In the WorldNomads.com Responsible Travel blog, we've gone out to some of the biggest and smallest names in the Travel Industry to get a snapshot of who's who and find out what they're actively doing in voluntourism, green travel and socially responsible travel. Here to kick off the Fast Five Profile series is Planeterra.org:
1. Who are you? Brief description of trips you offer
Richard G. Edwards, Director, Planeterra.
The voluntourism trips we design are a combination of volunteering and adventure. We work with local projects that have productive tasks for volunteers that can be for shorter periods of time and whose activities suit groups, for example, building stoves in Peru or working as a team on sea turtle conservation. We are also working on developing long-term volunteer programs with projects that can benefit from volunteers who stay on for several weeks or more.
2. How do you define Responsible Travel?
At Planeterra we define Responsible Travel as travel that not only minimizes negative impacts in the destination, but maximizes positive impacts by making a genuine contribution to creating and maintaining a sustainable and equitable local economy and supporting the health of the local natural environment.
3. What does your company do to make sure it travels responsibly?
Planeterra is not a tour operator. We’re a non-profit foundation that works with our partners to provide a means to incorporate community development into their trips. In designing voluntour programs in cooperation with our partners we work directly with local partners by visiting projects and creating trips with them that are beneficial to their programs and goals. Strangely, these in person visits by operators are rare in the industry, and we feel they are vital to the success of the projects and the tours.
4. Tell us about a successful initiative. And an unsuccessful one - what did you learn?
Our biggest successes to date have been in locations where our travel industry partners have the most travelers passing through. In Peru for example, we have been able to develop and continue to fund two major projects outside of Cuzco. Working with our founding organization, Gap Adventures, our Women’s Weaving Cooperative continues to receive travelers on Sacred Valley tours en route to Machu Picchu, providing a steady stream of customers for the women’s micro-enterprise. This is sustainable tourism represented by triple bottom line business practices (people, profit and planet) in a developing country, contributing directly to poverty alleviation. For our Cuzco Kids’ project, a safe home for youth threatened by serious poverty, we were able to raise over $75,000 which was matched by Gap Adventures for a total of over $150,000 in order to purchase a permanent home for the project.
We have been less successful when asking travelers to projects that aren’t on routes that are visited during tours, even though the project may be doing important and worthwhile work. That direct and meaningful connection between traveler and local people is fundamental to people feeling good about where their money is going. We’ve learned that as a travel foundation we can have the greatest impact by focusing on community development efforts in areas that are visited by our partners’ tours. Going forward, we will be working with more and more projects on tour routes that will benefit from visitors and the resulting donations.
5. What’s some advice you can offer to travelers wanting to travel responsibly?
Our focus is really on encouraging travelers to be socially responsible. The media and public relations campaigns from large tourism corporations are full of green travel tips, such as conserving water and energy, recycling, using refillable water bottles, and making sure your hotel is doing everything they can to conserve. These are certainly important things to work on. At that level, though, the entire social aspect of sustainability is just missing.
We try to use our voice to promote making sure your trip is contributing to local communities and respecting cultures. A fundamental step is to try learning some of the local language and some of the cultural traditions of the area - it will help you get around, but it will also show your hosts respect and spark more meaningful connections, and memorable experiences. Try and purchase items made by local people, whether handicrafts, clothes, souvenirs or food. Your purchasing decisions help generate and keep income in the area, boosting the local economy in benefit of local people. Look for accommodations that have a program supporting a local community development or conservation project.
Another way to make a contribution is through a donation supporting a local organization that is working on an important issue such as access to education or healthcare, or environmental conservation. And of course, you might even want to go further and volunteer. You can do some research before you go or contact an organization at home that can link you up with a volunteer opportunity as part of your trip.
If you want to know more, visit the Planeterra.org website
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