Village Earth, a non-profit organization that provides sustainable international development training programs, is offering a new online course “Tourism and Development” as a part of the Community-based Development Certificate Program in partnership with Colorado State University. This course runs 5-weeks from January 6 – February 10, 2012. All registration is done online and the deadline to register is December 30, 2011.
The course is about tourism and its impacts within the framework of community-based development.
Course description
In developing countries, tourism as a means of economic development receives considerable public funding and private investment. Moreover, NGOs increasingly support local tourism initiatives, as well as voluntourism, in hopes of raising incomes in the communities in which they work. Amongst these institutions, tourism is seen as a mechanism for local communities to capitalize on assets such as the natural environment and cultural heritage. Yet in academic circles, tourism has often been accused of being destructive, elite and at times oppressive.
This course will explore successful tourism initiatives as well as problematic initiatives. We will critically examine the nature of tourism, its impacts on communities and considerations that must be taken into account in order for a tourism project to have the desired impact of pursuing a local vision for development without destroying.
Course Instructor: Cynthia Ord
Cynthia Ord holds a Masters of Tourism and Environmental Economics degree from the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca, Spain and a B.A. in Spanish and Philosophy from Colorado State University. Her M.S. program focused on the socio-cultural, environmental and economic impacts of global tourism. Ord’s research focused on non-commercial volunteer tourism networks. She currently works in media and communications for WHL Group, a global online travel-booking network that focuses on e-market access for small and medium sized tourism enterprises in the Global South. She has also worked on ecotourism projects in Central America and worked with a local tour operator in Albania.
Article taken from Your Travel Choice. Read original version here.
