Return to travel for the Rising Tide Foundation team

July 19, 2022

With a gradual lift in restrictions following more than two difficult years with the COVID-19 pandemic, our team at Rising Tide Foundation has resumed traveling. Visiting organizations and their projects that we support is an important part of our work.  

A recent visit by Rising Tide Program Manager for Freedom in Practice, Patrick Oetting, to the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) was a unique chance to see the first national #FreedomTalks event where Lithuanian teens participated in youth debates designed to instill a belief in freedom. Meeting with students, it was evident that they found the program valuable – developing more sound critical thinking skills, learning about markets, and gaining greater confidence in their own abilities.

Another visit with Patrick and Senior Program Manager, Isabelle Hirs took them to Italy to visit our grantee, Rondine Cittadella della Pace, an organization dedicated to the reduction of armed conflict around the world by bringing together young people from opposing sides of conflict and post-conflict countries. Isabelle and Patrick were able to meet the students of the peace-building program and hear about some of their social enterprise ideas.

The traveling continues as Patrick makes his way around the United States to meet with several of our US-based grantees, from Independent Institute, to Libertas Institute, and the Freedom and Virtue Institute. Isabelle is off to Kenya in the next weeks to visit more of our grantees, including Basecamp Explorer, Digital Divide Data, and Emerging Leaders. While there she will also participate in a two-day conference on the topic of livelihoods where several of our grantees will also be in attendance. We are very excited to see our grantees again and meet some beneficiaries of their projects after such a long period.