World Tourism Day

With a full secondary school now present in her area, Mary now goes to a secondary school in her own village, a school equipped with science and computer labs. A school offering safe boarding facilities to female students. A school powered by solar to give adequate lighting for study sessions at night. A school offering bursaries to the vulnerable and needy students. Mary can now proudly stand tall and compete with students whose families could financially sustain their children. She can indeed academically compete with James, who had extra study time due to electricity at his house.

Rainbow Hope Secondary School, in Makokola village in Mangochi district was born out of a partnership between The Responsible Safari Company (RSC) and Community Initiative for Self-Reliance (CISER). CISER was started by a local boat builder; Joseph Makwakwa who saw the impact of mass unemployment amongst school leavers along Lake Malawi's southern shores and decided to form a youth group. The CISER youth go out into the surrounding communities and educate the local villagers in key development issues. They are an inspirational group of young people. One of the projects Joseph (through CISER) was involved in, at the beginning of this partnership was school sponsorship for the local students from his village. He always wanted to set up a school in the village and equip it well enough to help educate his community. 

Through ecotourism, RSC makes sure that the benefits of tourism trickle down to the common Malawian in the village, and through this programme, we started to run paid community ecotourism visits for our clients. Our clients would exchange cultural practices and other experiences with the local community. Some of these practices included sports and dances. Partnerships were formed and through this, Joseph realised his dream of owning a secondary school for his community. Through these links, the school is able to take in needy students on a scholarship. Students like Mary and James are both able to access same quality education than they did before Rainbow Hope was set up.  

‘Proud that our school offered over 130 scholarships to needy students since opening on our doors. We hope to achive more in future through our partnership with The Responsible Safari Company’ Makwawa said. Education in the area is thriving and the school has recently been designated as an examinations cluster centre. This means surrounding secondary schools will now use Rainbow Hope Secondary School as an examination centre.

Tourism as a sector has the potential to develop other sectors like education in this case. Other sectors that can directly grow with tourism include agriculture, sports and conservation. Inclusive growth also involves developing and growing together with individuals behind attractions that are used by tourism sector. 

Happy World Tourism Day!