Types of Projects

Travel with a Purpose

Lumos Travel Award recipients are expected to Travel with a Purpose. Lumos Travel Awards
were created to enhance the impact of travel by funding projects for students which will:

• Expand their experience of the world and other cultures
• Develop their confidence, resilience, and resourcefulness
• Challenge them to step out of their comfort zone and test their adaptability
• Require them to learn new skills while they apply their education and experience in a new setting
• Enable them to build relationships and understanding with people in different cultural contexts

Lumos Travel Awards are intended to enable awardees to develop a new perspective on an issue that is meaningful to them. Successfully funded projects both articulate why and demonstrate how awardees plan to pursue that new perspective.

To be eligible for support, a project must:

• Be at least four months long
• Be based outside of the United States
• Involve the student in the life of a local community
• Serve the needs or objectives of a local organization

While the Lumos Foundation is flexible regarding the projects it will sponsor, it will not support vacation travel, field study or practica related to degree requirements, study abroad that consists primarily in enrollment in a university or program of study that does not focus in some way on community development or service, or a group travel study program unless the primary purpose of the experience is to provide service or work that gives back in some way to a local community.  

The Lumos Foundation does not fund projects designed primarily to serve the purpose of religious evangelism, but we do consider community development or service projects that are managed by organizations with a religious identity. 

What kinds of expenses can be funded?

• Fees for a sponsoring organization
• Transportation costs
• Living expenses not included in the sponsoring organization fees
• Fees for training central to the project
• Pre-approved personal expenses
• Purchase of pre-approved special equipment.

The amount of individual awards, as well as the percentage of project budget funded, will vary based on:

• the number of qualified applications received
• the cost/duration of each proposal
• the availability of funds