SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS X SOCIALBNB
Sustainability is on everyone’s lips and is of great interest in diverse subject areas. Climate change, scarcity of resources, dwindling biodiversity or even the current population dynamics as well as people’s consumption behavior require a rethink. In 2015, the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda. In it: 17 sustainable development goals that are intended to ensure and promote sustainability. The goals focus on poverty, food and drinking water, health, education, gender equality, energy, work, sustainable development, environmental and climate protection and peace. But how can tourism and explicitly socialbnb contribute to these goals? That is what we are clarifying today.
The role of tourism
Tourism is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. The tourism sector can ideally tie in with the Sustainable Development Goals and thus emerges as a central industry in their implementation. According to the World Tourism Organization, key factors are the creation of jobs, the promotion of local economic cycles, the preservation of nature and culture, the strengthening of local infrastructure, and the reduction of poverty and inequality.
As one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world, tourism is well positioned to promote economic growth and development at all levels and to provide income through job creation. The development of sustainable tourism and its impact at the local level can be linked to national goals to reduce poverty, goals to promote entrepreneurship and small businesses, and to empower disadvantaged groups, especially young people and women.
World Tourism Organization
If you want to dig deeper into the Sustainable Development Goals and are also interested in the tourism industry’s role in them, check out this blog post.
The role of socialbnb
We would like to give you a small overview of the concrete contribution we have made as a social startup to achieving the sustainability goals. On the platform of socialbnb, ecological and social projects with overnight accommodations are offered – in most cases, the projects are not directly connected to tourism and are therefore not experienced players in the industry. This is where socialbnb comes into play and markets the unique projects free of charge for the latter.
There are currently over 200 projects listed worldwide that are committed to the goals of the 2030 Agenda. The valuable project work is financially supported by the Overnight Award. If you would like to get detailed insights into the impact we have made in 2022 and what has happened with the money, feel free to read our Impact Report. You can find it on our website.
We see it as our responsibility to take on environmental, economic and social challenges. To this end, our projects are actively committed to the Sustainable Development Goals of “No Poverty,” “No Hunger,” “Health and Wellbeing,” “Quality Education,” “Gender Equality,” “Clean Water and Sanitation,” “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” “Reduced Inequalities,” “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” “Responsibility in Consumption and Production,” “Climate Action,” as well as “Life Under Water and on Land” and “Peace”.
Example 1: Environmental sustainability
An exemplary project in the ecological field of action of socialbnb’s sustainability is Project Wings in Indonesia. Project Wings is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has set itself the goal of tackling three of the biggest problems in the field of environmental protection and nature conservation – species extinction, deforestation of rainforests and plastic pollution. To this end, the project is building the world’s largest recycling village of plastic waste, within which not only nature is being cleaned up, but also sustainable awareness is being created.
In addition to the ecological aspect, they also implement social sustainability, as the local population is largely integrated into the project and thus sensitized to the issue of sustainability. In addition, the project strengthens the role of women by creating equal jobs for all genders and creates access to environmental education for current and future generations. The project is listed with two single rooms, one double room and one apartment at socialbnb. The overnight stay of the travelers takes place in the direct vicinity of the project and thus contributes to socialbnb’s ecological contribution to a more sustainable tourism.
Mara Kersten, socialbnb
Example 2: Social sustainability
The Qosqo Maki project in Peru can serve as an example in the social field of action of sustainability. Qosqo Maki is an association that supports children and young people on the streets of the city of Cusco. This support is offered to the children and young people by providing them with accommodation, teaching them responsibility skills, and offering them education and training opportunities. In addition, the project has premises that can be used for solidarity tourism to promote intercultural exchange and the sustainability of the project.
In the form of shared and double rooms, travelers can stay separately from the children and young people, in accordance with the child protection code “The Code”, and support the project through the amount paid for the overnight stay. Those rooms are listed on the platform socialbnbs and thus contribute to the social contribution of socialbnbs to sustainable tourism.
Mara Kersten, socialbnb
In addition, socialbnb brings together a large number of different stakeholder groups from the tourism industry, the development sector, government institutions, local and international civil society organizations, political associations, and end consumers, and thus has a central influence on Goal 17 “Global Partnership”.
Through our tourism concept, the financing of the projects is supported, which in turn has an influence on all other goals, as the organizations can increase the output of their project work through additional financial resources. Last but not least, travelers are sensitized to the work of Agenda 2030 through their visit to such a project. In the coming years, this influence can increase enormously and thus lead to awareness of the Agenda and local approaches to solutions.
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