhere the world!

Thinking about this milestone has made me reflect on why I started this nonprofit.

When we leave our temperature , we’re confronted with many of the world’s problems.

One of the foremost powerful and challenging lessons that travel teaches us is how unequal the planet are often . Seeing an impoverished child begging on the road causes you to reflect on colonization, war, and therefore the systemic inequalities that cause poverty.

Likewise, venturing underwater only to ascertain dead coral reefs or struggling to inhale cities enveloped in smog makes global climate change even more real.

Yet travel also brings us closer together. It reminds us of our shared humanity and provides a platform for our own personal growth and development.

Travel has shown me my privilege but also my power to try to to something to form the planet a far better place.

It’s for that reason that I created FLYTE.

Many kids don’t have access to opportunities which will help them see beyond their current situation.

Through these FLYTE trips, we’re working to offer students the prospect to ascertain how incredible our world is — and to remind them they need the facility to vary it for the higher . i would like FLYTE to be an opportunity for them to ascertain the planet beyond the stereotypes, to place their education to use, and to ascertain that the planet is filled with possibilities!

Today, I’m excited to share two announcements:

First, FLYTE features a new partnership with Crabtree & Evelyn, a corporation that’s combining travel, philanthropy, and wonder .

It’s making an enormous donation of $35,000 and funding a whole group of students’ life-changing trip abroad! How amazing is that?

The founding father of Crabtree & Evelyn, Cyrus Harvey, explored the planet and returned home to Boston with various soaps and perfumes from his adventures. With those products, he founded Crabtree & Evelyn.

He wasn’t just selling soaps. He was selling stories. Cyrus loved connecting with people. He built a business around those connections so he could share his passion for travel and discovery with people back home.

As a part of the company’s new initiatives and plans, it’s supporting students, giving them the opportunities Cyrus also had.

I had the prospect to interview Ashley Souza, Crabtree & Evelyn’s chief brand officer, and she or he shared more about Cyrus’s story, the company’s evolution, and why FLYTE was chosen as its nonprofit partner.

Nomadic Matt: My earliest memory of Crabtree & Evelyn was a brick-and-mortar store that sold toiletry . How has the corporate evolved over the years, and what’s the story behind your recent rebranding?

Ashley: Our founder Cyrus was a culture junkie. Before we were Crabtree & Evelyn, he founded The Soap Box, where he showcased artisan soaps he picked abreast of his travels around Europe.

Crabtree & Evelyn was founded with an important British inspiration and with a various portfolio that included many lifestyle products additionally to non-public care. We discovered through our deep marketing research , before the rebrand, that the normal British qualities of C&E not resonated with a younger consumer. So we went back to the elemental values that Cy originally built the business on: exploration, curation, and storytelling.

We kept our core ranges as a homage to the historical C&E: Evelyn Rose, Crabtree, and therefore the Gardeners, but our real purpose is coming to life through our Exploration ranges, capsule lifestyle collections inspired by locations that our Exploration team authentically explores with locals. [NOTE: Nomadic Matt readers get 10% off their first order using the code FLYTE10 at checkout!]

New products from Crabtree & Evelyn



How has Cyrus’s legacy and travel shaped the company’s mission and values?

Cy was a believer in connecting cultures, whether that was through the films he imported and showed at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge or through the products he sold. Our passion is that the same: creating connections for our customers through stories and products from our travels. we would like to supply an experience to our community that they could not otherwise have.

We’re so grateful that you’re funding a whole FLYTE trip! What moved you to settle on FLYTE as your nonprofit partner? Why does one think it’s important for college kids to ascertain the world?

The goal of this rebrand wasn't only to revive a heritage brand during a new and modern way but to use our platform permanently . for every Exploration collection we launch, some of proceeds are going to be donated on to a charitable organization within the location we've explored, for a selected need that the people we connect with on our travels have cited as important.

In addition to our collection-specific give-back program, we wanted to try to to more to encourage travel and understanding of other cultures. FLYTE was an ideal partner for us. Its mission, exposing youth within the us which may not have had the means to visit other ways of life, other ways of thinking, is how we break down barriers and become a more unified world.

Personally, i used to be blessed to possess parents that taught me the importance of travel. They urged me to teach myself through cultural experiences at a young age. It taught me to be more understanding, more considerate, more tolerant, and it deeply impacted who i'm today. Traveling has the power to interrupt a cycle, shift how of thinking, and push you to trust yourself et al. — invaluable life lessons that i'm thrilled to be ready to help kids experience through our partnership.

Your company’s slogan is “Born Curious, Grown Wild.” How has this translated into your products and outlook?

Our slogan pays tribute to Cy, who was born a really curious man with lofty goals and incredible business sense, and to the brand now, which has taken his original ethos and turned the quantity up, creating a cultural experience for C&E customers.

The second big announcement is that of our new partner school:

Rosenwald Collegiate Academy (RCA), a tremendous highschool in New Orleans , Louisiana, whose students are going to be traveling to Puerto Rico!

With a majority BIPOC population, Rosenwald celebrates equity, inclusion, and variety through rigorous classroom instruction, social innovation, and cultural authenticity. The goal for all students: college success and lives of limitless opportunity.

Many of Rosenwald’s students still face circumstances that present significant challenges for his or her personal and academic journeys. Despite of these obstacles, they persevere in numerous exceptional ways.

“They are creative and authentic and work incredibly hard to urge through highschool . Their goal is college, and therefore the choices they create a day push them closer thereto goal.” this is often how Erica Perez and Angela Filardo, the teachers who are going to be leading this trip, described these remarkable students in their FLYTE application.

Percy, a junior at RCA, shared that he “hasn’t traveled anywhere outside of latest Orleans besides Little Rock , Arkansas. This trip are going to be opening my mind up to things aside from just New Orleans . it'll be an exquisite learning experience on behalf of me . i would like to travel to high school to be an engineer and can probably need to attend different places to find out about this subject. this may be an honest way on behalf of me to find out the way to adapt to a replacement place and environment and learn from other cultures.”

Last March, when the scholars acknowledged that they might have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit Puerto Rico, this was their reaction.

This trip will specialise in sustainability and global climate change . the scholars have demonstrated interest in creating policy changes, and this trip will give them much practical information and context as they work with local-led organizations focused on coastal restoration and reforestation.

We’re so excited about this new partnership with Crabtree & Evelyn and can’t await the scholars from Rosenwald Collegiate Academy to urge out into the world!

Our team has been pretty quiet about FLYTE these past few months because, for a nonprofit whose mission is to urge students onto planes, this goal isn’t possible in our current COVID-19 world. But, since we forged this new reference to Crabtree & Evelyn and since Rosenwald starts school this month, we’re super excited about what's to come!

Right now, we hope for this trip to require place within the summer of 2021. We also wanted to worry that our students are at the core of what we do, and their safety is our highest priority. to make sure their safety also as that of the communities they're going to visit in Puerto Rico, this trip will only happen when regulatory agencies, the varsity administration, and science-backed evidence tell us it’s safe to travel again.

In the meantime, we are working in partnership with the varsity to make virtual programming therefore the students can steel oneself against their journey from the security of their homes (Rosenwald is starting the varsity year remotely).

During these truly trying times, I’m so thankful to everyone who continues to support FLYTE. I’m so glad to celebrate the work that Crabtree & Evelyn is doing to include philanthropy. due to all of them, FLYTE are going to be ready to send even more students abroad in 2021 and beyond.