When Bola Ibidapo discovered her pal Brandon Miller was raising cash to help young students get passports, she immediately told Miller she was eager to provide assistance.
“Before you know it, we’re talking and exchanging our own experiences about what it was like to be black, young and abroad and how it shaped our viewpoints,” Ibidapo stated.
“I shared, when I was abroad, the experience of being one of the only black trainees in my program. As we’re talking, I go, ‘You need to do a fundraiser event like a delighted hour mix and call it the Too Fly fundraiser.’ Which’s actually how it began.”
That discussion close to 6 years ago stimulated Ibidapo and Miller to launch the Too Fly Structure, a Texas-based organization that provides passport and travel grants to private trainees and U.S.-based student organizations. Too Fly, to date, has helped more than 170 students research study abroad in locations such as Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica and Japan.
The Aspects Making Research Study Abroad Difficult
The students Too Fly has actually helped belong to segments of the population underrepresented in U.S. study abroad programs– Hispanic and African Americans.
“Not to say that low exposure (to travel) or being financially disadvantaged is synonymous with being Black or Brown because that’s not something I want to (insinuate),” stated Ibidapo, who is based in Dallas. “However we have actually seen most of the time we have seen our inequities for our Black and Brown trainees.”
Hispanic and African Americans consisted of 10.6 and 5.5 percent respectively of U.S. students abroad throughout the 2019-2020 scholastic year, the most recent one from which statistics are readily available.
Ibidapo believes absence of direct exposure to worldwide travel is a substantial barrier avoiding many members of those 2 communities from studying abroad. Approximately half of African Americans have ever taken a trip abroad, well below the figure tape-recorded for both white and Hispanic Americans. On the other hand, white grownups in the U.S. are most likely to taken a trip to five or more nations than African American and Hispanic grownups.
“Even though Brandon and I were raising these funds for these passport scholarships, we needed to pause and take a step back and say, ‘Wow! Some of these trainees don’t understand the concept of travel,'” Ibidapo said.
“It’s not even an idea that’s even been implanted in them of ‘Oh wow! I can travel.'”
Ibidapo, who is also a law trainee at the University of Texas and pursuing a career in educational law, explains herself as the byproduct of people who went abroad to check out. She is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who initially met in Oklahoma.
“My mom was always a curious, studious young woman,” Ibidapo stated, adding her mother was frequently stigmatized by kids throughout her youth since she wished to advance her education.
“My mom said she would always read books and imagine herself (in numerous countries), and somebody would inform her you can go there. I’m trying to do the very same thing for youths, informing them you can go to different places and explore different things.”
Planting the Seed in Trainees
To attract that interest in studying abroad, Ibidapo and Miller have taken sessions they have actually entitled the Too Fly Flight Academy to various schools in the Dallas area. While the flight academies present information about travel etiquette including dos and do n’ts, the celebrations usually resemble pep rallies featuring DJs playing go-go music, dancers and food.
“We’re not going to do a PowerPoint discussion,” Ibidapo said about the party-like design of outreach, which she and Miller developed the idea for after thinking about energetic ways they could get trainees thinking about travel.
But even while massive travel was closed down during the height of the pandemic, Ibidapo and Miller continued their outreach to trainees. The two created a virtual curriculum called Travel@Home, for which they curate a travel set for successful applicants based on a nation they pick– either Belize, Brazil, Ghana, Japan, or the Netherlands. The set comes with a virtual truth headset and consists of items from the picked country, such as its flag and popular treats.
“We’re getting testimonies like, ‘Wow! Now I wish to go to Japan!'” Ibidapo stated.
Programs like those can be life changing for those trainees. Ibidapo cities her experience as one of two Black trainees in her study abroad program in Argentina as one that affected her in part to release Too Fly to assist produce more visibility for young Hispanic and African American students. She admitted there were times she wished to hide when people would gaze at her in the street.
“We desire youths to see the world,” Ibidapo stated. “(But) we don’t only want our kids to see the world. We want the world to see our kids.”
As for whom to send abroad and offer grants to, Too Fly has applications for both students and student companies. Ibidapo stated trainees using to Too Fly must have limited exposure to worldwide travel, a demonstrated financial requirement and prepares to go abroad for educational purposes. Trainee organizations or schools sending applications are needed to serve trainees from intermediate school through undergraduate level in college.
However, as Ibidapo explains her organization as a bridge in between students and the programs they’re accepted to, Too Fly does not choose the locations where it sends people to. However Ibidapo has plans for that to alter in the future. The organization is preparing to release a set of curated journeys in the next three years called Beyond Borders, which are educational experiences centered on ideas such as fashion, architecture and food.
That initiative is simply one part of Too Fly’s strategy to expand its reach. The company participated in a collaboration with Ohio-based travel insurance company battleface in late February, which Ibidapo said will help the organization reach students beyond Texas and conduct more Flight Academies.
However Too Fly’s efforts to broaden its scope received a larger boost that month when Ibidapo and Miller appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where the 2 got $50,000 donations from both Texas-based grocery store chain H-E-B and actor and screenwriter Tyler Perry.
And Ibidapo has even loftier goals for Too Fly.
“When individuals think about trainees seeing the world and being affected, we want to be the revolutionaries in that space and produce opportunities for students in different manner ins which haven’t been seen yet,” Ibidapo stated. “We really think that when we’re sending a trainee abroad, we’re stimulating the interest of the next CEO, the next doctor, the next chef.”
“We actually want to inspire that deliberately when we’re sending students abroad.”