This week end, i joined a group of young and motivated people that took up the challenge to make tourism work for development in a small gurage village in Ethiopia.Two trips have already taking place.
Flyer for the next trip |
Today, the group is not only preparing the 3rd trip but also starting to think about how to make sure that the value added of tourism is spread into the whole community. In other term, how can we make tourism work to become a sustainable, market based tool to promote bottom up rural development? This is crucial to insure that tourism does not only benefits the few who provide services to the tourist but to the whole community and avoid that disparities in the community increases, making the poor poorer.
It is pretty challenging to find an efficient way to share benefits of tourism to the whole community. Maybe in the Ethiopian case one might make use of existing informal institutions. It is definitely an amazing challenging and interesting topic from which you are likely to hear more about on this blog.
Have a look at the website of the inside travel for more information about next trip.