Best Social Responsibility Initiative 2018

G Adventures

G Adventures has defined (and redefined) small group travel for over 25 years. At the end of 2015, G Adventures and its non-profit partner, Planeterra, announced the ’50 in 5’ campaign, an initiative to build 50 social enterprise projects in five years (between 2016 and the end of 2020). It supports local people in communities by providing them with access to the benefits of tourism, and at the same time providing 93% of G Adventures travellers the opportunity to experience a social enterprise project firsthand.

In a recent project, they worked closely with a local community in Colombia to create an exclusive trekking route for travellers from Colombia’s Lost City and social enterprise projects in partnership with Indigenous Wiwa Communities. This was the first time Columbia had opened their community to this kind of tourism, so a lot of communication and training was necessary. Now there are 100 local people employed and 1000 travellers who visit per year.

By mid-2018, 33 new projects have already been integrated into G Adventures trips, with the company set to achieve its goal of 50, one year ahead of time. By tapping into the undervalued talents of women, youth and indigenous people in the culinary, handicraft, hospitality and transportation sectors, G Adventures offers distinctly meaningful travel experiences to the 200,000 travellers from 160 countries who travel with the operator each year, while directly and indirectly benefiting 290,000+ local suppliers and employees’ wealth, health, education and future.

Learn more about their initiative here.