Our Trips
Meaningful travel through collaborative design.
CoDA trips provide creatives with intimate travel experiences where you’ll engage with communities abroad, apply your skills to important challenges and implement solutions in the field. Our trips offer you the opportunity to work and network with like-minded peers and learn new design skills, while making profound connections through sharing culture and ideas. Join us, travel with purpose to a unique destination, unplug, roll up your sleeves and achieve something meaningful.
Because we travel with small groups (8-12 people), and the goal of each trip is to work with a community with needs that can tangibly be met through design, we schedule trips once teams have been formed. Within each team, we try to balance the right skill set according to the project we work on. Don’t worry, you likely have the goods, as our methodology relies on using an interdisciplinary team approach. CoDA supports the process from beginning to end.
ZANZIBAR
Join us for sunshine, tropical tides and a history and culture infused with spice. For centuries, Zanzibar was a destination for explorers and merchants seeking clove, nutmeg, vanilla, black pepper, and coriander. Today, the exotic locale offers outstanding beaches, Swahili culture, a culinary fusion of Indian, Arab, Chinese, Portuguese and African cooking traditions and the historic capital of Stone Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
TANZANIA
The Usambara Mountains, Tanzania, offer spectacular panoramas of Maasai lands below. Cooler than much of the country, the fertile terraced mountain slopes are dotted with small villages, where individual and families support themselves through the subsistence farming. As the population in the region increases, opportunities to find new sustainable livelihoods – especially for girls – are rare. Joining our partner in the community, you will work collaboratively with girls to help them build healthier, safer, and more economically secure futures.
GUATEMALA
Guatemala’s charm and rich cultural history will be on display in the city of Antigua and the Petén region. Petén, the centre of the Maya world, is where the most spectacular Maya sites are located. It’s also the home of our project partner Itza Wood, where we’ll spend our days in the heart of the Lacandon jungle, sharing our skills with a budding social enterprise and learning about the region’s proud people and rich craft history.
UGANDA
Our Ugandan project is presently being developed, as we work with our community partner to better understand their needs.
For this project we are looking for a specialized team of Design Educators, Strategic Foresight specialists and Industrial Designers.If that is you, and you would like to learn more, please contact us.
RAJASTHAN
Beginning in Jaipur, the Pink City, we get an overview of the rich craft history of the region by visiting important historic sites and cultural institutions. Then we immerse ourselves further in the local culture by staying on the campus of Barefoot College and working closely with their artisans.
COMING SOON
PROJECTS TO BE ANNOUNCED
It takes time to build new projects to be sure we are serving the communities we work with. If you have a project or want to work with us we’d love to hear more about it!
Join Us
Because we travel with small groups, and the goal of each trip is to work with a community with needs that can tangibly be met though design, we schedule trips once we have a team assembled. We try to balance the right skill set according to the project we work on. Don’t worry, you likely have the goods, as our methodology relies on using an interdisciplinary team. Just sometimes, we might be looking for a particular skill.
Who can join? Anyone who’s willing to roll up their sleeves, and share their skills. Each project is unique and determined by the skill set of the team.
How do I join? Reach out, let us know a bit about yourself. Why are you interested in joining, what skills might you bring. Also among our listed trips, let us know where are you most interested in traveling. We’ll start a conversation.
What happens next? Once we have a trip organized, we will invite you and we will provide more trip information, including a payment schedule and detailed itinerary. You will then have a period of time to pay a deposit to confirm your spot.
GUATEMALA 2025
We returned to Guatemala, with craft and design students, to work with project partners Itza Wood, and women’s ceramic cooperative Selva Savia. Our tangible objective was to design accessories for hotel rooms, but it was equally important we serve the community through a participatory design process. The broader goal therefore was: How to collaborate equitably when designing for a user (a boutique hotel) little known to the community? We are grateful for the Family Coppola Hideaways for the opportunity to design for their hotels, but also providing context to better understand the projects demands and constraints.
GUATEMALA 2023
We returned to Guatemala with an interdisciplinary team of nine creatives, seven with varied design experience, and for the first time two team members who work in communications and market research. Connection was at the heart of our project when we asked “how can we combine wood and natural fibres?” Itza Wood artisans were asked to make a wood object with no particular function in mind to give to the weavers. Weavers reciprocated by responding to the piece they were given. Together through iteration and collaborative problem solving we considered ways to create a a variety of products including lighting, serving trays and decorative items.
TANZANIA OCTOBER 2022
We traveled to the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania where we collaborated with the Sisters Workshop. This vocational training program helps girls, unable to continue in school, develop entrepreneurial skills in an area where jobs for women are rare. Working collaboratively, we shared critical thinking skills and creative tools through the design sewn products. .
GUATEMALA FEBRUARY 2020
We traveled to Guatemala with Sheridan College students to work collaboratively with the artisans at Itza Wood. After visiting Antigua and immersing ourselves in the rich craft traditions of the country, we flew to our project site in the jungled Petén region. There, CoDA supported Itza’s sustainable zero-waste by designing products to be made in scrap wood easily dried in their solar kilns. The collaboratively designed collections were eventually launched in New York in August 2022.
ZANZIBAR OCTOBER 2018
We traveled with a team of professionals to the island of Zanzibar off the East coast of Africa to work once again with our partner Barefoot College. Here we collaborated with women sewers and bee keepers to develop a protective, climate appropriate and cost effective bee keeping suit to generate income opportunities.
INDIA MAY 2017
We traveled with students to work with the artisans of Barefoot College in Tilonia. We collaborated on the design of three appliqué collections (each including table top, bedding, bags and clothing) to address issues of quality control and standardization.
For more about our past projects visit our instagram.
Questions?
Feel free to contact us with any questions or join our mailing list to be sent news about upcoming projects and trips.