I learned about Impact Travel Alliance in the daily CSR Wire email. The press release explained that
Travel+SocialGood, a nonprofit working in the global travel industry since 2013, changed its name to Impact Travel Alliance (ITA). The new name better reflects the organization’s long-term vision to affect the choices an average leisure or business traveler makes and the importance travel businesses put on a triple-bottom line.
ITA is a kind of community of practice in the sustainable tourism industry. According to its website (which for now redirects to the old url), ITA was launched by the UN Foundation and +SocialGood in 2013 and has grown "from its original Summit into a nonprofit and global community with Hubs in more than 15 cities worldwide.” 2017 was designated by the United Nations 70th General Assembly as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, which ITA has apparently used to build momentum.
ITA’s initiatives focus on community-building within the travel industry to share tools that encourage sustainability. Rather than catering to travelers, ITA caters to businesses in the travel industry:
Impact Travel Hubs are local ITA chapters. Through education, advocacy and community-building around sustainable tourism, Hubs build networks of travel professionals passionate about making a positive impact on our world.
The media network promotes stories of sustainable tourism across media platforms.
The annual Impact Travel Summit brings sustainable travel leaders together to discuss the state of sustainable travel/tourism and to brainstorm/collaborate across the ITA network.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information available about the administration of ITA itself - which I have been finding to be increasingly common among smaller nonprofits, no matter how beautiful their websites. The “about” page includes the names of staff and the fact that there are 15,000 members across the local hubs. There’s no financial or governance information, though, and it’s confusing how an annual 2-day summit yields revenues of only $21k.
Warning: unintentionally long diatribe/defense ahead.
One thing that upset me during my ITA research was learning about the #StopOrphanTrips campaign. When I wrote about Outreach360 back in February, I was reflecting on an organization that I think I know quite well, that I volunteered and interned for about seven times for a total of about six months, between 2004 and 2010. Long story short, I don’t think this campaign completely applies to Outreach360, even though it works with orphanages:
For one thing, although the org used to be called Orphanage Outreach, they renamed and rebranded themselves a few years back in order to reflect the extent of the work they do in the community - they’re not exclusively focused on orphanages.
Second, part of volunteers’ orientation is a list of 10 principles about the need to be humble, flexible, and respectful - and those principles are reinforced throughout the volunteers’ stay.
Finally, my personal experience tells me that Outreach360 and the orphanage directors are not extorting these kids (whether “true” orphans or not) - although I can imagine that that happens elsewhere. In fact, I remember conversations with the organization ED about the integrity of the orphanage director - so they’re aware of the risks of working with vulnerable populations like this.
Back to ITA, though - the Better Volunteering Better Care campaign was effective at making me ask those questions, though, which I think is a valuable exercise wherever you decide to volunteer.
