Socio-Economic Responsibility: Key to Social Journeys is the chance to encourage positive interface with the society in order to foster mutual respect and understanding and be socio-economic benefit to the local people and community:
• We work in cooperation with local communities as far as possible, promoting community-based tourism initiatives that bind tourism with development and empower local people and the community.
• We actively support community initiatives through financial contributions and direct participatory involvement. We try to find ways we that can offer travellers short term and long term support to the communities by supporting local charities and projects visited.
• We try to provide travellers a unique intercultural experience through staying with local people in their own homes, resulting in mutual learning and a better understanding, promoting a more wide-spread home-stay program involving the entire community.
• As per the interest of travellers we schedule volun-tourism activities. Volunteers are placed with local home-stays, who receive an income from providing meals and accommodation.
• We promote a respect for local communities and their culture where we visit. Limit the negative impacts to daily lifestyles of local people. We will help to understand and respect the areas and people we are visiting.
• Wherever possible we employ local people of the region as leaders and crew to operate our tours to put money into the destination where we visit
• We use locally owned infrastructure and services that the money gets spread in the local economy. We use locally owned accommodation local equipments, transports and purchase food from locally produced sources
• We assist in maximizing the retention of travelers’ expenditure in the local communities through our literature and from our group leaders. We support local income generation and small business enterprises by supporting locally owned shops and restaurants
Environmental Responsibility: Social Journeys aims to leave this environment and its ecology in the same state that we found. We ensure that our operations are sustainable and that our negative impact on the natural environment is minimized. Wherever and whenever possible, we make sure that our environmental effect is positive.
• The first step is to ensure that we minimize use of natural resources in order to generate less waste by conserving fire woods, energy and water and by ensuring endangered wildlife and environmentally compromised areas are treated with respect.
• On our treks all rubbish and waste material are disposed in a proper way. All biodegradable rubbish are buried in a proper way and non biodegradable rubbish are carried out in the main towns or cities and disposed or reused
• On our trips we recommend our travellers to use water purification methods rather than buying bottled water as this reduces the use of plastic bottles and also reduces the weight carried.
• On our trips, group size are kept maximum of about 12 people(more a very few). Small group sizes help us to tread lightly, minimizing impact and ideally enriching the environment and wildlife and to use more environmentally sound forms of transport
• Our teams are trained in principles of environmental sustainability and offer travellers tips on how to conserve natural resources, reduce waste and minimize the environmental impact of their trip.
Raising Awareness: We encourage all travellers, our employees and suppliers, in order to gain their commitment for sustainable and responsible tourism. We will endeavor to highlight the benefits of addressing these issues and encourage all stakeholders to care for our community culture and environment and to minimize negative impacts. We encourage travellers to arrive with an open mind being prepared to have their world views gently challenged by the new cultures they will encounter.
Monitoring: We ensure that all of our operations abide by this Policy and that all new trips are developed in accordance with it. We regularly monitor our operations in respect of all the above aims. At the end of every trip our travellers are asked to fill out a feedback form which allows monitoring and highlighting the areas of our service that can be improved. Any comments from the travellers are immediately followed up and sorted out.
