Southern
africa travel supports uthando (meaning ‘love’) South Africa, a nonprofit
organisation and Responsible Tourism initiative based in Cape Town.
In
turn, Uthando supports a broad range of community-based, sustainable and innovative
social-development programmes. Funding and other forms of assistance come primarily
through the tourism industry.
In addition, Uthando offers unique and tailor-made
daily scheduled tours and private half-day field trips, taking visitors to the
projects being funded by sponsors. Most of these are located in the sprawling
townships on the outskirts of Cape Town. The field trips offer visitors to
South Africa an opportunity to discover the positive and interesting stories of
life in the townships, interacting with locals in their place of work and learning
how these impoverished communities overcome adversity and poverty. By joining
a field trip, visitors are also contributing to and assisting with social development.
In
2007, just over 9 million foreigners flew in to South Africa – an increase
of 8,3% over 2006 and a massive step up from the 3,9 million visitors at the dawn
of our democracy in 1994. With the next Football World Cup being hosted here in
2010, this figure looks certain to rise to above 10 million.
This is great
news for our tourism industry. But it also should sound alarm bells for anyone
concerned about the world we live in. One long-haul international flight adds
a considerable amount to your individual carbon footprint. Southern Africa Travel,
in association with My Tree In Africa, offers you the opportunity to offset
the environmental impact of your travel. For ZAR80 you can purchase a tree, which
will then be planted in disadvantaged communities across the country by an
organization known as Food and Trees for Africa. And while planting one tree will
not make your round trip carbon-neutral, it goes a long way towards offsetting
your CO2 emissions and is the first important step towards responsible travel.
If you’d like to support this project, please ask a Southern Africa Travel
consultant how you can purchase a tree in Africa for only ZAR80.
May you
enjoy your visit to our beautiful country. And may you take away beautiful memories
and leave behind only the smallest of footprints.
SOUTHERN AFRICA TRAVEL The Oak Suite, Guardian House,
Borough Road, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 2AE Tel: 01483 425533 Fax: 01483 860391 The air holiday packages on this website are ATOL protected
by the Civil Aviation Authority. Our ATOL number is 4795. Please see our booking
conditions for more information. Click on the ATOL logo above for more information.
Many thanks and credit to the following
photographers whose images have been used in this site: Michael Poliza, Colin
Bell, Dana Allen, David Ross and Wilderness Safaris.
