Responsible Travel
We at Bowles Volunteering recognise that our programmes have an effect on the local, regional and global environment. However, by volunteering in our projects you are also leaving long lasting and positive benefits within the communities and environment in which you are working. Our Responsible Travel Policy ensures that overall your experience is as environmentally, culturally and socially friendly as possible.
To further our aims of responsible travel, we interview applicants and provide pre-departure briefings. These help to minimise your impact on a destination and provide simple tips on behaviour, dress and conduct. You are then taken through an orientation programme on arrival to ensure you are fully informed and prepared as far as possible to integrate into life in a new country.
We seek to minimise the impact that we and our volunteers make upon the communities in which they are working in the following ways:
ENVIRONMENTAL
• As the greatest single environmental impact of international travel is the carbon dioxide created by aircraft flights, we have chosen to offset both our staff travel and our volunteers’ travel by calculating the carbon offset of their flight through Climate Care. We then donate the value to our environmental projects in Brazil, where it will be spent directly on reforestation of the Atlantic Rainforest (now reduced to 7% of its original size), restoration of original wetlands and other projects to benefit the environment. In this way, we can see the tangible results of our donations and know that the money is going directly to projects in the countries in which we are working.
• We recycle as much of our office waste as possible
• We carry out energy saving practices such as turning off lights and electrical equipment.
• All of our printed material comes from sustainable forests, thus minimising the impact on the environment
• We print as little as possible and encourage our customers to use our website and not to print out forms or ask for brochures.
• We use water sparingly and ask our volunteers to be aware it is scarce and act accordingly.
CULTURAL
If you are participating in our programmes, then you will want to be more than just a tourist and we will help you in the following ways:
• All our projects are organised in full consultation with local communities to help ensure that our work is giving the locals what they need and is therefore sustainable.
• We organise briefings and orientations to help you to be aware of and sensitive to local customs
• We encourage you to learn enough of the local language to be polite and to show you are making an effort – it will be appreciated and will break down barriers!
• We ask you to wear clean, tidy and acceptable clothing. Many very poor communities make great efforts to be clean and smart in difficult circumstances despite their poverty and consider it an insult if you do not dress accordingly.
• We ask you to remember you are visitor and therefore be aware that your cultural values may differ from those of the locals. This may include different concepts of time, personal space, communication etc. which are not wrong or inferior, just different.
• We ask you to be sensitive to displays of wealth in front of people in developing countries and try not to display such items as expensive cameras and jewellery. This will avoid arousing feelings of envy or inadequacy which may inhibit genuine interaction between visitors and locals.
• We encourage our volunteers always to evaluate carefully requests for gifts and money. As a general rule, difficult as it is, you should never give money to beggars.
• We expect you always to ask before photographing people
• We ask you to demonstrate responsible behaviour to others who may not be as well informed as you are by acting as an example.
• We donate a percentage of our proceeds to our projects to improve their infrastructure.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
• We contribute both directly and indirectly to the local economy by sending volunteers to work with local communities
• Our volunteers pass on skills that can help local people to earn a living.
• By buying local goods and souvenirs, our volunteers are putting money directly into the economy where it matters most and are supporting local businesses
• A large proportion of what you pay to us goes directly into the local economy.
• We help to provide local employment through our support of local businesses both in the UK and abroad.
• Small, family run establishments make up most of the local accommodation, whether it be with families (which gives a unique insight into local culture) or in small hotels and guesthouses
• We encourage our volunteers to eat in local restaurants and cafés as much as possible rather than supporting fast food chains selling imported western food as these can threaten the livelihood of local businesses.
• We encourage our volunteers to undertake fundraising to support the projects in which they will work/have worked.
• We aim to bring benefit to the communities in which we work, especially to the vulnerable and the poor.