What We Do

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain

Motherland Travel specializes in customized birth country travel for families with internationally adopted children.

Our trips are designed to: 

• Foster family bonding
• Build self-esteem and positive self-identity
• Cultivate pride in a family’s multi-cultural heritage

 
We design purposeful and intentional trips to a child’s birth country with their adoptive family – a Heritage Journey. Our goal is to customize EVERY trip to meet the needs of EVERY family member! We do this by incorporating the concepts of experiential and transformative travel.
 
Experiential travel specifically involves using activities, nature, culture, social or spiritual experiences to enrich a traveler’s life and improve the way they connect with loved ones and with the world. The concepts of transformative travel are used to foster lasting change. We encourage families to journal, talk more about specific experiences, touch, hug and celebrate their accomplishments. Both of these travel philosophies (experiential and transformative travel) assume there is intention and purpose to the travel – which is very different than booking a traditional trip. After consulting with a family, we design an itinerary based on the specific needs and desires of that family. We consider the potential outcomes of those experiences and work to plan activities in a way that will achieve the family’s goals (family bonding, building self-esteem, cultivating a rich cultural understanding, etc).
 
Traditional heritage travel has focused on cultural immersion, service learning, visiting orphanages, meeting foster and/or birth families. Although all of these components are important to international adoptees at different times in their life, research tells us that travel can be so much more, especially birth country travel.
 
We believe that a child’s first visit to their birth country should be fun, fascinating and instill a sense of desire to better understand their roots. We also believe that a well planned and executed Heritage Journey can and should connect an adoptive family more deeply – strengthening those bonds long before a birth or foster family search is initiated. A Heritage Journey can be a time for healing, for building self-esteem, for families to connect on a level that isn’t possible at home. Travel can take us out of the normalcy of life and into a world of possibilities, heightened senses and a willingness to explore deeper on many levels! We want to leverage those emotions in order to create trips that will provide the potential for real and lasting change in individuals, as well as, the families that travel with us — an experience that is designed for transformation.