why this matters
We’re in our founding stage.
The vision is clear, the model is built, and we’re ready to bring our first three pilot trips to life over the next 18 months.
Inclusive Travel Adventures creates small group trips — 10 to 12 travelers — that bring young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) who attend an inclusive postsecondary education (IPSE) program together with their peers for genuine travel adventures. No clients. No caregivers. Just travelers – full inclusion.
We’re building peer-integrated travel experiences one trip at a time — and we’re looking for founding donors who want to help open this door to new life changing opportunities.
The Gap Is Clear
There are 8000+ young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in IPSE programs each year in the US. Peer-integrated, inclusive travel experiences designed for them? Almost none exist. ITA is building what’s missing and changing expectations for what is possible.
Friendship First
When you ask students with IDD what they value most about college — and what they’ll miss most after graduation — the answer is always about the friendships, the daily connection, the sense of belonging alongside their peers. Inclusive community doesn’t have to end at graduation.
Lifelong Opportunities
Inclusive postsecondary programs change the trajectory of lives — but inclusive, meaningful opportunities after college are still hard to find. ITA is a path forward for a full life of continued exploration, belonging, and living big dreams with adventure and connection.
Travel Changes People
New places build confidence, curiosity, and independence — for everyone. The gains from shared adventures don’t disappear when the trip ends. They travel home and impact every area of life.
Inclusion Benefits Everyone
Inclusive Travel Adventure trips aren’t just meaningful for travelers with IDD — these experiences will reshape how all of us see the world and the people in it. True inclusion ensures everyone belongs.
Become a Donor
You won’t just fund a trip. You’ll remove barriers and open access to life-changing opportunities that currently don’t exist. Help us set a new standard for what inclusion looks like in the world.
what matters most
friends & belonging
Skills and credentials matter. So do friendship, connection, and belonging. Society has prioritized the first. The other gets assumed – and for young adults with IDD, that assumption leaves a lot of life on the table.
Inclusive postsecondary education is transformative.
Students and families experience powerful results:
- Students discover their strengths, explore careers, and gain skills for a more expansive life
- Friendships form alongside peers
- Families watch new independence and confidence emerge
- Hope grows for a full, meaningful future
That foundation travels with them after college graduation. But opportunities to keep growing alongside their peers — to keep exploring, connecting, and belonging — become much harder to find.
Not long ago, college was considered out of reach for young adults with IDD. Then someone built a model. Others followed. Today, there are hundreds of inclusive postsecondary programs across the country. An entire generation gained access to something they didn’t know to want, until someone showed them it was possible.
Inclusive Peer-Integrated Travel is a new frontier.
If you can’t see it, you can’t know to want it. Paris. Japan. Wherever the road leads. This is not a disability travel program – it’s young adults with and without IDD exploring the world together, as peers, with shared experiences and real adventure. When others see it happening, they know it’s possible. And when they know it’s possible, they, too, want to go explore!
how it works
the whole point
Inclusive Travel Adventures runs small group trips of 10 to 12 travelers for young adults with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Trips range from five days to two weeks and explore both domestic and international destinations. We partner with trusted travel agencies to provide logistical support.
For college students in IPSE programs, trips are scheduled around academic breaks so participation fits naturally into college life.
For graduates, trips run throughout the year — because adventure and friendship are lifelong pursuits.
Groups are intentionally small, and every group is built on the same principle that guides everything we do: full inclusion.
All travelers share in the journey together — with the same expectations, the same sense of belonging, and an equal stake in the adventure. That’s not a detail. That’s the whole point.
And the community doesn’t end when the trip does. Travelers stay connected through a post-trip travel club, an online community, and opportunities to become ambassadors — helping shape and grow Inclusive Travel Adventures from the inside.
Co-founders
who we are
Christy Sofianek Briscoe brings 30 years of experience in special education, nonprofit leadership, and higher education. She founded the LIFE Scholars program at Montana State University — building something from nothing through relationships, persistence, and a deep belief that new pathways are possible where none previously existed.
Kristin Taylor brings experience in outdoor education, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership — and the lived perspective of a parent. Her son graduated from LIFE Scholars. Watching him approach that transition, and seeing what he would miss most — the daily friendship, the shared experiences, the sense of belonging — is what brought her to this work.
Their partnership combines institutional experience with personal understanding, grounded in a shared belief that young adults with IDD deserve a full and adventurous life — rich with friendship, exploration, and the kind of belonging that doesn’t end at college graduation.
Every person on an Inclusive Travel Adventures trip is a traveler first. Everyone contributes. Everyone belongs. The experience belongs to all of them equally.
— christy sofianek briscoe
The vision is clear
Inclusive travel adventures is ready for you
JOIN US AS WE LAUNCH THIS MODEL.
We are a nonprofit organization seeking proof of concept funding to bring our first three pilot trips to life over the next 18 months.
We are actively seeking founding donors who understand that inclusion in action changes those who encounter it – the travelers who are transformed, the peers who are shaped by it, and the destination partners who witness it. Every encounter on the street, in restaurants, or hotel front desks – plants seeds of possibility.
Your support will make the first trips happen, prove what’s possible, and lay the foundation for a world where young adults with IDD explore, connect, thrive and belong — long after graduation.
We’d love to talk with you about how you can join us on this journey!
Contact Christy and Kris at: inclusivetraveladventures@gmail.com