In 2008, longtime friends and Boston By Foot supporters Bill and Lia Poorvu established the Flansburgh Travel Fellowship to honor Earl and Polly Flansburgh and the spirit they evidenced by creating Boston By Foot. Every year, one or more deserving BBF volunteers are awarded the opportunity to travel to cities best experienced in our favorite way: by foot!

Aside from benefiting Boston By Foot as a whole, we also feel that these trips are a fantastic way to individually reward our wonderful and well-deserving volunteers! They put so much work into this organization, and we’re so thankful for everything that they do.

This year, we were fortunate enough to send two of our dedicated volunteer guides on enriching and educational trips to Newfoundland, Canada, and to Italy. During their journeys, Jean Hunt and Willa Brown gained new and valuable perspectives as they explored new cities in depth. These constructive experiences are extremely useful to our organization as a whole; we use them to learn, and to improve our own tours, something that we always strive to do.

On September 24th, the BBF volunteer community gathered to hear Jean and Willa recount their expeditions. Jean brought us to St. John's, Newfoundland, one of the locations that Loyalists fled to after the American Revolution. Willa took us through Campania and Calabria, Italy as she traced the roots of Boston's Italian immigrants.

Clearly Jean and Willa were enthusiastic to share their newfound knowledge from their respective trips with the rest of the BBF community. We’re so thankful for the Poorvus for allowing us to provide our guides with this amazing educational opportunity, and we can’t wait to see where our future fellowship winners will explore next!