Our February 20, 2025 open meeting focused on building family cohesion through family travel and family meals and featured two distinguished guest speakers: Lidia Bastianich and Bruce Poon Tip. You can see a full video of the event here: https://youtu.be/IzIWpR6ac94
What helps to keep families together? We discussed two activities that can lead to family cohesion: meals and trips taken together. We were pleased to be joined by two distinguished personalities to discuss how the experience of sharing family meals and taking a family journey helps to strengthen family bonds.
Lidia Bastianich is a well-known, award-winning personality with a weekly TV cooking program in New York and is an author of nearly 20 books relating mostly to the extensive Italian cuisine. She is fond of food and cooking, and their ability to connect family and friends. Originating from an Italian town in the northeastern Istrian peninsula, a territory that was ceded to Yugoslavia after World War II, young Lidia and her family became refugees, eventually immigrating to the United States. Lidia has gone from refugee to restauranteur, a story she tells in her best-selling book of 2018 “My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family and Food.”
Bruce Poon Tip is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and leader, who founded G Adventures in 1990, aged just 22. Powered that travel can, and should, be transformational for both travellers and local people in the destinations visited, he has grown G Adventures from a garage in Toronto to the world’s largest small-group adventure operator. Taking travellers of all ages to over 100 countries, G Adventures also offers National Geographic Family Journeys – a collection of trips focused on bringing all members of the family together in a meaningful way. Bruce has written several books and in 2023 he executively produced The Last Tourist, a hard-hitting documentary which explores the challenges facing tourism. At the end of 2024 he was honoured as an Officer of The Order of Canada for his contributions to the travel industry, continual advocacy for responsible travel and his leadership in pioneering projects that have made a global impact.
The NGO Committee on the Family has been wonderfully fortunate in the high caliber of panelists and speakers who have graciously addressed us. In an effort to enrich the intellectual experience of our audience, we have invited guests representing a diverse set of views and beliefs. We should note here that the expression of any views on this or any other program does not constitute an endorsement of those views by the NGO Committee on the Family, our member NGOs, or our co-sponsoring organizations.
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