Fighting Poverty with Responsible Tourism
Content submitted by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation – Kathrin Klöti
Submited Date : 07/06/2022

The project, conducted with the Center for Rural Economy Development (CRED), built the capacities of local actors – women, youth, associations, public entities – in partnership with fair-minded tourism operators based in Hanoi to jointly establish responsible tourism offers for both international and domestic individual tourists and in small groups. The basis was the respect of local culture and environment with a view on creating sustainable income generation opportunities and professional diversity in rural areas as alternative to respectively agriculture or internal labour migration (especially the young generation). Local tourism plans were elaborated and integrated in socio-economic development plans, thus fostering local governance through participation, transparency and accountability. The project, implemented 2015-2019, is now transferred to public and private local actors after the creation of a the social enterprise. Helvetas Vietnam is still engaged in the development of Community-Based Tourism in the frame of the USAID-Viet Nam Biodiversity Conservation program  under the lead of WWF.