Tribewanted: Vorovoro

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Sustainable Community Advisor

Helen Lang: The place and its people make the difference between a nice holiday and the trip of a lifetime, so it makes sense to invest in the future to ensure that it is as unspoilt and welcoming for visitor number 5000 as it was for number one. So members of tribewanted have to take a shared responsibility to make sure Adventure Island works for all!

As the founder of Global Sense, Helen has worked in various universities in the UK running workshops on sustainable development in tourism. She works with charities, local community groups and NGOs, raising the profile of economically viable and sustainable tourism that benefits local communities. Helen is looking forward to bringing this experience to the team as their Sustainable Communities Advisor.

Culture

Mali people lived much as their ancestors before. In essence, this entail a simple but happy life evolving around fishing and subsistence farming. Everyday stories around the tanoa (kava bowl) evolve around these central themes. Like any coastal community in Fiji, it is not difficult to see that civilization for the people was largely influenced by the sea, continually forming and reforming it. Of course, there must be some social science justification to connection from the lyrics of traditional dances, chants and stories of sea voyages, fishing expeditions and to some extent explicit lamentations about lives lost at sea.

Today, schools, churches, transistor radios and mobile phones, amongst other agents, are heralding new ideas of the modern era.

Mali people through the times have also settled and migrated elsewhere looking for better opportunities. The reasons are vast, but central amongst these are the need to access higher educational institute and the need to be closer to work place. For this reason, a chance encounter to meet people from Mali or relations to them in other parts of Fiji and overseas is not uncommon.

Communtiy Projects

We are currently building a structure through which tribewanted and the local communities can work together in a successful and fairly traded partnership. We have been working with Helen Lang from Global Sense to help develop a platform for this crucial part of the project.

Basic Principles of sustainable tourism that tribewanted is aiming to practice are as follows:

1. Using resources sustainably


2. Reducing over-consumption and waste


3. Maintaining diversity


4. Integrating tourism into planning


5. Supporting local economies


6. Involving local landowning communities


7. Consulting landowners and the public


8. Training Staff & Tribe members


9. Marketing tourism responsibly


10. Undertaking research

Under each of these headings we are developing a strategy that can then be implemented. The content of this plan and how we are going to try and achieve it will be made available here for tribe members to follow. We will be developing surveys for both tribe members and local communities to take part in to give this side of the project direction and accountability.

Social Business Advisor

Heather Wilkinson (Striding Out): Ben and Mark are enthusiastic members of Striding Out, a support network for young entrepreneurs based in the UK. Striding Out have been working with Ben and Mark on the development of tribewanted since January, providing them with business coaching, training, and a network of dedicated professional advice. Both Ben and Mark are currently contenders in the Striding Out ‘Big Leap’ competition, a five month business planning competition for young entrepreneurs with great ideas…so watch this space!

Heather Wilkinson, who leads the network and has worked in the Social Enterprise Sector for the past six years, says ’”Its really inspiring to support such great projects on a day to day basis, and tribewanted is definitely exciting! We want all our young entrepreneurs to make it, and Ben and Mark definitely will! Their energy, enthusiasm and commitment to making a positive impact through their business is amazing. Your missing out if you don’t get your tribal membership, so claim your space in history now! I have….”

www.stridingout.co.uk