A government shut down in Washington, China threatens to invade Taiwan, street protests in Budapest and Paris, and the UK deeply divided over Brexit. Welcome to 2019. If you read only the headlines, you would wonder why anyone should get on an airplane and visit another part of the world. And yet look behind the headlines and the story is a very different one. Absolute poverty globally is now below 10% whereas it was over 90% a hundred years ago. Mass starvation (outside of civil wars) has disappeared and the number of travellers who crossed international borders surpassed 1.5 billion in 2018. In other words, while there are major challenges facing the world such as climate change, the opportunity, the ability and the desire to see this world of ours has never been better.
The team here at EBI makes no apology for having a globalist perspective. None of us will go (nor could we afford to) to Davos to schmooze with the world economic and political elite. Yet we are committed to a better world founded on understanding and a sense of empathy for other cultures and values. Our business is to help other businesses and organisations grow and prosper by making the ability of all people, but especially the young, to travel and see the world, not as a CNN moment but as an appreciation of how 7 billion people live and have to get along on this small blue planet.
In 2019, the millennials in the US will outnumber the baby boomers for the first time. Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping are vestiges of a different age and value system that, notwithstanding their present status, is and will recede. It is to the millennials and their children that we at EBI commit to help see and enjoy the world as it really is and help them create a better world for all. Welcome to 2019!
