Since its founding 11 years ago, Overland Expo has welcomed all overlanders regardless of age, race, nationality or gender. Overlanding has always been about the journey. However, exploring foreign lands and greeting new people and embracing their cultures is a core element of overlanding; we overlanders know many of our journeys would not be successful without the help of the communities we encounter. We see openness and acceptance of others as fundamental to overlanding.
Because of the accepting nature of our community, Overland Expo calls on all overlanders to ask what they can do to drive meaningful and purposeful change — not just in the overland community but also beyond. We believe that it is our duty as human beings to stand up against racism and injustice and denounce violence against black people and all people of color.
Overland Expo stands with the Black Lives Matter movement.
As many of you know, we support and promote overlanding community members year round by featuring user-submitted content across our social media channels. A great deal of the content we share doesn’t include people at all. And we often are not aware of the race of the fans who submitted it. That said, we would be honored to have more people in the Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) overland community submit their adventures to be featured across our channels using the #overlandexpo and #myoverlandexpo hashtags or through our website at “My Overland Story.”
Overland Expo’s robust educational programming at live events teaches attendees to keep an open mind. We believe crossing borders and unknown lands are not things to be feared. Our programming encourages international travel as a means to understand the perspective of being an outsider. We will continue to challenge overlanders to see their world through this lens.
The Overland Expo Foundation supports organizations that provide education that fosters understanding and a more conscientious overland community. It also funds travelers that make a difference with their travels. The Foundation considers causes that encourage people to explore and give back throughout their overland journeys as well as those that build international cooperation or greater understanding of other cultures.
However, we want to do more and be better. We are already putting the following into action here at Overland Expo
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Encouraging more people of color to utilize our user-generated overland story channels so that we may feature that content in upcoming social media posts.
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Adding classes supporting the underserved BIPOC overland communities at upcoming events as part of Overland Expo’s Education series.
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Overland Expo Foundation will specifically consider causes supporting individuals or organizations who serve the BIPOC overland community.
Admittedly, we do not have all the answers. If you have additional suggestions of how Overland Expo can further support the BIPOC overlanding community, please let us know in this form here.