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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971113181355.24452L-100000@ccen.uccb.ns.ca>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 18:14:21 -0400
Reply-To: Michael Gurstein <mgurst@CCEN.UCCB.NS.CA>
Sender: Technology Transfer in International Development
<DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
From: Michael Gurstein <mgurst@CCEN.UCCB.NS.CA>
Subject: Re: From Development to Education (fwd)
To: DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
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Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 10:50:00 -0800 (PST)
From: "Marcus L. Endicott" <mendicott@igc.apc.org>
To: Recipients of conference <green-travel@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: From Development to Education
In reponse to whether or not it is possible to combine tourism
development with sustainable development - Yes, but it's not
easy.
A personal example I have is my hotel in Zanzibar, Tanzania. My
partner and I restored an historic palace and turned it into a
botique hotel and restaurant. We hired all local workers and used
indigenous building techniques and materials. The majority of our
time, energy, and funds was spent teaching local people skills in
tourism management as well as other skills needed for the project
such as building renovation techniques, etc. We utilized small
grants from aid agencies and embassies to fund some of the
building training, hired teachers ourselves to teach language
classes, and spent the majority our profits and time doing
hands-on training for the cooking, cleaning, and reception sectors
once we opened.
It was (and continues to be) a lot of hard work. At the same time,
it is very satisfying to see our staff, who began working with us
about six years ago, go from having very few economic oportunities
to having enough skills to become managers, and in some cases
branch off and open their own businesses. The first chef I trained
now has his own restaurant. The man who supplies my fish began
working with me and brought me fish from the out-of-town markets
on his bicycle. He now supplies several restaurants and has been
able to afford a small moped. Slowly, things grow.
Frustrated that the demand for trained labor was much greater than
the supply, and worried that the trend to bring in employees from
outside of Zanzibar and from Europe was growing, I returned to
grad school to find ways to combine tourism training and
sustainable development. My Masters Thesis was a proposal for a
hands-on training institute that would teach sustainable
development techniques much in the way I had trained people
through my hotel, but on a larger scale. The goal is to help
indigenous people gain a better understanding of tourism and learn
the skills they need to profit from tourism - but without selling
out. While the project has received praise from development
agencies, it is not receiving funding. Many donors see tourism
soley as private/for profit industry and trying to raise money to
open an on-job training institute for tourism training has so far
been impossible.
So, this long-winded answer to your question, is tourism a means
for sustainable development? Can the two be combine? Yes. And in
my experience it is done well in a number of places, from Africa,
to Central America, at the grass roots level. But will
development/aid agencies sponsor such programs? So far, as far as
I know, only on a minimal level. I know that Conservation
International has sponsored tourism as sustainable development
projects and say that they have had very good results. I have
heard a bit about World Bank sponsored programs, but don't have
any details.
Does anyone out there know more? I'd be eager to learn about more
examples.
cheers,
Jennifer Kay Emerson's House Zanzibar, Tanzania
jennkay@froggy.org
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