A year ago, Brian Oliver told Baltimore about his travel blog, Beyond Bmore, and his efforts to motivate people, and specifically black men, to travel more. A Towson graduate from West Baltimore with a degree in political science, Oliver is now launching BMore See More, a long-gestating idea in the form of a nonprofit that will organize trips and educate young minority men about the benefits of travel in the U.S. and abroad.

“One of my regrets is not traveling earlier,” Oliver says. “There was a fear that I had prior to traveling alone. I just know that the first time I went somewhere alone and I was forced to navigate and make a trip work, I felt like Superman after that.”

Oliver has been to 55 countries and 26 states. He’s traveled halfway across the world, volunteering schools in Kenya, and sightseeing across Europe, and has plans to make his second trip to Ghana this year for New Year’s Eve. Oliver made the jump into solo travel when he realized that he didn’t want to wait around for friends to commit to coming along. He’s long wanted to give back in some way, to instill a passion for young men across Baltimore to see the world.

“There are way too many young men losing their lives to violence and other things in the streets, and it’s just because they don’t know anything else other than what they wake up and see every day,” says Oliver, who works at Howell Funeral Homes, his family’s local business, where he writes and designs funeral programs and obituaries. “If you don’t come back and try to help out that particular area or tell someone else, ‘Look where I’ve been and how I made it work,’ then there’s no point.”

A few years ago, Oliver took a group of kids to Washington, D.C., where they took in a Washington Wizards game and explored the monuments. The trip went well, but the timing to build upon it wasn’t quite right, he says. Throughout this past year, Oliver has been focused on devising a workable plan for BMore See More. Applications for the program won’t be out until early 2020, as Oliver and his team are still working on securing funding and donations, as well as plan a January launch event at a yet-to-be-determined location.

“Our goal is to light a fire in them,” says Crystal Mosby, one of Oliver’s longtime travel partners and the secretary as well as a board member of the organization. “Getting kids to network with other kids hopefully will foster friendships. We want to encourage these kids to travel and be exposed to different cultures and ways of living that will encourage them to want to bring this back home to their communities.”

Oliver wants to start with high school sophomores, who will serve as the foundation of the organization, moving forward as mentors as they finish high school and go on to college. He anticipates the inaugural class will comprise of eight to 10 students from all over the city traveling to a destination somewhere within the U.S. next spring. Input from the students will influence where they go, but it’s important to Oliver that their destination is a place rife for learning.

“My goal is to focus on somewhere we can compare the two cities that may have had similar issues [to Baltimore],” he says. “There are some cities who have made significant progress over the years with reducing crimes and creating jobs—there’s a lesson we can learn.”

Oliver envisions the lead-up to the trip as a series of educational sessions. He wants to bring in friends and travel companions to talk about their experiences and have students research what interests them most about the city they’re going to. He will also expect those in the program to contribute to his blog to reflect upon their experience and put what they learn through their travels in perspective.

When Oliver pitches his idea to schools or to curious minds, he’s often met with reservations. They raise issues that come up with the intricacies of travel—passports, lack of luggage, supplies, to name a few.

“I’m always the guy who thinks very much ahead,” he assures. “We can handle those types of problems.”

It’s the type of confidence you’d expect from someone with Oliver’s experience. And despite his travels, he’s quick to point out that Baltimore is home, the place he has laid his roots, and the place he wants to impart his wisdom and resources.

“Part of the reason I wanted to make this bigger now is that everyone is always intrigued when they find out I’m from Baltimore,” Oliver says. “When you’re traveling, you meet people who were brought up differently and you begin to realize that, despite our differences, we are all very similar. I want the world to see that there’s something bigger in Baltimore.”

Although Brian Oliver graduated from Towson University with a degree in political science, he knew that a career in law was not in his future. He wanted to do more than just read over documents and sit in courtrooms all day.

He was always interested in traveling the world but he found himself constantly waiting for his friends to jump on board. Oliver got to a point where he realized that if he sat around waiting for other people, he would never go.

“I decided to just take that leap,” he said of his first trip to London. “Once I ended up going alone that first time, I was like, oh I’m good. I can do this.”

Since that realization, Oliver has traveled to 48 countries, 25 states, and has shown no signs of slowing down. His goal is to live a very full, and well-traveled, life while helping others in Baltimore to do the same.

To fund his travels, the 33-year-old has a pretty unorthodox day job working at the family business, Howell Funeral Home, in West Baltimore.

“I live the way I do because I’m surrounded by death every day,” he said. “You want to live. You read people’s obituaries and they never did anything. I really want to live my life to the fullest.”

Around Thanksgiving of 2015, as he was en route back to his Ashburton home from Thailand, Oliver started thinking about how he could expand upon his travels by helping other people. He says while sitting on the airplane, the thought just hit him.

“The word beyond came to me out of nowhere and I started really thinking of the meaning,” he recalled. “A typical person from Baltimore, especially a black man, carries so many stereotypes. I started thinking about going beyond what people think of you and what people expect of you. When you travel, you go beyond your neighborhood, your city, and your state—both mentally and physically.”

And thus birthed Beyond Bmore, an online platform to document his travels and share with the rest of the world how to make it happen for themselves. Through this initiative, he also hopes to help foster a love of new cultures and experiences for the youth in Baltimore and help children in the countries he visits. For example, he’s volunteered at a Kenyan school on his many visits to the country and is currently working on a fundraiser to help them rebuild their school.

“If people can go outside of where you live, it can change your outlook and your mentality of everything,” he said. “I tell people all the time, ‘Every time I go somewhere, I appreciate home so much more.’ We have issues here but I’ve seen some real issues traveling, especially when it comes to poverty, lack of resources. It puts it all into perspective.”

While many of the places Oliver has visited may appear on your bucket list—France, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Tanzania, Portugal, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, Bahrain, and UAE, to name a few—he says that it’s not as difficult to travel to them as we think. By using credit card points, airline miles, and various websites he manages to secure these trips for less than $800 and is very public about how to attain it.

“People ask me for tips and advice, which I don’t mind giving because I want to see all of us travel to different places,” he said. “I go to Secret Flying, The Flight Deal, and Airfare Spot and also follow them on social media so I can stay up to date on their deals. Yesterday, a flight to Nigeria was $600 from D.C. It’s a game changer.”

During his travels he has eaten a scorpion in Thailand, been mistaken for rapper 50 Cent in Egypt, been called a “stolen child” in Kenya—that experience shook him to the core—and has taken a tour of black history in Amsterdam.

“Some of the experiences are so surreal I can’t put it into words,” he said. “I go to these places and when I get back into my room in the evening I’ll just sit there for a minute trying to take it all in.”

Oliver’s travels are taking him to Nigeria in two weeks to participate in a day of service in Lagos and in the new year he plans to travel back to Africa to trace his ancestral roots in Cameroon, Mali, and Benin. He says that his travels have helped him to grow as a person and have changed his life for the better.

“I hope that my experiences will show people that there’s so much more to life than the city you are from,” he said. “Just do it. Get out and see the world. It will change you forever.”