What Is Responsible Travel?
Responsible travel is about making informed, thoughtful choices that benefit both travellers and the places they visit. It goes beyond simply seeing a destination and instead focuses on engaging with local communities in a respectful, meaningful way that creates positive social, cultural and environmental outcomes. At African Impact, we believe responsible travel is a two-way exchange that brings value to everyone involved. Our programmes are designed to support local livelihoods, strengthen community initiatives and contribute to long-term conservation efforts, while also allowing travellers to learn, connect and grow through authentic cultural experiences. By working closely with trusted local partners, we ensure that our projects respond to genuine needs and are rooted in ethical practice, sustainability and mutual respect. Responsible travel also means recognising the impact our presence can have and taking care to ensure that our actions support, rather than disrupt, local environments and ways of life. Through careful planning and ongoing collaboration, we aim to create lasting, positive change that continues long after the journey ends.
Our responsible measures
These measures guide how we design and deliver our projects, ensuring every experience is ethical, responsible and rooted in positive, long-term impact.
Community Involvement
We partner with local leaders, schools and organisations to support meaningful projects shaped by real needs. By collaborating respectfully and sharing skills, we help strengthen communities and create long term change, ensuring the effects last long after departure.
Modern Slavery
An act that deprives a person’s liberty and dignity for another person’s gain. At African Impact, we have a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery and are fully committed to preventing slavery and human trafficking in our operation and supply chain.
Constant Evaluation
We are committed to regularly reviewing our projects to ensure they remain ethical, effective and community led. Through ongoing monitoring, feedback and reflection, we adapt our approach as needs evolve. This process helps us maintain accountability, improve outcomes and deliver responsible programmes with genuine impact.
Lasting Impact
Our focus is on creating positive change that continues long after a placement ends. By supporting sustainable initiatives, building local skills and empowering communities, we help ensure benefits are long term. Every project is designed to contribute to meaningful outcomes that support people, wildlife and environments for the future.
Ethical Interactions
We are committed to respectful, responsible and culturally sensitive engagement. All interactions are guided by clear ethical standards that protect communities, participants and partners. By prioritising dignity, consent and transparency, we ensure our work is carried out with integrity and respect at every level, across all projects and partnerships.
Volunteering responsibly with children
Our child-focused approach ensures safeguarding, ethical engagement and long-term community benefit throughout every Community Support placement.
African Impact's stance on orphanage volunteering
Unfortunately, exploitative orphanages exist where the focus is on generating income from well-meaning volunteers, not the welfare of the children. It is for this reason that we took the decision to stop working with a number of orphanages across the continent and, as of 2018, no longer have any affiliation with this type of institution.
While African Impact, under no circumstances, supports the institutionalizing of children in orphanages, we do continue to work with orphaned children in reputable childcare organizations if the long-term aim of these institutions is to place children into a family setting. Our goal is to support vulnerable children across Africa and help them reach their full potential and our volunteer work will continue in foster-care homes, after-school centers and schools across the continent.
Our child protection policy
We are aware that many children are the victims of different kinds of abuse and exploitation. They can be subjected to social factors that have an adverse impact on their lives, including domestic violence, substance misuse, bullying, child prostitution and ritualistic abuse. This abuse could also be extended to the misuse of authority as it relates to our industry, tourism, especially as it relates to capturing images of the vulnerable communities we work with. We aim to create a safe environment within which children can thrive and adults can work with the security of clear guidance and therefore promote good practice.
Our top protection priorities:
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Safeguarding children at all times
- Empowering staff and volunteers to respond confidently to child concerns
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Preventing unsuitable individuals from working with us
