By Ed Thompson, Ooh.com – Whether information gathering, or physically participating, there has never been a time when we’ve been so widely involved in a collective awakening about our impact on the environment. There’s also never been so much fun to be had from it. There are now more courses, classes, tours, and travel opportunities for the eco-conscious than ever. Have you always wanted to get some practical experience with sustainable living? Or considered building your own yurt? We’ll here’s how!

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.

“The Maasai of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba—two of the oldest cattle cultures on earth—are emerging from a century of ‘white man’s conservation,’ which turned their lands into off-limits game reserves. Now, with a new model of conservation, wildlife is back in their hands and the tribes are vying for a piece of the ecotourism pie. But can poachers become protectors?” On April 7, the Emmy Award-winning PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS presents David Simpson’s MILKING THE RHINO, which examines the deepening conflict between humans and animals in an ever-shrinking world.

What started out as a realization has become a new book for Carol Patterson, President of Kalahari Management, a Calgary-based ecotourism consulting company. “It was on the long flight home from Africa that I suddenly realized that I was not the same person I had been when I left Canada,” Carol said. “I had changed. The country, the adventures, the people I met, the places I stayed all changed me; all for the better.” This idea of being changed by travel stuck with her and last year she decided to develop the idea. She began writing and collecting travel stories for what became Reinventure…