May 9, 2010; Los Angeles Times | Getting away from home and seeing the world is not only be good for yourself, but if you book with a tour group that ties their travel business to charity, you might also help enrich worthy causes and organizations. For example, Boston-based Grand Circle Corp., uses some of the proceeds from trips it sells to some 100,000 travelers each year to fund its nonprofit arm, Grand Circle Foundation. Since 1992, the foundation has donated or pledged $47 million to educational and humanitarian efforts around the world. Billings, Mont.-based Austin-Lehman Adventures will donate $1,000 of the $3,998 fee from everyone who signs up for a weeklong bike trip this fall through Italy’s Tuscany region to build a center in Nambia to train people to repair bicycles. Then there’s Journeys Within our Community, the nonprofit arm of Journeys Within Tour Co., which provides scholarships for dozens of university students in Cambodia, Laos and Myannmar. Traveling isn’t just mind broadening for you, it can be good for the world.—Bruce Trachtenberg