Mission Statement - Practical Wanderlust

Welcome to the Practical Wanderlust Mission Statement! This is a living document continues to grow and evolve and change as Practical Wanderlust grows and changes.

You can help by providing your feedback and making suggestions for ways that this document can and should be improved. We encourage both our audience and our team to poke holes in it, question it, and examine it, and we commit to re-working it constantly as we find new opportunities to do better.

Please send your feedback to contact at practicalwanderlust dot com! We’d love to hear it.

What Practical Wanderlust Believes In: Our Core Values

Reader First
1. Every decision we make is driven by how our actions will impact our readers.
2. Every decision we make should answer YES to the question: does this provide value to our reader?
Transparency
1. We believe in honesty, authenticity, and transparency.
2. We will always disclose our brand partners, whether we are paid or unpaid, not because the FTC says we have to but because it’s the right thing to do.
3. We will always be honest with our readers, even when the truth is unpleasant. We will never lie to our readers.
4. When we make recommendations to our readers, we will do so with honesty and transparency, to the best of our ability.
5. When we are unable to validate our information, we will make it clear that our recommendation is based off of personal experience and opinion rather than fact.
Realism
1. Our goal is not to portray a lifestyle that is out of reach or inaccessible. We are not selling a dream. We are selling an actionable, achievable goal: accessible, practical travel.
2. We strive to maintain a down-to-earth mindset. Even if we’re being paid to travel, we will remember that our reader is not – and our reader’s reality will drive our decision making.
Gratitude
1. We strive to remain firmly grounded and humble, no matter what.
2. We will remember all of the factors, people, and opportunities that got us to where we are, and not make the mistake of believing that we alone are responsible for our success.
3. We will be gracious and thankful for the opportunities we are granted, and strive to never take them for granted.
The Greater Good
1. We will be aware that the decisions we make and the words we publish have a tangible impact on the world, and we will strive to be mindful of that impact. We will seek learning opportunities to better understand how we can drive positive change, and learn from our mistakes.
2. We will thoughtfully consider the ramifications of our decisions: how might we impact a destination, a population, an economy? We will consistently strive to achieve a net positive impact, even as we acknowledge that perfection is impossible.
3. We will take measures to educate our readers about important issues surrounding tourism in particular areas, and include important and relevant information about how to travel as sustainably and ethically as possible.
Taking Responsibility
1. We will take ownership for everything that we say and do.
2. We recognize that intentions do not invalidate actions. We understand that communicating our intentions may help remedy a hurtful action, but we will take ownership and responsibility of that action regardless of our intentions.
3. We will be receptive to critique. Despite our best intentions, we acknowledge that sometimes we will make a mistake. We will address our mistake, and we will seek to learn and grow from it.
Profit Last
1. We recognize that modern capitalism is an inherently racist system.
2. As we make descisions to grow and expand our business, we will prioritize our core values first and financial profit last.
3. We will do the right thing to the best of our ability, even when it seems contrary to the growth of our business. That includes paying fair and equitable wages to our team members while recognizing power disparities in conversations about finances; turning down partnerships with brands that don’t align with our values; and carefully evaluating every business decision we make to ensure that it aligns with our core values.

Our Commitment to Anti-Racism

As individuals and as a business, we are committed to anti-racist work as an ongoing, lifelong process. While we don’t always get it right, we seek to learn from our mistakes. Here are the anti-racism steps we take:

As Individuals
1. We work to educate ourselves about racial injustice & systemic racism.
2. We strive to be aware of the privilege our white skin enables us, to unlearn inherent racist lessons from growing up white, and to use our privilege to help dismantle the systems that we benefit from.
3. When we are called out for our mistakes, we work to listen, learn, and fight against our white fragility.
As Travel Media
1. We seek to learn and tell the stories that are not part of the dominant narrative. We actively seek to visit and write about destinations that represent marginalized stories past & present, particularly destinations that represent the story of Black America. When traveling internationally, we do our best to self-educate in order to learn about and support marginalized peoples.
2. We seek tours & attractions that highlight Black and Indigenous stories and patronize and recommend Black and Indigenous-owned businesses.
3. When interacting with tourism boards, we speak up to request those experiences when they are not offered; we refuse to partner with tourism boards that do not incorporate diverse voices & stories into their marketing; and we call out tourism businesses and tourism boards for a lack of racial awareness/exhibiting racism.
4. We answer not to our sponsors but to our audience and our core values.
As Content Creators
1. We research and incorporate Black & Indigenous history and other marginalized histories into our content, while welcoming and embracing feedback on our interpretations.
2. We advocate for marginalized content creators by patronizing and amplifying their work and recommending them at every opportunity – to brands, to our audience, and in our personal lives.
As Employers
1. We strive to ensure an equitable hiring process and establish a work environment that is a safe space for members of marginalized groups.
2. In our internal hiring and training procedures, we require awareness and compliance for all of our team members to recognize that harassment, discrimination, and bias is different than interpersonal conflict; to not expect someone experiencing discrimination or harassment to assume positive intent; to push back against the ways that marginalized people are dehumanized; to speak up when they recognize inequality and marginalization at work; and to be receptive to being called out on implicit bias and treat it as an opportunity for self-reflection and growth.