In South Africa, an estimated 30,000 children under the age of 18 are said to be victims of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC). Even more shocking is that many of these victims are children between the ages of 10 and 14 years old. Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa (FTTSA), South Africa’s leading responsible tourism NGO, is now challenging citizens to become involved and assume their role as protectors of our children, forming part of their initiative where key players in the travel and sector are stepping up and taking a stance against Child Sex Tourism (CST).

Since Alex Haley’s book ‘Roots’ was published in 1976, tourists have been flocking to the villages of Juffureh and Albreda in the Gambia where the story began. The book and subsequent film tell the story of Kunte Kinteh, a man captured as an adolescent from Juffureh and sold into slavery in the United States. Today, around 2000 people live in Juffereh and Albreda, including decedents of Kunte Kinteh’s family. Tours to the villages involve international visitors arriving by boat and spending a few hours in the community learning about the slave trade and life in the village.

In 2009, Basecamp Explorer, in partnership with 500 Masai landowners, agreed to create a 20,000 hectares community wildlife conservancy in Masai Mara Kenya. The called it Naboisho, which means togetherness in local Maa language. Unique to this conservancy is that each of the 500 landowners is guaranteed of monthly income paid as rent for fifteen years, for setting aside part of their land for conservation. The rent is determined by the number of acres a landowner has contributed to the conservancy and will increase each year based on inflation rates.

The Forest Conservation by Livelihood Development Project (LIVE Project) aims to conserve the forest areas and biodiversity in Zanzibar by supporting alternative livelihoods for the local communities. LIVE Project supports 40 groups in 11 villages around the Kiwengwa-Pongwe Forest Reserve, including Kiwengwa. There are also ten Village Conservation Committees involved in the project, working to develop sustainable use of forest resources. By visiting the caves, visitors will also be able to support the project, as well as experiencing one of the natural wonders of the island.

In October 2010, a new group of visitors will arrive on Sierra Leone’s John Obey Beach, 20 miles south of the capital, Freetown, and begin to build a new life alongside the local fishing community. The initiative is led by Tribewanted, a social enterprise whose groundbreaking social experiment on the Fijian island of Vorovoro has injected since 2006 more than US$ 1 million into the local economy by setting up an online tribal community of more than 10,000 people.

We were the five women who had traveled to Senegal with Women Travel for Peace. Our goal: to fund and help construct a sturdy, concrete well for the women’s farming collective. While this project had begun several months before our arrival with village meetings and discussion, on this, our last day in the village, we were all ready to inaugurate and celebrate our much needed contribution. Women Travel for Peace’s community-based tourism enables women from the industrialized world to work side-by-side with women in the developing world in support of a community project.