In line with the World Tourism Organisation’s announcement of 2020 as the Year of Tourism and Rural Development, NotOn-Map (connecting travellers to indigenous communities in India) launched a travel revival initiative called TraVival.
Started in association with The International Centre for Responsible Tourism and backed by Booking. com, TraVival aims to empower communities in villages with health, hygiene, sustainability and tourism practices, and educate travellers from metros on travelling responsibly. On World Tourism Day, September 27, Founder Kumar Anubhav spoke to The Morning Standard about the initiative.
What is the idea behind TraVival?
Due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, the rural communities who survived on the tourism economy were in a critical position. Various government and organisational guidelines were introduced, but rural communities find it difficult to comprehend. TraVival that stands for ‘Training for Travel Revival’, came into being with a simple thought – to help rural communities and property owners get back on their feet so that they can maintain their properties and work towards reviving the tourism industry while maintaining hygiene guidelines and safety precautions.
How exactly will TraVival achieve this?
Project TraVival is a five phase series. In the first phase, we conducted a series of webinars inviting local people to know how they can use technology to attend any webinar, seek inputs for traditional local practices and techniques being followed to address hygiene issues and maintain safety; and share knowledge about the current situation and future prospect. For the second phase, we made hygiene guidelines and in the third phase, we conducted a series of webinars in regional languages, where we focused on success stories and the best practices followed in that region.
The fourth phase consists of a series of 150+ training videos over 18 regional languages further divided into 12 modules for educating and guiding will be shot extensively. These training videos cover a variety of subjects related to safety guidelines and the new normal post COVID times. The project is an outcome of three months of efforts after conducting over 30 webinars involving over 2,000 community members and 50 organisations from across 17 states in India. The fifth phase is to ensure that the training imparted
is being followed and an audit system is brought in place.
How will you train these people?
We will opt for tech-enabled solutions and publish these videos online. The entire training and visual aids will be open-source, free of any expenses so that we can reach the grassroots community.
Will your team get in touch with people at the grassroots?
Yes, we have our representatives across rural India. They have established contact with village groups, created village communities and we train them individually using video conferencing, conducting webinars, etc.Those involved in the project have decades of experience working at the grassroots level. The local champions will be key to the process of reaching to the grassroots community and spreading this knowledge. The Nom team will help them overcome any difficulty.
How will TraVival guide travellers from metros like Delhi?
Our webinars for travellers teach them how to maintain certain decorum and rules so their presence in
these remote communities does not harm the inhabitants.