About YIRA Trips

International trips are YIRA members’ opportunity to travel all over the world. Every year, YIRA organizes, funds and administers several international trips, which give members the unique opportunity to travel to places all over the world. The trips are an opportunity for members to experience international relations and global affairs first-hand. Trips are run during Winter Break in and during Spring Break. Each trip generally has 6-8 members, including two Trip Leaders, who spend several weeks beforehand organizing and planning the trip. In the past, YIRA members have run a diverse range of trips; any trip bearing some relevance to international relations and global affairs is considered. To learn more about a sample YIRA trip, please read about the 2017 YIRA Spring Break trip to Central Europe, which studied Roma community-building and activism.

Frequently-run trips include

Election-monitoring trips: YIRA is one of the only student-run organizations to run election-monitoring and election-observing trips, including past trips monitoring elections in Haiti and Honduras.

Political/investigative trips: These trips focus on exploring particular political issues through meeting with prominent political leaders, civic and youth groups and NGOs.

Community service trips: These trips focus on development issues and members generally participate in grassroots community service activities, such as home-building or visiting local NGOs.