Two students can walk down the same street, on the same trip, with the same chaperones—and experience that place very differently.
It’s called identity.
Years ago, when we talked about risk management and duty of care, much of the conversation focused on two things:
What can we control? – Itinerary, paperwork, an informative orientation, preparation.
What can we not control? – Weather, natural disasters, political upheaval, illness.
Those things absolutely still matter.
But I would argue there is a critical third area that is too often overlooked—or, in some cases, isn’t even on the radar—when we talk about today’s risk management and duty of care:
Identity, Social-Emotional Well-Being, and Belonging.
Traveling away from home already presents challenges for students. The issues they are navigating at home don’t disappear when they board a plane. In some cases, travel can amplify them.
Now layer onto that a student who doesn’t feel seen; who is navigating social-emotional concerns that existed long before the program began; or who enters a culture where their race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or another aspect of their identity may take on a completely different meaning than it does in their everyday reality.
Sometimes, it’s all of the above. And when those realities aren’t anticipated or discussed, they can introduce risks that traditional trip preparation may never address.
We aren’t simply sending students into the world. We’re sending individual young people whose identity – however you define that – may influence how they experience a destination—and how others may respond to them there.
And that can undoubtedly affect their decision-making.
This is an evolving dimension of risk management and duty of care that, unfortunately, still doesn’t find its way into enough student travel training.
Same destination. Different experiences.
Risk management can’t only be destination-centered. It also needs to be traveler-centered.
That requires information and conversation—not scare tactics. Traveler-centered risk management means understanding that the same information may not be sufficient for every student. It means creating opportunities, both individually and as a group, to talk about what students may encounter beyond the itinerary.
Because the day-to-day highlights of a program can get plenty of attention during preparation. But a student may experience those highlights very differently if they are also wondering:
Will I be accepted here?
Will I feel comfortable with how roommates are assigned?
Will I be safe being myself?
What happens if I encounter something that makes me uncomfortable?
Who can I talk to if I do?
And it means preparing the adults traveling with them.
Do our chaperones understand that students may experience the same destination differently?
Have we created space for students to raise concerns they may not feel comfortable discussing in a large pre-trip meeting?
Do we know enough about the travelers in our care to anticipate where additional support might be helpful?
And are we preparing students not simply for where they are going, but for what it might mean for them to be there?
For me, this is where risk management, duty of care, global education, and belonging increasingly intersect.
An Expanded Understanding of Duty of Care
Unfortunately, I continue to see this third area missing from student travel preparation—not because schools don’t care, but because many of the risk management and duty of care practices we’ve relied upon simply haven’t evolved to incorporate it.
Schools have limited professional development time and, sometimes, limited budgets. As a result, duty of care training can get relegated to a short meeting after school. Travel directors understandably need to cover the essentials and logistics—the itinerary, meeting points, emergency contacts, payments, room assignments, and more.
And that’s often where identity gets pushed to the back burner when, as I have seen time and again, it needs to be front and center.
Because when students better understand how they may experience a new culture—and how their identity may shape their experience within both the destination and the traveling group—they are better equipped to make informed, safer decisions.
But we also need to know the traveler.