Behind the Scenes

The 2009 World Tour covers twelve countries in just six weeks – not exactly an easy task, especially since we manage to conduct over a hundred official meetings and squeeze in visits to orphanages, schools, youth groups, and community centers along the way! We also have a major Youth for Human Rights International event in nearly every country and have to shuttle ourselves all over to get from meeting to meeting and country to country. So, basically, we’re very busy!

The world tour team actually consists of several different groups: the touring team, the home team, and the in-country teams. The touring team grows and shrinks depending the location and what’s needed in a certain area, but Dr. Mary Shuttleworth, president and founder of Youth for Human Rights International and Jimmy Collins, videographer/photographer travel to every tour stop. The home team, based in LA, sets up meetings and makes sure that everything is running smoothly and that all reservations, appointments and commitments are scheduled and confirmed. The in-country teams meet the touring team at the various tour stops and assist with translation, transportation, and coordination. With everyone working together, the tour moves smoothly and there is a lot of opportunity to really make things happen!

Sleep is definitely a luxury on the tour. We are almost constantly working, but there’s no doubt that we manage to have an enormous amount of fun along the way too! There are quite a few laughs to be had on tour and we are never short on fun cultural experiences.

We’ve put together a few “behind the scenes” photos and videos which we hope will give you a sense of what life on tour is like. We also hope you’ll enjoy seeing us goof around a bit! (The photos cover Barbados and the video covers the other countries we’ve been to so far.)