Working with local people benefits the community but is also an advantage for guests, who can learn about the people and places they are visiting. It's also a good way for your business to bring benefits to the community within which it operates and create work for local people - sharing the advantages of responsible tourism.
Being Green in your local Community
Shopping locally for staple produce such as food is a great way of supporting your local community and economy, as well as getting any household repairs and maintenance done by local firms and suppliers. These simple steps help keep money circulating within the local economy and community. Local farmers markets are as much a part of responsible and sustainable living as off-grid power sourcing, and are a great way of involving yoruself and getting to know the local community, while helping support local businesses and economies. They also reduce emissions created by the transport of goods over long distances.
Getting involved with local projects is another great way of supporting local community invtiatives. Joining an allotment scheme, supporting commmunty based recycling intiatives or campaigns for 'greener' policies in local towns help drive the issues of sustainability from a local initiative into town policy, as well as creating a sense of community and sharted resposibility for sustainable living.
Other projects such as starting a community garden or community groups can also help create a sense of community and localised action, and can bring about a more localised means of production and community that is a foundation of responsible tourism adn development.
See
information on how to apply for funding for voluntary and community groups from direct.gov.co.uk,
Setting up local car sharing schemes will help imrprove the local environment and help reduce the carbon footprint of the community, as can other projects such as communtiy allotment schemes, reducing the need for food that is transported great distances, so that it can be sourced by the community, locally and sustainably.
Great Plains Conservation
Some accommodations take their involvement with local communities to a whole new level. Winners of the 2009 Responsible Tourism Awards "Conservation of Wildlife and Habitats" category, Great Plains Conservation (
http://www.greatplainsconservation.com/) have embodied the highest principles of responsible tourism through "the greenest possible lodges, sound habitat practices and benefits passed directly to neighbouring communities and families." (r:travel magazine, Issue 3, 44, 2009). Setting up sustainable Safari Lodges while paying local communities for the use of their land, regardless of the number of guests, is just one of the ways that Great Plains Conservation are pioneering the responsible tourism movement.
In Kenya, Great Plains is now famously responsible for the inception and creation of a new 80,000-acre conservancy adjoining the Mara. "These new conservancies put more land under formal protection while delivering guaranteed rentals and improving the lives of imprverished Maasai communities." By changing the established and traditional relationship of alientation between Safari Lodges and traditional indigenous cultures, Great Plains is pioneering a new reponsible and symbiotic relationship of mutual agreement and benefit between tourism and local communities.
Rivertime Resort and Ecolodge
Winners of the Responsible Tourism Awards 2009 Best Small Accommodation category, Rivertime Resort and Ecolodge set up their lodge in the middle of a dense forest in Laos without removing a single tree. The Lodge practices and innovative approach to supporting the local community - they actually designed and signed a contract, the ‘Agreement of Cooperation’ between the Lodge and the three local villages that sets out the rights and responsibilities of the lodge to maximizing benefits for the local community. Their contract takes responsible tourism principles and turns them into a legal commitment.
For a comprehenseive list of winners at the 2009 Virgin Responsible Tourism Awards, organised by responsibletravel.com, head over to
http://www.responsibletourismawards.com/pastwinners.htm
(Information sourced from Energy Saving Trust UK, DirectGov.co.uk, and Responsibletravel.com)
