Sarah Tours
How the minimum criteria of the responsible travel standard was met...
Economic responsibility
All our guides are local and support their environment and families. We also provide them with training to help them improve their service to travellers and serve with respect their communities.
We encourage local suppliers to employ local people to contribute to training and exercising a preference for local goods and hiring local people for all our accommodation.
Our policy in Sarah Tours is to make our sourcing of products such as food and drinks, accommodation and guiding 90% local, beneficial and authentic.
We have a policy that all our programs will help improving the income of rural communities not fat cats. A percentage of our benefit will be devoted to help with school supplies in the Atlas Mountains especially.
Environmental responsibility
Environment care starts from our main office in Fez by training by training our stuff to print the minimum and save on the using paper as much as possible. It is our policy to not print any paper brochures and use only our websites and electronic promotions.
Our office has a small garden with some fruit trees that our stuff share. They also grow vegetables for internal use. Moroccan life style allows us to share when we eat so our stuff have lunch like a family from one big dish to cut down on washing many dishes. The use of water either in the office or during our tours is very respected. In the office we have a 10 gallons Jar to serve everyone in the office and not allow individual bottled water.
Our guides are all trained to brief our travellers on environment and social commitments with relevant suggestions. We are very sensitive to the preservation of the social life of local and the ecosystem. We provide all travellers with refilling water recyclable bags. The food is mainly organic or natural. We suggest visits to appropriate local projects with direct or indirect environmental benefits.
We work side by side with NGOs with cleaning fields from plastic bags in all places our tours cover. We also work with The ministry of environment as a freelance consultant.
Most of our travelers bring their own refill bottles for their hiking and trekking journey. If not we give them a brain new trekking bottle. We devote always a Land Rover for supply. We always get 4 bottles of 10 gallons each of mineral water. with us. if we are using mules 2 bottles of 10 gallons. so there is plenty of refill water always available for our travelers. We use these bottles as they have a spout. So it is easy to refill without losing a drop.
Our guides brief the travelers not to litter, how to dispose of the waste, how to respect wild plants and farmers crops while crossing these fields. How to respect wells and natural spring by not bating in them or waste their water foolishly. Locals have their drinking supply from these sources.
We take our people to many environmental projects. in the rural areas we make them visit traditional irrigation programs that the Ministry of water and forests sponsors. Goodwill associations fieldwork sites helping villages in remote areas of the Atlas Mountains and Sahara desert. Field projects of replanting Olive and Argan trees throughout Morocco. An endeavor lunched by the king of Morocco to make Morocco green again by planting over two million hectares of Olve trees throughout the kingdom. Visiting regional Ministry of Agriculture nurseries improving native plants and cloning new fruit trees. Water purifying plants, water preservation projects in arid areas, solar energy on which Morocco is a leader in Africa for renewable energy.
Social responsibility
We provide all our travellers with accurate pre-trip information on the social and political situation in each destination visited.
We supply all our travellers with constructive suggestions to deal with local cultures with care and respect not to corrupt them especially with material stuff and money to minimize negative impacts. Instead try to share with them knowledge and teach them values that would improve their lives and surroundings.
We make sure that our travellers to visit local communities and be accompanied by one of our well-trained local guides to ensure the communication and promote mutual respect.
We work hard to keep our culture intact, and even educate all our partners to do so with respect and integrity. Most of our travellers do so as well as we attract mostly travellers who are more environmentalists and respectfully cultural explorers. Our programs are designed to reward both sides, visitors and locals.
Our guides brief the travellers how to respect local villagers, not to corrupt children by giving them money of sweet candies especially. To give them only what could be of use to them like school supplies, pencils, and pens for example. Never to take a picture of people without their consent. Give priority to flocks crossing paths and roads. Follow the footpaths instead of walking on open fields, not to play with errand dogs, etc... There are many cultural encounters and the briefing varies from one area to another in Morocco.
We have many success stories of which some of our travelers have participated. By visiting a village in eastern Morocco where drinking water was scarce, an American family donated $3500 to dig a well that is now in total function satisfying the whole village with drinking water. We visited once an association of widowed women farmers in Taza where our group bought ten small Olive trees each and planted them for these women in their plots. There are a lot of goodwill people who participate or build a direct relationship with environmental and social goodwill associations in different fields especially young women enterprises and orphanages.