Cook is an executive with Academic Treks, a private company that sends high school students on educational and community service projects all over the world. The company is run from Raleigh, N.C., but Cook works out of its D.C. office.
How many local kids have taken the treks?
Well, since 1993, we’ve had hundreds of kids from the area.
How did the company get started?
Carlton Goldthwaite is our founder. He founded Broadreach and Academic Treks, which are sister companies … in 1993 because he saw a need for summer adventure programs for teenagers that really focused on a small group, international exploration model. I mean, hiking a rain forest is really a different experience with 10 like-minded adventurers than it is with, say, 100. We were seeing a lot of demand from our client base for programs that were more than just skill-building adventure programs. Particularly after 2000, parents wanted more value out of that summer. They wanted college credit program, they wanted community service as part of the program.
Do you think kids are more interested in traveling abroad than they were in 1993?
What’s different now is kids have an awareness that they didn’t have in the 1990s. I’ve seen a difference in kids’ awareness of global issues and their roles as global citizens and the importance of making a difference in the world. So kids are looking for programs now that they weren’t looking for in the ’90s. We have kids who are working in Tibetan orphanages in China, and learning about sustainable agriculture in Brazil, or primates in central America.
Why do you think there’s this new cosmopolitanism?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that the Internet has made the world a smaller place.
What’s the weirdest souvenir you’ve ever gotten from a traveler?
Sadly, I haven’t been on our program for years because now I’m a mom. … I don’t know — a picture of diving on a wreck of a ship that littered the sea floor with toilets. How’s that one? – Bill Myers
