Awards

Responsible Tourism Showcase Award 2011

Eos Visions received one of the prestigious 2011 Responsible Tourism Showcase Awards at the Educational Travel Conference (ETC) in Providence, Rhode Island.

In recognition of our general achievements in educational and responsible travel in East Africa, particularly in the post-conflict settings of Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern DR Congo, the ETC decided to particularly honor our ‘more-than-profit’ philosophy, taking our signature project collaboration with the UN Millennium Villages Project (UNMVP) as an example.

The partnership with the UNMVP had been launched in late 2006 by our co-founder and Executive Director, Dr. Michael Grosspietsch, i.e. already before the official birth of the Eos Visions brand. Together with the Director of the UNMVP in Rwanda, Josh Ruxin, he created the vision of the first-ever educational community-based tourism project that focuses entirely on development challenges and successful interventions in a holistic way. With their respective teams, they set out to build a successful partnership with the project managers, the local government and the community leaders. The result is a tourism cooperative that hosts unique educational day excursions that focus on development interventions in agriculture, education, infrastructure, healthcare and micro-enterprise development, while also providing fascinating background introductions to the geography and history of the area, cultural activities and reconciliation success stories. During the first three years, the partnership hosted over 800 visitors and generated over $30,000 in direct revenues to the Millennium Village community. It is a particular success that the cooperative is now receiving tour groups from a range of tour operators and other partners, signifying that the project has managed to cross the important threshold of becoming a mainstream tourist experience that attracts more than just niche visitors from one specialized operator.