Group Assembly in Rural St Lucia
Cox Journey Adventures donate again to high school provides to a kindergarten class in St. Lucia
Vacationers Posing with Grade 5 College students of the Dugard Mixed College in Choiseul, Saint Lucia
Ramping Up Community-based Tourism in Rural St Lucia Beginning With Elementary College College students and Customer Engagement and Then Constructing Outwards From There
— Kirk Elliott
CASTRIES, LC, SAINT LUCIA, August 10, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — A few years in the past award successful St Lucia photographer Kirk Elliott received invited to a rural neighborhood in Saint Lucia to assist it develop a way of excellence in its tourism providing after his St Lucia Picture Tour received its first TripAdvisor Certificates of Excellence. Elliott was blown away by the great potential of their tourism product. Nonetheless, he couldn’t assist lamenting that residents merely didn’t see its potential and have been thus content material to keep up the established order.
In grappling with the conundrum of how greatest to impact constructive and lasting change Elliott got here to the conclusion that rural communities are largely ill-equipped to efficiently handle and function tourism enterprises. This led him to an thought he dubbed “Caring Entrepreneurship”.
Defining Caring Entrepreneurship
Within the context of tourism Elliott defines the Caring Entrepreneur as somebody who understands the enterprise of tourism. The entrepreneur brings this experience to the mutual good thing about each the neighborhood and his/her enterprise and in the method nurtures and empowers the neighborhood in tourism excellence.
To achieve success the enterprise association should be primarily based on mutual respect and belief. The entrepreneur should actually care in regards to the neighborhood relatively than solely about his/her backside line. In flip the neighborhood should acknowledge and admire the caring entrepreneur’s worth. This synergy is the muse for an end result that yields outcomes that far exceed the sum of the neighborhood’s and the entrepreneur’s particular person efforts.
“I would be the first to state that this notion of caring entrepreneurship is a counter-intuitive strategy to success. Nonetheless, from inception it was clear to me that this novel strategy was an efficient means of nurturing long-term success in community-based sustainable tourism growth” Elliott defined when requested why would an entrepreneur sacrifice revenue simply to assist a poor rural neighborhood.
Testing The Concept of Caring Entrepreneurship
After a number of false begins Elliott lastly received the chance to check his principle in a unique neighborhood after @CoxTravelAdventures of Danbury Connecticut, USA, outfitted a whole kindergarten class with an assortment of faculty provides firstly of the 2022 college yr.
The college provides have been donated to the Dugard Mixed College in Choiseul, Saint Lucia. Whereas Dugard is a rural neighborhood deep in the guts of Saint Lucia, in any way the varsity might have missed as a result of its remoteness it greater than made up for with coronary heart and soul. From the principal and academics, to the scholars, to the varsity’s caretaker employees, all of them function like one huge household and their love and caring comes shining by means of.
“From my preliminary phone dialog with Mr. Elliott I felt like my prayers had been answered, as simply the week earlier than I had prayed that our small rural neighborhood college with restricted sources would in some way acquire better visibility. Then seemingly out of the blue there was Mr. Elliott lending a serving to hand and talking of desirous to develop a long-term relationship with our college”, acknowledged college principal Mrs. Tessa Charles-Calderon when requested about Elliott’s help for the varsity.
Connecting Younger College students With Tourism
Because the publish pandemic return of tourism Elliott has been taking patrons of his Personal St Lucia Experiences to the Dugard Mixed College the place they get to interact with college students first hand. Elliott invitations his shoppers to deliver over college provides primarily based on the wants of the varsity, and the final consensus of tourists is that their engagement with the scholars has been a spotlight of their Saint Lucia trip.
For the scholars – they’ve come to understand vacationers as folks identical to themselves relatively than as some summary time period they hear about on the radio or see on tv newscasts.
What’s Subsequent For The Dugard Mixed College
College students on the college have stated they might like to have a correct playground at their college and the principal and academics contemplate this a wonderful thought that may train the kids about caring and sharing, amongst different issues.
Elliott has engaged a lot of his skilled buddies to lend a serving to hand to the Dugard Mixed College’s Playground Challenge. From an engineer who has assessed the required earth works, to an architect who has produced architectural renderings for the playground, nearly everybody Elliott has reached out to has lent their help and even gone means past his wildest expectations.
“The overwhelming help of everybody I’ve reached out to has emboldened me to ask each the academics and the scholars to dream huge scary desires after which collectively let’s exit and make these desires come by means of!” Elliott passionately commented when requested his ideas on this playground challenge and past.
In the course of the 2022/23 college yr Elliott labored with the varsity to finish Section 1 of the Playground Challenge in the type of the portray of instructional video games in the schoolyard. To not let a chance go to waste, the varsity integrated the video games portray challenge into college students’ College Based mostly Evaluation (SBA). This SBA is a sensible exercise college students should efficiently full in order to graduate and acquire admission to a secondary college.
From the video beneath of the official launch of the video games it’s clear that the scholars’ efforts have been effectively obtained.
Creating an Worldwide Benchmark of Sustainable Community-based Tourism in Small Island Growing States (SIDS)
When Elliott launched into this journey of searching for to empower a rural neighborhood little might he have imagined the place the journey would lead. Within the means of understanding and overcoming the obstacles he encountered he has come to understand that these we contemplate rural poor take pleasure in a richness of life and dwelling that is still largely unrecognized.
“I’m tremendous enthusiastic about this concept of Caring Entrepreneurship and my objective is to see this neighborhood engagement beginning with the Dugard Mixed College challenge manifest into an Worldwide Benchmark of Sustainable Community-based Tourism in Small Island Growing States” stated Elliott when requested what was the general end result he envisions.
…and on the fee at which this intervention is progressing he simply could be on to one thing.
Kirk Elliott
Kirk Elliott Pictures
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Dugard Mixed College Playground Challenge – Painted Video games
