In the Spotlight: Collette and Collette Cares

Collette, the country’s oldest travel tour operator, offers guided adventures on all seven continents.  Collette Cares, the company’s philanthropic arm, is dedicated to supporting youth programs worldwide and is a fantastic new supporter of GTNPF’s Youth Engagement Initiative.  Brian White, from the company’s businesses development team, shares more about Collette’s dedication to improving youth experiences in Grand Teton and beyond:

Collette has guided travelers for almost 100 years.  Tell us a bit about the history of Collette and Collette Cares.

Established in 1918, Collette is a family-run travel organization that offers land adventures, river cruises, rail journeys, and national park tours worldwide.  Collette Cares began in 1997 to support local Rhode Island youth initiatives.  The global foundation launched in 2007 to establish and manage youth projects in Australia, China, Cambodia, Fiji, Costa Rica, Ireland, Canada, Kenya, Mexico, Egypt, Peru, South Africa, and the US.

Your foundation connects employees, vendors, and travelers with partner communities and children around the globe.  What types of projects do you currently have underway?

Our mission is to enrich the lives of children worldwide.  Currently we support schools, clean water programs, orphanages, and even a youth-run bakery.  We incorporate access to and understanding of projects to our guests traveling in the area, and some guests have even returned from Collette trips and organized their home communities to support the foundation sites they visited on tours.

 Collette Cares is an employee-run initiative.  How does your staff participate in the many national and international projects?

Nearly every Collette employee contributes to our projects.  We participate in volunteer events, fund drives, and individual service tutors and sponsors for young people.  Each project has a task force to identify and manage programs, collaborate with foreign organizations, and allocate funding.  Collette’s employees are also able to personally visit sites they are working with to monitor effectiveness.

What prompted Collette Cares to begin supporting Grand Teton National Park Foundation?

We were looking to expand our support by sponsoring more sites and projects and were particularly looking for a program connected with the national parks.  While we contacted several organizations, nothing matched our mission as closely as the youth initiatives funded by Grand Teton National Park Foundation.  The Foundation is doing tremendous work for youth both locally and nationally and we are excited to expose our guests to this great program during tours in Grand Teton National Park.

Thank you, Collette Cares and Collette, for connecting diverse young people to Grand Teton National Park and for your work that is improving the lives of youth around the world.