About Us

              Global Genie, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit socially conscious travel organization that helps travelers manage social impacts and minimize environmental impacts, as well as find their way.  It represents the shift from cultural paradigms to ones based on global community.  Travel experiences serve as priceless periods of growth and awareness and offer numerous possibilities for intercultural learning regardless of age or interests.  Yet, from a sociological and environmental perspective, it is clear that the privilege affording such opportunities has great potential to further dislocate and disrupt the communities and ecosystems that travelers may visit.  By managing their ecological and social footprint, travelers can stay in motion without leaving damage in their path.

Global Genie seeks to offer socially conscious resources to travelers following the vision in support of the following mission:

To foster the global movement towards a just society that embraces global public goods, sustainable development, ecological restoration, and universal human rights by providing educational travel services dedicated to helping people find opportunities to undertake socially conscious travel.

Over the past two years the organization has been designing and implementing various programs that aim to meet the following objectives:

• To promote socially conscious travel both domestically and internationally.
• To provide opportunities and support for people to undertake educational travel.
• To offer and link people with green travel resources and ideas that minimize their ecological impact and manage their social impacts while traveling.
• To offer a library of information on socially conscious travel considerations and educational travel options.

The organization addresses global social problems posed both by an outdated national-centric education and a tourist industry that encourages the "I am a camera" phenomenon, in which "the viewing brings with it the panoptic-like quality of seeing without being seen, a traveler of invisibility.  This notion is also reminiscent of Janet Wolff's description of the flaneur, who is able to "pass in anonymity"" (Casella 1999:196). 

 To prevent such divisional travel experiences, Global Genie promotes "global imagination," "conscientization", and "world-building."

"Conscientization" refers to a profound insight into the source(s) of oppression worldwide, combined with a willingness to act collectively in bringing about solutions to those oppressions (Estes: 1992: 28).

"World-building" is the process of integrating and transforming the aspirations of collectivities at all levels of social organization toward those that advance the development of people everywhere  (Estes: 1992).

"Global imagination" is a romantic although realistic vision of a world in which people everywhere are connected with each other.  "Global imagination" implies a cosmopolitanism in which irrational views of religious and ethnic difference did not prevail in interstate and intercultural relations (Rizvi: 2000).  Global Genie will assist travelers to develop these concepts, and incorporate them into their educational travel pursuits, as well as into their everyday travels.

              The nonprofit organization is dedicated to expanding its services to reform the travel options that are readily accessible to travelers.  The website www.GreenTravel.org serves as an information resource and networking base for anyone hoping to travel within an environmentally and socially responsible context.  This resource is structured by a working database of international travel programs, transportation options, fundraising suggestions, language learning methods, social theories, impact management, and links to other agencies that promote or offer forms of responsible travel. This enables travelers to objectively explore all travel options starting from one location, and Global Genie will soon offer guidance along the way through future nonprofit business ventures.  The consolidation of information presented by Global Genie on www.GreenTravel.org , offers travelers direct links to information that may otherwise have required months or even years of research to unveil.  This ensures the richest travel experience for both the traveler and communities visited, and encourages civil society's efforts to repair the world.

Fuel the lamp!  Global Genie welcomes all tax-deductible donations to ensure that our educational travel programs are ongoing, and the vision for a sustainable and just global society is rightfully endorsed.  A gift from you would help us experience human solidarity through participation in the fulfillment of wishes for a better future worldwide.  As one Spanish proverb says: "Traveler, there is no path, paths are made by walking."  Global Genie helps travelers compose globally sustainable paths that we can all follow.

      Staff & Board of Directors

Lorrie Loveman, Executive Director

Lorrie Loveman has been imparting leadership skills and overall managerial functions for Global Genie since 2003.  She is affiliated with several social change organizations, including the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Net Impact, the Social Venture Network, the Mars Society, and the Lion's Club.  Lorrie holds a BA in Language Studies and an MA in Teaching and Practicing Sociology with concentrations in Community Action and Program Evaluation, as well as certificates in both Nonprofit Management and Fund Development.  She has traveled, studied, or volunteered in the United States, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Honduras, Peru, Greece, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Russia, and the Philippines.

 

Ronald Oster, President

Ronald Oster has a Bachelor of Science in Arch, a Masters in Urban Planning and is ABD in a Multidisciplinary Social Science PhD program. He has taught Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape architecture at Michigan State University and the University of Lagos in Nigeria, as well as spoken at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies on community organizing and on urban environmental issues. He describes himself as a community activist, since he has helped organize the development of 3 neighborhood parks, one of which has helped to spur an environmental education program in the New Haven schools. He has also lived in several countries; Canada, Sweden, Nigeria, Zambia and Botswana, and has traveled in many others. In Botswana, he helped set -up one of the first Building Brigades as an alternative educational path for primary school graduates. "I am deeply concerned about the environmental position that we will leave to our grandchildren. How we design for the world we leave, how we hear the voices of those not in city hall, and how we implement the changes those voices ask for are my concerns."

 

 

Vice-President

To be announced

 

Dr. Maria Bartlett, Secretary

Maria Bartlett is Professor of Social Work at Humboldt State University in Acata, CA.  She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in research, values and ethics, feminist practice, international social work and environmentalism in social work practice.  She has a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MA from the University of Chicago.  She has been Adjunct Faculty at the University of Bristol, England.  Her practice, teaching, research and service interests focus on issues of oppression.  She has lived in Mexico and France and traveled to Asia, Europe and throughout Canada.  She belongs to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and to the International Federation of Social Workers.  She participated in the U.N. 4th Congress on Women in Beijing and has presented her research in Hong Kong, China.

 

Mark Bruzonsky, Treasurer

Mark Bruzonsky holds dual advanced degrees in international affairs and law from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (M.P.A.) and from New York University School of Law (J.D.) where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar.   During his graduate school years Bruzonsky was Chief Representative to the United Nations of the International Student Movement for the United Nations (ISMUN) traveling to 35 countries.  
Bruzonsky is today the publisher of MiddleEast.org and Washington Associate of Goals for Americans.   He freqently writes and speaks about U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, and U.S.-Israeli relations.  In these many and varied capacities Bruzonsky has made over 150 visits to countries in the greater Middle East region from Libya to Pakistan.  He has been the official guest of a number of governments and organizations in numerous countries including Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, the PLO, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.

 

Steve Walsh, Advisor to Board

Steve Walsh has been dedicated to environmental advocacy and social service through his work with the Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation, the American Cancer Society, American Forests, and Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today. He holds a BS in Psychology from Tennessee Tech University, and an AS in Business Management from Nashville State Technical Institute. To illustrate his travel interests he writes, "After driving to Alaska and camping in the backcountry with grizzly bears at Denali, an already strong interest in travel led me to Hawaii, New Zealand, Thailand, Nepal, Europe and Mexico. In addition to traveling for more than a year outside the United States, I have camped for nearly a year in the western states and Alaska.".