It was 10 years ago that longtime friends and Boston By Foot supporters Bill and Lia Poorvu established the Flansburgh Travel Fellowship. The Poorvus wished honor founder Polly Flansburgh and her husband Earl for the spirit they evidenced by creating Boston By Foot.

Every year since 2010, one or more deserving BBF volunteers have been awarded the opportunity to travel to a city best experienced in our favorite way – by foot!

This year, we were pleased to send three of our volunteer guides on enriching and educational trips to Dublin and Cork, Bologna and Vienna. During their journeys, Nancy Heywood, Lynda McNally and Laura Sitterly gained new and valuable perspectives as they explored a new city in depth. These constructive experiences are extremely useful to our organization as a whole; we can use them to learn and improve our own tours, something that we always strive to do.

Aside from benefiting Boston By Foot as a whole, these trips are meant to individually reward our well-deserving volunteers, who put so much work into the organization.

The Flansburgh Fellowship Presentations were held on Wednesday, September 26th at the HI-Boston Hostel. In recognition of the 10th anniversary of the Flansburgh Travel Fellowship, the Poorvus were presented with a special travel view book featuring photos from past fellowship recipients. The book’s inscription reads: “With our deepest gratitude to Bill and Lia Poorvu for helping our volunteers enrich their tours by seeing the world.”

Nancy recounted her experience visiting the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, and taking the Cobh Rebel Walking Tour in Cork. Laura spoke about the architecture of Otto Wagner and Joseph Maria Albrich. An injury prevented Lynda from making an in-person presentation, but she did submit photos and a presentation that summarized her experience.

Clearly Nancy, Lynda, and Laura 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!