How to Celebrate Cambodia’s Water Festival Bon Oum Touk!
November 21, 2023
Youth Leadership Development: Building Future Leaders Through Our Debate Competitions
August 1, 2024
The PEPY team hosted close to 10 youth and education exchanges in the last two months – making May and June a busy but enriching time for the students and the team. However, as an organization committed to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (including sustainable tourism) through all aspects of our work – the recent parade of tours had us thinking, are we following best practices to ensure our tours uplift and support PEPY and Siem Reap community?
For this blog post, we wanted to reflect on what it means to practice sustainable tourism and consider what we could do to improve our tour practices to advance sustainability – staying true to our values and principles as an organization.
What is Sustainable Tourism?
Sustainability means different things to people depending on their experiences and context. At PEPY, we define sustainable tourism as travelers and hosts doing what they can to avoid negatively impacting the current and future economic, social, and environmental conditions of the host community.
In the video below, we outline the potential dangers of tourism and what PEPY’s does to foster sustainability:
How to Practice Sustainability
On our most recent exchange, we hosted The American School in Switzerland (TASIS) for our 2nd consecutive year – after a long break from COVID. During this tour, we planned and implemented several activities and practices that were aimed at promoting sustainability.
1. We supported our students and staff’s well-being by making sure that they were not overworked during the tours – and that all the activities they engaged in were substantive and meaningful to them.
2. We actively carved out sessions during the tours to discuss sustainability and the UN SDGs and how it’s applied in our programs.
3. We had several sessions dedicated to Cambodia’s rich history and culture ensuring that the exchange involved learning opportunities for all the visitors – including dance and cooking classes.
4. We shared our expectations and values with the group – ensuring that they respected the students and staffs’ culture (like our office dress codes).
5. We championed local businesses and community initiatives throughout the tour. For example, for transportation services and logistics, we had the support of Tola, a former PEPY scholar who now operates SAK Adventures – a tour agency in Siem Reap. We also visited Ouen, the owner of Ouen Can-Art, a current PEPY YISI participant.
Through our efforts, we aimed to benefit both the tour group and the PEPY and broader community. But. . . . can we do better?
How Can We Improve Our Tours to Advance Sustainable Tourism?
In reflection, we believe there are some things we could improve upon for future tours
First, our sharing sessions and lessons on sustainability can only go so far if they are not consistently engaging and interactive. During the TASIS exchange, Siem Reap was VERY hot – making it difficult to focus. We learned that when leading sessions like dancing class and sustainable workshops, we need to make sure the activities allow for more interaction – involving insights from PEPY students and alumni panels in addition to staff
Second, we need to consider our environmental impact when conducting activities. Each activity equaled 30+ plastic water bottles. In the future, we will make sure to send visitors packing lists that include water bottles in advance of their visit and do a better job of providing clean filtered water to the group.
Third, despite our best intentions, many of our meal activities led to considerable food waste. It was not until the last day that we had gotten much better at planning and sharing meals to ensure that there was little to no food left behind.
Is Sustainable Tourism Possible?
Like many meaningful and important things in life, practicing sustainable tourism does not come intuitively or easily. While we have made great strides in advancing our social and economic sustainable practices – we think we have a lot of room to improve on the environmental aspects for future tours.
We look forward to improving our sustainability and being a role model to other local organizations and visitors who come to our office! To learn more about our PEPY tours and exchanges page.
