Our Impact

Ignoring the impact of global education travel on people and the planet would be a disservice to our in-country and school partners, the natural world, and to our values. Envoys works to understand, acknowledge, and responsibly steward our impact through a variety of initiatives, outlined here.

Envoys has joined the revolutionary B Corporation community through our parent company OBA, meaning we are legally required to consider the impact of our decisions on our teachers, our students, the communities we visit and the environment we all share. Through our membership in this community of leaders, Envoys is now part of a global movement of people using business as a force for good, helping to build an inclusive and sustainable global economy.

We work with small locally-owned companies around the world, partnering with the Grassroots Business Fund to ensure we do this sensitively. Our programs help communities develop viable, sustainable and inclusive enterprises that lift people out of poverty.

Envoys is a certified B-Corporation, upheld by our commitment to small locally-owned vendors in over twenty-five countries. Envoys considers the impact of decisions on our employees, our traveling students, our partners around the world, and the environment.

We recognize that the man-made warming of our planet is among the most critical issues facing the planet, and that travel is an outsize contributor to the current crisis. As an organization based on instilling responsible stewardship through socially and environmentally responsible travel practices, we are committed to practicing what we preach.

We have undertaken an ambitious and concentrated effort to reduce climate changing emissions within our offices and our programs, and are proud to announce that all program flights purchased through Envoys will be made carbon-neutral through offsets going to projects across the globe, like planting trees in Africa and India, putting up wind turbines in Costa Rica and creating cleaner cookstoves for use in China. We also provide opportunities for individual travelers to make additional offsets, as we work towards becoming net carbon-neutral. All carbon offset projects we support are third-party certified to meet high standards and ensure quality environmental protection.

Beginning in October 2019, Envoys instructors are equipped with the ability to nominate students participating on Envoys programs to receive merit scholarships through Global Citizen Year. Global Citizen Year uses the power of a deep, global immersion to unlock curiosity, conviction and courage in our next generation leaders. Each year Global Citizen Year recruits the most talented high school graduates from across the country and around the world. Global Citizen Year invests in young people who represent our society’s diversity, and uses the formative transition between high school and college to ignite their purpose.