Wanderfest, the First Major Outdoor Travel Festival by and For Women, Coming March 2022

In March 2022, Wanderfest will have a good time all the wonder, pleasure, and nuances of the ladies’s journey expertise.

It was 2013, and I could possibly be discovered sitting in a Starbucks in Chicago, a caramel latte in hand. As I sat there sipping my drink, a information briefing flashed throughout my pc display: one other solo feminine traveler was reported misplaced and sure killed abroad.

I want I might inform you that this was the primary and final time I noticed a information clip of this type, however sadly, they’re in every single place. To at the present time, there are numerous horror tales of issues that occur to girls after we dare to enterprise out into the world. Fixed advisories and articles about how girls can journey safely. Merchandise that increase tens of millions of {dollars} on the premise that feminine vacationers are at risk each time we pull out a passport.

It’s not that these issues don’t occur or that a few of these fears aren’t actual. As an alternative, it’s the truth that this is likely one of the solely narratives which might be advised about girls touring (the opposite one being the precise reverse and what I wish to name the “Eat, Pray, Love” narrative, which entails gorging on pasta, discovering bliss abroad, and being swept off your ft). Briefly, in relation to girls’s journey, there aren’t many nuances between the horror tales and the Eat Pray Love tales.

In actuality, there’s a lot extra that makes up the ladies’s journey expertise: navigating gender and cultural norms, costume codes, contraception, hormones, maternity, or the plain and easy proven fact that when the journey trade speaks, they’re normally talking to a 20-something (or 50-something) white male, and never a lot of anybody else. But, do you know that women make the majority of purchasing decisions within the journey trade?

Once I began Wanderful—a global collective of vacationers and journey content material creators on a mission to assist girls journey the world—it was with the intent to create a space the place girls can get entry to actual, useful info and a reside help community. However extra than simply arming girls with pepper spray and sending them on their manner, Wanderful does so much to problem the journey trade’s behaviors and techniques, amplifying the work of numerous thought leaders and inspiring the journey trade to do higher for each the vacationers going out into the world in addition to the native communities affected by tourism.

I’ll be sincere; it’s a variety of work. We spend a variety of time and power advocating for the trade to be higher and converse up about essential issues. However you understand what’s additionally necessary? Celebrating and nourishing ourselves. For this reason I made a decision to placed on one of many gutsiest occasions of all: Wanderfest, an outside pageant and true celebration of journey and the ladies who do it.

Wanderfest is the primary main out of doors journey pageant by and for ladies going down in March 2022. The occasion will carry collectively over 1,000 journey lovers for a weekend of music, audio system, and extra in downtown New Orleans. Image this: a whole lot of individuals (girls and allies alike) getting impressed, energized, and connected.

There will probably be audio system like Patricia Schultz, the creator of the worldwide bestseller ebook 1,000 Locations to See Earlier than You Die, Journey Channel host and influencer Oneika Raymond, and movie star chef and Chopped indigenous delicacies artist Crystal Wahpepah. Think about musicians like Feminist icon and former M.I.A. drummer Madame Gandhi, a Bhangra-inspired dance class with cultural energizer Sarina Jain, and a parade into the French Quarter with the New Orleans Baby Dolls. Along with these audio system and musicians, attendees can even discover a market of journey items by woman-owned and woman-supporting companies. And that’s only the start.

You would possibly assume that Wanderfest is nearly having enjoyable (which, after all, it’s), but it surely’s additionally about one thing larger. There’s one factor I didn’t inform you about that day in Chicago again in 2013. It wasn’t simply the article concerning the girl who was lacking abroad that stayed with me, it was what got here after that. Beneath the article have been dozens of feedback—pages of judgment—lambasting the traveler for leaving her husband and kids behind to journey solo. As if her option to journey alone was justification for what occurred to her, the feedback appeared to recommend that getting misplaced, assaulted, or killed abroad isn’t sufficient; girls should be shamed for it, too.

Girls in our tradition are continuously pulled in numerous instructions. We’re pressured to handle our households and family members and steadiness that with our careers (after we can). We’re requested to deal with every little thing else besides ourselves and our personal wants. After we select to journey, we’re actively selecting to honor ourselves and provides ourselves time to do what we love. Selecting to offer ourselves that point to deal with one thing that we love is probably the most highly effective manifestation of self-care that we are able to make.

Wanderfest isn’t nearly speaking and celebrating journey. It’s about celebrating what journey does to us and the way it offers us time to replicate. It’s a celebration of how journey encourages us to lean in, find out about, and interact with the world; and the way it teaches us about others, and in the identical manner, teaches us about ourselves. Taking time to honor that—and to make deep connections with others who really feel the identical manner—is what the spirit of Wanderfest is all about.

Subsequent yr’s Wanderfest will probably be ballsy and courageous, and it’s our manner of telling tales that show that the fear-mongering round solo feminine journey isn’t what defines us. We get to decide on our narrative, and now, for the primary time, we’ll shout it from the rooftops of New Orleans.