Ecotourism
The Pendeba Society works on eco-friendly income generation, environment conservation, and promotes and protects natural resources by the local people uplifting the life of communities living together with the environment. This benefits the local community by letting people share natural resources and their cultures with tourists without damaging and exploiting these traditional and natural resources.
We believe that it is important to think about the consequences and system of ecotourism before we implement the ecotourism program. Therefore, we have given first priority on the awareness, leadership, management and technical skills for the local community, leaders, and volunteers about the:
- Sustainable local resources protection and use of natural resources no greater than nature can produce.
- Potential benefits and impacts from ecotourism
- How to implement sustainable eco-friendly small businesses
- How to welcome visitors and provide positive services
- How to promote ecotourism as partners with the government and line agencies
The Pendeba Society supports and guides the economic development, social development, and environmental conservation. The economic development idea promotes the expansion of income generation opportunities for the local people through ecotourism and a system of family hotels, traditional handicrafts, local transportation, and local available resources. Social development promotes family health, Agro-forest, and sanitation through a community-based system known as the Pendeba program—which links to the growing network of social services that is being provided by government and other NGOs.
The Pendeba program system is the key link that allows village people management of environment conservation, creates empowerment and true partnership with government, rather than dependency to the outsider NGOs. The program focuses on helping Pendebas, mothers, and communities to learn about the basic knowledge of an ecotourism income generation, environment conservation, and sustainable forest management including tree plantations, agriculture, and kitchen gardening. We implement the program with sources of international experience and professional experts who have worked with community based development.
We encourage all partners to understand that the maximum benefits can result only if the tourist’s satisfaction and quality of the services are increased. The tourist can influence positive impacts to change people’s behavior in nature and the environment, economically, socially and culturally.
The positive impact of tourism is that it provides benefits to the local community through employment opportunities for the rural people and informal education of the people on how to manage and implement small income generations as well as how to protect local natural resources. The negative impacts occur if the local community, village leaders, Pendebas, and management leaders are not aware of the environment conservation and lack special management and guideline polices about eco-tourism.
Training and Activities
We develop training materials and manuals according to participants and community-expected reading materials during and after the training. This helps Pendebas self learn through reading materials and later implement activities accordingly. Pendebas can follow the experiential learning cycle using the reading materials “manual” so that they can effectively internalize learning in practical ways. Pendebas training as multi-purpose workers has acquired an important role in learning, practices, demonstrating and teaching villagers.
The training and activities focus on the value of natural resources, the environment, the balancing and usage of local resources, changing people’s behavior, and how ecotourism and income generation projects can be promoted to reduce poverty and protect natural resources.
The Pendeba Society supports to implement specific activities and training in eco-tourism income with income generation including:
- Agriculture production including agro-forest and animal husbandry
- Traditional handicraft, arts work and thankas
- Trekking, hiking guide, and maintenance centers
- Small medical centers
- Family guesthouse, restaurant, and tea shops
- Travel guide and logistic information, traveling areas, transportation, weather conditions in the traveling area