Responsible Travel | Volunteer Tourism

With over 6 years experience in facilitating responsible volunteering in Southern and East Africa, at African Impact we believe that we are the on-the-ground African specialists in volunteer tourism, and pride ourselves on being ambassadors of responsible and meaningful travel.

Through careful sustainability planning at our volunteer project locations we endeavour to increase the positive impact of our volunteers and operational practices on the social, cultural and physical environment within which our projects are based.

African Impact as a responsible travel company

• To design and operate our volunteer travel experiences and voluntourism opportunities in a way that gives the highest degree of long-term economic benefit to the host communities, whilst also maintaining and/or improving the environment
• To use local suppliers wherever possible should we be in need of additional partners to facilitate any of our itineraries
• To develop long-term relationships with our partners/agents overseas so that the economic benefit is ongoing
• To increase the skill sets of our local staff through skills such as guides training, literacy programmes and HIV education
• To ensure that our type and scale of volunteer project is appropriate to local conditions and does not overload local infrastructure
• To take into consideration economic, environmental and cultural issues when looking at new project locations. These assessments are overseen by our sustainable development team who are available for consultation by our project managers
• To minimise water and atmospheric pollution from any specific project areas
• To aim to achieve zero litter policies everywhere
• To aim to work closely with all relevant local bodies and authorities to help preserve or improve the environment and deliver a long-term benefit for the host community
• Where possible we will encourage local involvement and provide financial support for economic, social or environmental projects that will benefit the local communities
• To facilitate our volunteer experiences in a way that encourages positive cultural exchanges
• We will continue to support our partners The Happy Africa Foundation and The ALERT Trust as goal-orientated and recognized UK-registered charities