At what point does a business that donates to charity or a firm providing ‘voluntourism’ holidays become less about social responsibility and more an exercise in cynical marketing? We asked three successful entrepreneurs about the logistics of running a social enterprise in Africa that benefit their communities.
Gap year breaks, projects that use paying ‘volunteers’ to build schools, or companies that staff orphanages from travel websites – Africa has always been a popular destination for tourists looking for a life experience, rather than just a holiday.
But how does a tourist venture go about establishing itself as a reputable company offering socially responsible trips, or become a social enterprise that benefits the community as well as the bottom line?
Wycliffe Sande runs Sandfield Travel, a startup that invests 10 percent of its profits into community development initiatives, and also provides volunteers to work on local projects.
He says he took a long-term view when settling on a level of commitment.
“We are still very much a startup and a very small fish in the huge pond of the world travel industry, so we settled on the 10 percent figure as we felt this was a figure that would make a significant contribution while still allowing us to grow the company sustainably,” he told AFKInsider in an interview.
“Aside from the actual funds, what is perhaps more valuable is the manpower and awareness that our volunteers provide – that contribution is very difficult to quantify.”
He cites a medical centre in the Mityana District in central Uganda – on land bought by Sandfield Travel and built on by the company’s employees and ‘voluntourists’ – as an example of a successful project.
The centre provides treatment for over 4,000 people in an area that previously had no medical facilities and where deaths from treatable diseases were common.
“From a personal perspective this was a project close to my heart as I was told I would have died if I had arrived at hospital half an hour later than I did when I caught cerebral malaria as a child,” said Sande, who is now working with his old school in Uganda to build a classroom for its 50 children.
The project will also see a new social enterprise chicken farm set up to provide jobs and teach business skills to young people.
“We select projects to work on extremely carefully, based on the long-term impact we think they could have on people’s lives,” he said
“We have a team of community liaison workers at our office in Uganda who identify and engage with groups within communities. We believe the key to sustainable success is for local people to maintain ownership of the project – nobody wants to be a charity case, so we aim to empower communities, which certainly develops a sense of pride in what they have achieved.”
Community Empowerment
Empowerment. It’s the same word used by Dave Bellairs, director of the Cape Town Cycle Tour Trust, which runs the Cape Town Argus Pick’n’Pay Momentum Cycle Tour.
The event – the largest time bike ride in the world – draws 35,000 cyclists from across Africa and farther afield each year.
Bellairs says there’s scope for cycle tourism to play an important role in community development and fundraising initiatives.
The Argus event raises in the region of 10 million rand (About $1 million) each year for (mostly) bike-based projects, however its ripple effect reaches even further.
“We estimate that charities that buy entries from us will put three times that back into the community,” he says. “So we estimate that somewhere between 25 and 35 million rand over and above what we do is raised by the 120-odd charities that have an allotment of entries for the cycle tour.
“Our ambition is to take that and turn it into 50 or 60 million rand. Then what you’re seeing is a massive double edged sword: people riding bikes, which is keeping them fit and healthy, but it also results in a massive amount of good being done in communities. All round it’s fantastic.”
Bellairs said the money raised directly by his organisation goes towards using the bicycle to empower disadvantage communities.
“It’s about getting school kids interested in cycling, or encouraging community health care workers to ride rather than having to walk between townships,” he says.
“It’s about increasing the value of the bicycle in the community so people are seeing the positive side of the bicycle rather than seeing the bicycle just as a cheap and nasty means of transport for poor people.”
It’s a similar ethos to that of Sally Peterson, who runs AWOL Tours, a Cape Town-based tourism venture offering customised wildlife safaris, cultural exchange programmes, and walking and cycling tours.
AWOL’s Cape Town bike tour is run in conjunction with the Bicycling Empowerment Network (BEN), a non-profit that imports second-hand bicycles for use in African communities.
“Volunteerism”
AWOL’s Townships tour breaks down the barriers imposed by tour buses and cars, using local guides and bicycles to bring visitors closer to communities, and to introduce them to Xhosa customs.
The company is a member of Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa and is also involved with the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes grassroots community development.
Peterson set up the business after spending 15 months cycling through Africa as part of a London to Cape Town bike ride. She said AWOL was “in response to the enormous generosity I received when travelling in Africa”.
The greatest challenges facing SMMEs in community tourism are the need to commit to the project for the long-term, and the need to remain true to the people they serve, she says.
“Community businesses often don’t value the very aspect that makes South African Townships so unique and try to ‘Westernise’ their product offering to what they think tourists want and in that way dilute the experience,” she said.
Sande agrees that integrating a business into a community – rather than expecting a community to adapt for tourism – is key.
“I think businesses should always place people at the centre of everything they do, which means not only their staff and their customers, but also the communities in which they operate,” he said.
“It’s only by businesses in Africa taking long-term responsibility for their actions that the whole continent can move forward. Of course governments must have a major role in community development initiatives, but if businesses look at the bigger picture they can also harness the skills, people and funds at their disposal to benefit those around them.”
Sande says tourism businesses in particular are a good fit for community development projects.
“Tourism has the power to not only bring people from the rest of the world to Africa, but also for these people can take away the message of what they have seen and experienced to their friends and families in a way that is much more powerful than any advert could ever be,” he said.