Responsible Tourism

The main focus of all of our programs is on responsible tourism and it represents a fundamental part of how we create and operate our programs.

Our trips include a service learning element and cultural immersion in local communities.

Our clients are treated as visitors everywhere they go, and in the activities they do, rather than as tourists.

Responsible Tourism Policy

• Generate incomes for local communities by visiting locally owned lodging, restaurants and shops and hire local guides where possible.
• Ensure that our type and scale of tourism is appropriate to the local conditions and operates within the limits set by the local community with regards to its infrastructure and capacity for receiving visitors.
• Minimize our impact on the environment during our visits.
• Manage our group sizes, ensuring they are appropriate to the local conditions, and minimize any impact to local communities and ecosystems. Where necessary we will split larger groups into smaller sub groups, or between different communities.
• Dispose of litter responsibly and encourage recycling where possible.
• Take economic, environmental and cultural factors into account when considering new destinations.
• Give guidelines to our clients on how to act in the natural environment.
• Build links with locally based projects that aim to support and produce a positive impact on local communities.
• Encourage our clients to act responsibly and respect the local community, its culture and traditions, which in turn will help them to gain a greater understanding and insight of the local customs.
• Commit to the use of only one intermediary when planning trips.
• Support and visit eco-projects and Fair Trade organizations where appropriate.
• Provide our guides with instructions on how to act in the natural environment, encourage them  to teach these guidelines to our clients during our programs.
• Voluntary Horizons commits to working with partners and suppliers who do not use or support child labor, or commercial sexual exploitation.
• Voluntary Horizons promotes the interest of children and youth so as to ensure their full  physical, mental, moral, and social development.

We make no grand claims for how these programs will change the world, but we do believe that they will change those who go on them and those visited by them.

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