Responsible Travels
Very important to Tari Travel is giving back to the local communities, wildlife and nature of Indonesia. Find out more about our commitment to responsible traveling and which initiatives we are involved in.
Local communities
For more than 10 years we have been organising lunches, dinners, cooking classes and overnight stays at local communities. We are always on the road to find that unique, loving family or that typical house amidst the rice fields and that local special dish of the area that no one else can cook better than the old lady of the house. It is important for us to let you interact with the real people of Indonesia and at the same time supporting their livelihood. Not only will you be learning about their way of life, it is a great experience for the local communities as well. Very often you will see you are not just with one family, but with the whole neighbourhood!
Time for you to meet a few of our local families!
Harja & Family
Siwa, Sulawesi
Harja is happily married with his wife for already 19 years. They have 3 children of 18, 14 and 2 years old.
While Harja is a great guide for Tari Travel guests, we also send our guest to their lovely home in Siwa as Asiah is a fantastic cook!
For Harja it is important to help the people of his local village, so in his spare time he is a voluntary English teacher! A 'half professional' as he calls himself.
Currently still under construction, but more introductions of local communities are coming soon!
Tari4Trees
Since June 2014 Tari Travel has joined hands with Trees4Trees, a non-profit organisation that empowers local communities with reforestation initiatives. All customers who book a tour with Tari Travel receive an information package. As the number of our bookings increases, so does the volume of printed paper. We decided it was time to take action and give back to the forest thus compensating the paper we use and helping to reduce CO2 emissions. For each booking, no matter how many guests it consists of, we purchase 4 trees from the organisation, hence the name Tari4Trees. Trees4Trees makes sure the trees are taken care of by local communities by educating them in forest management. The local people develop skills and receive knowledge which they can use to raise their standards of living.
Each booking of Tari Travel receives a colourful bookmarker made of 100% recycled paper with a World Identification Number (WIN) on it. By visiting the website www.trees4trees.org you can check your WIN, see where your trees are located and who the farmer is that takes care of your trees.
Meet Unyil...
Adopted gibbons
Tari Travel has adopted two gibbons! One is Unyil, a juvenile male from Sumatra and the other one is Juliet an adult female of 13 years old originally from Kalimantan.
Just like orang utans, gibbons are classified as apes and their DNA closely resembles that of humans. In contrary to orang utans they are monogamous and choose a partner for life. It is an enormous joy to see these acrobats of the forest brachiating between trees. Their very distinctive calls carry up to kilometres far. They are found in the tropical forests of South-East Asia, in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Laos, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Seventeen species of gibbon have been classified, three of them can only be found in Indonesia:
- The Müller gibbon or grey gibbon (Hylobates muelleri) in Kalimantan,
- The Kloss gibbon (Hylobates klossii) in the islands of the Mentawai archipelago (west of Sumatra),
- The Moloch gibbon or silvery gibbon (Hylobates moloch) in Java.
Unfortunately just like the orang utans these animals are threatened in their existence. Orang utans have received and still receive worldwide attention and there are several rehabilitation centres throughout Sumatra, Kalimantan and Malaysian. Although this attention is not enough (and will never be enough!) it is still in striking contrast with the attention that gibbons receive which is almost nothing.
The Kalaweit Foundation has been taken care of gibbons since 1997 and is nowadays the largest gibbon foundation in the world. Both Unyil and Juliet are in the excellent care of Kalaweit headed by the energetic Chanee.
Have a look at Kalaweits website www.kalaweit.org and it would be great if you could support their work and become a friend of Kalaweit!
For news about Unyil & Juliet, please see our blog where we will post updates about our gibbons.
...and Juliet
Recycling plastic bags
Since 3 years we order plastic bags to give to our guests. These are not just simple plastic bags but they are made with waste plastic. Empty plastic refill pouches (which are very popular in Indonesia) are cleaned and made into very strong and useful bags. This project is carried out in a small leprosy community in the South of Makassar where at least 4 women (hopefully more in the near future) are able to support their family with this work. Fortunately they also receive orders from other sources, ensuring them at least one year’s work. Tari Travel will also continue ordering the bags and strong>everyone who books a tour at Tari Travel will receive such a bag as a gift. We will use them to put in our vouchers and tickets. Here at Tari Travel we already started collecting as much as empty plastic refill pouches as possible for the support of this project!