by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 11:54 AM ET, Tue March 22, 2022
Sustainability and a focus on immersion and community tourism are more important for travelers than ever before.
One family-owned tour operator, EF Go Ahead Tours, is making an impact with its Responsible Tourism Initiatives, which help community-based development projects, sustainability initiatives, animal conservation programs and more.
EF Go Ahead Tours is part of EF Education First, which is a family-owned company that has specialized in language training, educational travel, cultural exchange and academic degree programs since 1965. The tour operator offers trips for anyone who wants a small-group trip that focuses on learning about the culture and the ecosystems in which they visit.
EF Go Ahead Tours has three pillars to its Responsible Tourism Initiatives: supporting local communities, promoting animal welfare and protecting the environment.
The tour operator supports local communities in a variety of ways, but one of the biggest is by supporting locally owned businesses and initiatives that promote cultural preservation and economic equality. One such business is Kazuri Beads in Kenya, which travelers can visit on the Kenya Wildlife Safari trip. Travelers can visit the jewelry workshop, which employs single mothers and other disadvantaged individuals who create jewelry from locally sourced clay.
Additionally, EF Go Ahead Tours provides culturally immersive experiences that benefit local communities and provide long-term impacts that continue to do good after you leave your trip, like supporting Nar Kadin, a Turkish collection that provides culinary employment opportunities to women, or the Balcon del Inka textile cooperative in Peru, which helps preserve Quechuan culture and provide economic prosperity to indigenous women.
The second pillar of the tour operator's Responsible Travel Initiatives is promoting animal welfare. It became the first international education company to develop animal welfare best practices protocols in 2018, which it uses as a guide to the safe and humane treatment of animals on all of its trips. It's also partnered with the nonprofit World Animal Protection to help implement these guides.
Travelers taking a variety of trips can visit rescues and conservancies, watch animals in their native habitats without interfering or taking them from where they belong and visit and support initiatives that provide economic alternatives to animal poaching across the globe. One such initiative is the Dhonk Craft workshop, which travelers can support on the India: Delhi, Agra & Jaipur trip. The workshop provides arts and crafts training and job opportunities to challenge the local poaching industry.
The third pillar is protecting the environment. One of its programs is the EF Forest Initiative, which in partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects, planted nearly three million trees in Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique in 2021.
It's also committed to becoming carbon negative by 2021 and historically carbon neutral by offsetting all of its carbon emissions since its founding in 1965. Additionally, the tour operator works to promote sustainability practices in each destination.
No matter which trips travelers book, they'll know they'll be making positive impacts on the planet with EF Go Ahead Tours.
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