This 2022, we walked the talk. Here's how we transformed words into action and positive impact.
This is what we did for sustainability, historic preservation and equality in the last year.
Since our country reopened for international visitors on Nov 1st 2021, here's just some of our most significant actions to promote sustainability and equality in our company + country.
Sustainability.
We planted 55 native trees in Choila and Cordoba via our partners at Reforestarg and already paid for +60 more to be planted during their next campaign!
These lands had been subject to wildfires and our partners went into the field to help restore the native nature of these lands.
During 2023, we will partner with Bosques de Agua, who are not just reforesting with native trees but buying strategic land in places full of water and making them into Preserved Land. The preservation of these strategic areas fights wildfires and droughts through conservationism.
Historic preservation.
This year, our Jewish Heritage deparment partnered with Latin America's largest Yiddish cultural archive, IWO, to open it for tourists and help raise funds to preserve and digitalize over a hundred years of Argentine Jewish History.
The preservation of this archive is paramount to the keeping of the Argentine Jewish identity, and this archive had been subject to immense damage after it was nearly destroyed in a terrorist attack in 1994 against Latin Ameroca's largest Jewish community center, AMIA.
We hope to help this archive finish its building renovation and begin a community outreach program through our intervention.
Equality: racial justice.
As you probably know by now, Lunfarda Travel is the first ever travel company to share Argentina's Black History, which has been largely invisibilized by society and in the history books, as well as by the travel industry.
Since we started running tours for international guests less than a year ago, we've been able to share this tour with +150 guests from all over the world, who said things like:
- "Show up and support this REVOLUTIONARY tour that is unearthing hidden Black and African history in Argentina." (Kadisha, 2022)
- "A MUST when visiting Buenos Aires if you truly want to understand the authentic culture of the city that is an amalgamation of multiple cultures of which the Afro-Argentine is present. This tour challenges the narrative of those who wrote history and questions the concept of a 'White Argentina'" (Terry, 2022).
This year, we've also run at-cost tours for +100 locals and give this tour for free to +15 kids in our community, creating 3 jobs for Black tour guides in our community. Through our tours, we convinced the National Historic Museum to incoporate pieces of Argentina's Black History, which you can find at their permanent collection today. We hope this is the beginning of a beautiful trend, in which our work pushes institutions and the broad travel industry to act up for racial equality.
This year, we've also supported Black Artists: we restored the Maria Remedios del Valle Mural made by Afroana on our commission for Black History Month and sponsored the first every Black Entrepreneur Pop Up Market in our office, in which we invited 10 artists and artisans from our community to our house so they could share their talents with the world! We hope to run this again in 2023, and to create a mini-store within our office to promote these artists year round.
We have also hired an all BIPOC team of content creators to create a collection of pictures of black people in Buenos Aires, because representation and visibility matter.
All in all, we funneled over 2,500 USD into our local community, and invested 10,000 USD in promoting a Black, anti-racist Argentina, so these numbers can continue to grow year after year. The best is yet to come!
Equality: LGBTIQA+ rights + diversity.
We continued to be the most diverse travel company in Buenos Aires and to deepen our commitement to gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights, both home and abroad. All executive decisions in our company are made by women, and our company proudly employs people with Indigenous, Black, Jewish, Japanese, Arab and European heritage and people across the LGBTIQA+ spectrum.
But because we know that our realities -and privileges- are different, we continued to work towards inclusivity and equality in the LGBTIQA+ community, for which the local Chamber of Commerce and LGBT Tourism awarded us with the Innovation Award of the Year.
This year alone, we donated +1000 USD to Mocha Celis, a highschool for trans and gender non-confoming students that Lunfarda Travel supports through it's LGBT+ tours. Consider making a donation of your own here.
We also proudly sponsored our local drag queen Tita de San Telmo, whom we hired for 3 shows and sponsored her first theatre performance.
But we didn't just make waves nationaly: our founder Mariana Radisic Koliren also participated in Proud Experiences in NYC during June to promote Argentina as a Queer Destination, and was later awarded the David Martin Smalls Fellowship for entrepreneurs by IGLTA. Through this fellowship, Mariana headed to the largest LGBT+ travel show in the world to represent our community with pride, participating in panels. She is now in the process of creating material to help bring an intersectional view to colleges worldwide in 2023/2024 and she has started teaching Intersectional Travel Design at the first LGBT+ Travel Masters' from University of Barcelona.
To cap off this amazing year, Mariana spoke at our local LGBT+ Travel Conference: GNetwork360, where she addressed the ways that the travel industry can actively use intersectionality to design better experiences across our community, and later joined Meg Ten Eyck and Lunfarda's own Julia Cohen Ribeiro to discuss safe destinations for Queer Women. Thanks for having us, Gnetwork!
In 2023, expect to see our team in local and international LGBTQ+ travel shows, pushing forward an agenda of intersectionality geared towards one goal: inclusivity, visibility and prosperity for our community.
Equality: fair trade and job generation.
Our company proudly employs 30 guides and 2 administrative office managers, all of whom are paid at least 30% over market wages. We continue to grow and provide ongoing training, education and growth tools for our team members.
We have continued to work elbow by elbow with our local community, helping funnel tens of thousands of dollars straight into the hands of small business owners, restaurateurs, artists and artisans.
In 2023, let's continue to walk the talk together.
Showing the travel industry and our guests that positive change is possible begins with enacting and demanding accountability.
Let's continue to set high bars, and take baby steps to get there, inspiring our partner organizations and guests to be a part of the change.
How can you help? Ask your local provider to provide an anual report on initiatives taken for SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) and measures taken to comply with the companies inner policies. Celebrate all the good that's being done, but always push a nudge further.
We are extremely proud of all of what we've achieved as a company this year, and we're looking forward to continue to change the narratives behind tourism in Argentina and abroad. Before we wrap off 2022 and say hola to 2023, let's manifest:
- Diversity is tourism's biggest asset. Let's promote and embrace diversity in organizations, tourism narratives and with our diverse guests.
- Sustainability is a society wide effort, and tourism can be a vector for people to embrace better travel practices for people and the environment. Let's act as vectors of change!
- Tourism can promote social and racial justice and elevate livelihoods. Let's demand that travel companies take an active role in this transformation.
We're looking forward to seeing you and make you part of the change this 2023!
