Category Archives: Global awareness

Nov12

World Pneumonia Day

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World Pneumonia Day

November 12th is World Pneumonia Day, a day to raise awareness about the #1 cause of death from infectious disease in children. The most common type of Pneumonia is vaccine-preventable. When the Pneumococcal Vaccine is introduced into communities child deaths from pneumonia are dramatically reduced. As an advocate for global vaccines and a Shot at Life Champion Leader, I had the honor of representing the United Nations Foundation Shot At Life Campaign in media interviews along with Dr. Namala Mkope of Tanzania on World Pneumonia Day in November of 2015. Dr. Mkope helped the country of Tanzania roll out the Pneumococcal vaccine in 2013 and saw the dramatic results of improved health outcomes first hand in his own pediatric practice.   

 

This is one of our interviews from 2015 that aired on the Valder Beebe Show. 

 

Apr24

Guest Interview on the Dramatic Travels Podcast

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Guest Interview on the Dramatic Travels Podcast

 

I was thrilled at the opportunity to be interviewed by Aaron Schlein for the Dramatic Travels podcast. Interestingly it felt more vulnerale or revealing to share some of these stories in a podcast interview than has felt for me to write about them in the past. Eleanor Roosevelt suggested:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

This was my thing that day. You can listen to the podcast through the link below:

Elizabeth Atalay on Dramatic Travels

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Aaron Schlein launched the inspirational family travel podcast Dramatic Travels earlier this year as a resource for family travel, a way to ignite curiosity, and to open people’s minds to the power of travel. In each episode Aaron talks travel with passionate and experienced travelers who are sharing the world, and that love of adventure, with their kids.

Follow more Dramatic Travels on:

Instagram

the Dramatic Travels website

and Twitter

 

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Apr16

3 Great Family Road Trips Abroad

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3 Great Family Road Trips Abroad

A number of years ago we decided that we needed to seize our opportunity for the six of us to take valuable memory making family trips as frequently as we could before the kids went off to college. Often our destinations have been dictated as much by desired locations as flight costs. We search on websites like Cheapoair and kayak to help us find the best flight deals. We usually end up doing what we call high/low travel, mixing youth hostel stays in with resorts, and tend to keep our itineraries somewhat flexible by booking key accommodations and then finding others along the way. This is surprisingly easy to do with websites like booking.com, tripadvisor, and hostelworld, and that flexibility has led us to some incredible experiences. Keep an eye out for detailed travelogues and trip guides for each of the below family adventures on documama in the next few months.

Iceland

Iceland

I call this the land of rainbows and ponies because we saw at least 1 rainbow a day and Icelandic horses were everywhere. Iceland had not been on our radar until we saw the amazing airfare on WOW airlines. We’d never heard of WOW airlines… but we were intrigued! This was a fantastic trip that the kids all loved. You have to rent a car to get around and there was a lot of driving involved, but the roads were pretty much empty, and the scenery is spectacular.  Frequent stops to take pictures of waterfalls, climb on the lava rocks, check out the ancient moss fields, and visit volcanos, glaciers, and hot springs make the driving worthwhile. And in 5 days we only made it around 1/4 of the country’s one main ring road! accommodations are few and far between but through booking.com and airbnb everyplace we stayed was great. 

iceland trip

Croatia, Bosnia & Montenegro

croatia

We flew into Zagreb instead of Split because, you guessed it…..the flights were more affordable. Zagreb is a great little city though with a vibrant market, some beautiful architecture, and a bustling city square. This also gave us the opportunity to visit the spectacular waterfalls of plitvice and the birth place of Nikola Tesla on our way to and from the coast. This region has very good roads and was easy to navigate in our rental a car ( aside from the hair-raising mountain pass our navigation system took us through in Bosnia in error). Accommodation highlights were nights inside the ancient walled Roman cities, which I highly recommend, and a couple of fantastic beach resorts. Between the rich history, the spectacular beaches, and the numerous world heritage sites, this trip has something for everyone.

Croatia map

Ireland/Northern Ireland

ireland

Despite the narrow roads a road trip around Ireland and Northern Ireland is easy to do. We found wonderful bed and breakfasts along the way which we mixed in with a few youth hostel stays . Our itinerary was provided by our Irish friend and we pretty much visited all of the places he suggested. There is amazing history and scenery everywhere and of course great pub food! We were blown away by the ancient beehive huts around Dingle and the 5,000 year old megalithic passage tomb sites of Newgrange, the kids loved climbing around abandoned castles and the incredible Giant’s Causeway. This is again a wonderful family trip that was a crowd pleaser!

ire roadmap

 

Bon Voyage!

Jan24

Explore The World With A Travel Scholarship

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Explore The World With A Travel Scholarship

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Travel changes You. You change the world.

–HI USA

International travel opens up your world and provides an unparalleled education. The good news is that there are many ways to afford to travel abroad even if you don’t think that you have the means to do so. There are organizations out there that believe in the power of travel. Hostelling International USA has just opened up applications for the 2018 Explore The World Travel Scholarships  . Through this scholarship more than 100 $2,000.00 travel scholarships will be awarded in 2018 toward an educational or service learning trip! This is an incredible opportunity for you or someone you know to explore the world. 

Social Media Image Explore the World

Experiencing new places, meeting new people, and being exposed to different cultures enhances global awareness and builds bridges toward cross-cultural understanding. That in turn creates a more peaceful world. Hostelling International USA not only wants to give travelers the opportunity to see new places, but a chance to make a positive impact along the way. That is what this scholarship is all about, making the world a better place through travel.  Past recipients of the Explore The World Travel Scholarships have done things like studied Arabic in Jordan or taught math in the Dominican Republic. You choose the path that you would like to take, and you are sure to return with an enhanced global perspective. Check out the eligibility requirements and start dreaming or share this opportunity with someone you know who would love it.

Every time I Travel I am amazed by the new things I learn about history, geography and the world. Travel has exposed me to the deep generosity of strangers and heightened my own desire to give back to others. It has given me a glimpse into perspectives I never could have otherwise understood and exposed me to cultures as different as possible from the one I grew up in. What I have observed in over 70 countries that I have visited is that at the core we are all more alike than we are different. I have become fascinated by learning perspectives and seeing the world through a different lens, and the greatest lesson is how much more there is to learn.  My husband and I hope to pass our love of travel on to our own children along with the knowledge that the world is a big beautiful place with a multitude of roads to travel, endless possibility, and different lifestyles to be lived. It all begins with that first trip. I love that Hostelling International USA is committed to making sure that everyone can share in the opportunity to explore the world. 

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Where will you go? What will you do to make a difference? APPLY NOW

Oct24

World Polio Day 2017…and Why It Matters

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World Polio Day 2017…and Why It Matters
My Mother

Childhood Photo of My Mother

She had one leg shorter than the other.  Not in such a glaringly obvious way that one would immediately notice, but you could tell if you studied her walk or she pointed it out to you, like she did to me when I was little.

I couldn’t fully understand the story as a child, but my mother had contracted Polio when she was around three years old, and almost died.  I remember that part because she had two names.   Mildred was the name she was given at birth, and Goldie was the name she was re-named after she had recovered, as is customary in the case of near death experiences in the Jewish religion.

By the time I was born, the Polio vaccine had been developed and was administered widely to children in the United States.  Polio was nearly eradicated in this country by then, and so the story of my mother’s near death from Polio became to me a long-ago folk tale from her childhood.

Sadly, that has not been the case for the rest of the world.  Sure the numbers have dropped 99.9% since 1988 when there were 350,000 known cases around the world, to the 37 reported cases in 2016.   Still, the fact is, that as long as Polio remains in even one child, children the world over are at risk of contracting the disease.  The victims of the highly infectious Poliomyelitis virus that attacks the nervous system are usually children younger than five years old.

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