In an ideal world, there’d be no need for a tour operator to notify travellers of how their seemingly innocent actions overseas could be hurting the lives of vulnerable young children.
But unfortunately, our world is one where tourists are unknowingly affecting the safety and welfare of young people every time they step into a foreign country.
G Adventures is hoping to educate people, and better protect youngsters around the world through a new child welfare campaign with the powerful slogan – ‘if you wouldn’t do it here, don’t do it anywhere’.
The campaign launched on 20 November to coincide with UNICEF’S World Children’s Day. It serves as a reminder to tourists that they should avoid seemingly innocent yet harmful actions such as taking selfies with children, geo-tagging their location on social media, visiting school classrooms and giving money or gift directly to them.
G Adventures will use social media to spread the worth as well as a new short, shareable video that encourages viewers to sign a pledge and be more responsible when interacting with children overseas.
Working with international child protection experts, ChildSafe Movement, and Planeterra Foundation, G Adventures has also released the Child Welfare and the Travel Industry: Global Good Practice Guidelines, which other travel businesses are encouraged to adopt.
Vice President of Social Enterprise and Responsible Travel for G Adventures, Jamie Sweeting, said the new campaign would help people travel better while the guidelines compliment existing guidelines for protecting wildlife and indigenous people.
“As a travel company we want to make sure we’re doing the best we can.”
Jamie Sweeting, G Adventures Vice President of Social Enterprise and Responsible Travel
“With ChildSafe Movement’s help, we’ve developed a policy based on the global guidelines to govern all G Adventures’ operations, which is helping us make appropriate changes in how we educate our travellers, as well as our office and field staff,” Jamie added.
“We’ve also swept our digital assets and owned channels to ensure all our media complies, have removed all school classroom visits from our itineraries, and have completed an internal training program for all staff.
“We’ve set up a task force for monitoring and reporting compliance with our policy, and it will be an ongoing effort to continue to live up to our ChildSafe Certification.”
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