Meaningful Travel Summit

Tourism Cares with Colombia | November 7 - 11, 2021

Our Meaningful Travel Summit is an event connecting industry professionals with local changemakers in places around the world. By coming together in-destination, we action and actualize the power of travel; creating opportunities, empowering communities, amplifying culture and protecting the environment, while fostering diverse perspectives and building inclusivity and understanding.

About the Summit

Tour operators, travel media and select suppliers including airlines, insurance providers and more, spent four days experiencing unique offerings in-country to inspire them to integrate local social enterprises and impact experiences into their product, increasing the positive social, economic and environmental impact of tourism. After arriving in Medellin, industry professionals experienced a handful of the local social enterprises highlighted on the Meaningful Travel Map of Colombia like Sonbatá, the Afro-Colombian artistic collective that combines hip-hop and autochthonous  Colombian rhythms, or Mezzón de la 55, Esperanza  Murillo’s local landmark restaurant.

By choosing destinations that are by and for the community, we contribute to economic opportunities for social enterprises that are working to solve social or environmental challenges and provide travelers with a respectful, authentic cultural experience. Local enterprises like Unión Latina, Corporación Mangle, and Coojardicom, open their doors to visitors to regenerative narratives by breaking stereotypes and allowing communities to tell the stories of their past and reimagine their future. These top-quality tours have been crafted with the goal of finding the intersection between the expectations of the modern experiential traveler and a sound sustainability strategy that actively includes initiatives that are solving challenges at a local level in the tourism value chain.

Meaningful Travel Map

Now that the Meaningful Travel Summit in Colombia has come to a close, we will continue to come together as travel professionals, tour operators, and travel industry leaders to actualize the power of travel to leave a positive footprint, reinvigorate economies, and return to real human community-based connections through the Meaningful Travel Map. In every corner of the world, there are amazing impact entrepreneurs and local community leaders wanting to partner with the tourism industry. The Meaningful Travel Map gives tour operators and advisors access to connect their travelers with unique and positive travel opportunities every day.

Our Top Three Takeaways From the Program:

• All tourism is community tourism. It is first and foremost about relationship-building and not simply transactional, so we must give communities a voice and ask how they want tourism to work in their homes.

• The travel experience becomes more beneficial for locals and visitors when destination stakeholders - both in the public and private sector - build partnerships with intention.

• Working with local leaders and forging unlikely partnerships can create social transformation and a prosperous business.

At the Meaningful Travel Summit, more than 30 travel professionals got to experience tourist destinations and begin building a connection between the world and communities thriving for social change. While there is an endless amount of local entrepreneurs, our visitors only got to enjoy a handful of the stories and experiences Colombia has to share with us- a few of them are highlighted here. Beyond this list, the Meaningful Travel Map of Colombia connects us with more local entrepreneurs.

Moravia Tours: A woman-led community-based tourism initiative that has involved multiple stakeholders in the community to engage them in tourism activities.

La Cocina Movil: Woman-led project that aims to help mothers provide affordable and healthy food for their families. They have educational programs to teach mothers how to use more vegetables and less junk food in their daily diet.

Coojardicom: Woman-led social enterprise that manages a local greenhouse and provides gardening and landscaping services. They generate dignified income opportunities for mothers and use the work as part of the healing process.

Corporacion Mangle: A cultural and educational initiative created by young leaders of Moravia that uses capoeira to foster critical thinking, values and life skills in vulnerable communities.

Sonbata: Af ro-colombian artistic collective that combines hip-hop and autochthonous Colombian rhythms to make music a vehicle for identity and resistance. They work with children and youth mostly f rom Comuna 13 and use art as a tool for expanding the personal development alternatives of underserved populations.

Barrio Comparsa: Created by 4 victims of the conflict, this organization’s goal has been erasing the invisible borders created in part because of the drug trade in Medellin’s periferic neighborhoods. With parades and theater, they create moments of katharsis and social integration.

Union Latina: Art academy in which music, theater and dance are taught, specializing in salsa, tango and urban rhythms. They open the doors of the academy to children and youth who want to rewrite their life story and become professional dancers and social leaders.

Mezzon de la 55: Esperanza Murillo started off working as a housekeeper. Then, she started selling empanadas on the street and now her restaurant has become a local landmark for comfort food with the characteristic tastes of the Chocó fusioned with the local cuisine. This restaurant serves it’s community by providing great quality food for small portions at an affordable price, helping single mothers with long working hours to provide quality food for their children.

Berracas: Berracas is a Colombian expression to describe OK a courageous and skillful woman. That’s the spirit that Paola Rivas impints in her social enterprise. Through training in gastronomy and creating job opportunities, Berracas empowers women in underserved communities to gain economic self-sufficiency and empowerment to improve their life situation.

Embera Bead Project: Handmade Artisan Jewelry that gives back! All profits go to provide humanitarian relief for Embera families in need in the city. Embera provides workshops, trainings, food relief packets, nutritional supplements, and much more.

UVA El Tesoro: One of Medellin’s achievements has been the transformation of public space as part of its social urbanism strategy. The location of this dinner event is one of the 18 UVAs which are active inf rastructure of Medellin’s water supply service that were recently adapted to serve a double purpose. They became parks and community centers located on the surrounding mountains of the valley of Medellin.

Café Urbania: Urbania focuses on contributing to the social welfare of the 250 families in which they work through specialty coffee projects, building value together. Their objective is to commercialize high-quality coffees produced by communities in a state of vulnerability, compensating them with prices much higher than those of the market. Urbania works on projects with coffee growers who are victims of the conflict and with communities that are restoring illicit coffee crops.

Take a deeper dive and gain a wider perspective of the amazing work that social enterprises and event partners in Colombia are doing. Scan the QR codes with your smartphone or click on the click and enjoy your journey!

6 Tourism Regions of Colombia: 6 tourism regions that invite you to explore our biodiversity, culture, archeology, communities, authenticity, sustainability, our legacy. Colombia is ready to welcome you with the warmth of its people. Welcome to Colombia, the most welcoming place on Earth! Explore more at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu5Fu7ZFats

The Birders: The Birders, a documentary film on Colombian bird diversity and birdwatching presented by ProColombia, with support of FONTUR and directed by Gregg Bleakney. Explore more at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-jn1_thxK8

 Sounds of Colombia: Built in collaboration with musician Gregorio Uribe, Sounds of Colombia is a set of experiences that allows a deep immersion into the roots of Colombian music, highlighting the natural and cultural diversity of the land of the thousand rhythms. Explore more at:  https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQd7i27h0_E&feature=share

IMPULSE TRAVEL: Make Tours Not War: Impulse started as a local operator of tours and activities and we haven’t lost that spirit and that connection with the ground operations. Through Impulse Travel, we connect with independent travelers f rom all over the world who want to book small-group local experiences with our unique twist. Explore more at:  https://youtu.be/VD5gFLVRT38

Tourism Cares with Colombia Official Press Release

Engage with the Colombia Meaningful Travel Summit and stories of impact on social media.

Learn more about becoming a summit host here and email Jessica Flores at Jessica.Flores@tourismcares.org to apply!

Not only does Tourism Cares have a long legacy of bringing our industry together but mobilizing it to create change. What started with volunteer efforts largely in the United States has grown into global investment in social and environmental impact organizations that create lasting change for communities around the world. Nearly 20 years of meaningful travel history: https://www.tourismcares.org/meaningful-travel-summit-history.