Camps International - ‘Best volunteering organisation’
Camps International has an aim of providing a gap year holiday experience that ensures the practises of responsible tourism are up held yet also still an extremely rewarding experience for all visitors. Some of their aims are to spread benefit through the local community and greatly improve the quality of the natural environment in which they carry out their gap year operations.
Camps International is committed to: http://www.campsinternational.com/
1. Economic Responsibility
a) Employment
• To maximise local economic benefits employment of local people where possible and also purchasing products locally. This aims to improve the standard of living in the local area. In Kenya, where Camps run gap year projects, 30 members of staff are employed in the low season and in peak season this number rises to over 100, every member of staff originates for the host country
• Camps provides the appropriate skills and training to all staff and make sure they are paid fairly for that particular job they have been trained for and also in reflection of their position and experience. They also provide staff with incentives and bonuses
b) Procurement
• Al basic supplies are purchased locally including all fruit vegetables and materials for conservations projects are also bought from local producers. Visitors are also encouraged to buy local produce.
c) Product Development
• Providing visits to local places of interest with traditional food and the opportunity to experience real culture.
• Advertising and promoting local organisations by providing promotion space online and locally and assisting with marketing development
2. Social Responsibility
• Camps always informs their clients about appropriate behaviour and the traditions and customs that have to be respect; this enables Camps and its clients to treat the cultural heritage with respect and dignity
• Camps thoroughly asses the social impacts on the community regarding every project and in all our charity work abroad
• Always providing support and help with healthcare and education for the local community
• In order to control the flow of benefits a charitable trust fund has been created, Camp Kenya created this trust fund to enable them to provide funds and support to the development areas that are most in need of it.
3. Environmental Responsibility
a) Energy and Resource Consumption
• In order to keep the gap year projects as environmentally friendly as possible Camps uses all local and sustainable building products in their gap year work. They also reduce the use of water using water systems that collect rainwater and store it in special tanks.
• Establishing several indigenous tree planting schemes.
• In order to give back to the community and to allow them to produce more building materials the CO2 emission offset scheme was created. This means that all visitor that travel by air, pay a small fee in order to give back a little something and to offset their carbon dioxide emissions. This fee will be used toward the tree planting programmes.
4. Nature Conservation
• Camps keeps the environment litter free and buy food with as little packaging as possible. And all organic food is separated and turned into compost.
• And finally they brief all conservation project visitors on pertinent environmental issues with the intent to discourage them from buying furniture made of indigenous hardwoods or unsustainable animal products.
To learn more about Camps International conservation and community projects call them on 0844 8001127. To read full article visit Camps International Site http://www.campsinternational.com/
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
