Global Basecamps, in collaboration with Maasai Wanderings, contributes to a variety of ecotourism and community outreach programs in Tanzania. In 2004, Maasai Wanderings visited a Maasai village called Ilkurot (which means “dusty place”) just north of Arusha, and saw that the schools were in desperate need of supplies and repairs, and there was no nursery school.

In Vietnam, Bloom Microventures combines tourism with microfinance in an extremely innovative manner: Bloom’s unique model of cross-subsidising microfinance operations with income generated through tourism enables the organisation to have a far greater social impact. By meeting the borrowers on a tour, we see clearly just how very successful Bloom’s program has been in lifting some of the poorest women in Vietnam out of poverty.

Bringing Laos alive for travellers is Tiger Trail, a leading sustainable adventure organisation that, for more than 10 years, has been promoting local development through tourism. Now, through its Fair Trek initiative that supports community-based tourism, Tiger Trail has has added the Clay School Project, which aims to bring in international volunteers to support the construction of clay-brick schoolhouses.

In 2007, after I learned that the government of Jordan had declared a poverty pocket in the community known as Ghor Al Mazra’a (Jordan Valley), I founded something called the Zikra Initiative, an ‘exchange tourism’ program through which city-based people can immerse themselves in the uniqueness of a rural area through workshops led by locals. It seems like we have come so far since then, and yet there is still so much to be done.

The Responsible Safari Company (RSC), a local tour operator in Malawi, collaborates with community-based initiatives to promote tourism as a beneficial source of income. The ‘win-win-win’ benefits are evident: Local groups enjoy a new way of making ends meet and forging meaningful bonds with discerning travellers; visitors gain unique insight into local communities by learning about their lives; and the RSC expands operations in line with sustainable and responsible tourism practices.