Invisible changemaker: A pioneer of community-based tourism in Ethiopia
In the first of her ‘Invisible Changemaker’ interviews, Elisa Spampinato chats with Mark Chapman, a pioneer of community-based tourism in Ethiopia. The “Good Tourism” Blog is proud to publish this interview in collaboration with Elisa’s Traveller Storyteller, a “GT” Partner.
It’s a “GT” Insight Interview. [You can write a “GT” Insight.]
To start this series of interviews with the grassroots changemakers of our industry I have chosen a person whom I met very recently, during my last trip to Ethiopia.
To tell the truth, Mark Chapman’s reputation preceded him. The CEO and Founder of Tesfa Tours is someone I have wanted to meet since Tricia Barnett from Equality In Tourism told me about him in 2020, while I was planning that trip to Ethiopia.
Tricia referred to Mark as “someone you must get in touch with if you want to connect with local communities and community-based tourism in Ethiopia”.
Strangely, though, my meeting with him occurred thanks to one of those happy ‘coincidences’ that happen in my life. But that is a story for another time.
Mark Chapman is a real ground breaker; a person of influence in the history of community-based tourism (CBT) in Ethiopia, with a rich account of real positive impacts among many local communities in different regions across the country.
Mark organises trekking holidays in several ‘unexplored’ areas of Ethiopia.
Trekkers stop in local villages where they are hosted in community-owned guesthouses, which are structured as cooperatives.
Some 75% of the total income from these community-based tourism activities goes directly to the locals. With those revenues “they can protect their local environment, their societies, and their way of life,” Mark says.
I am glad to share here the report of my recent conversation with him.
Also read other “Good Tourism” Insight Interviews
Elisa Spampinato: What you started to offer in Ethiopia at the end of the 1990s was something really unique and innovative for the country, quite apart from the fact that tourism was not even properly developed at the time.
You told me once that the idea to create the foundation for community-based tourism in Ethiopia came from the desire to replicate your first personal and amazing experience in the country, as a backpacker in 1992, and make it available to other travellers.
Tell us how that initial experience marked you so strongly.
Mark Chapman: I believe that the thing that struck me the most was that the reality revealed to me during that trip was extremely different from my expectations.
Bob Geldof’s Live Aid was the soundtrack behind the dramatic images of the famine that struck Ethiopia so harshly in the 1980s. They remained the only images associated with the country in our minds in the West.
But I found a stunningly beautiful country … continue reading this “GT” Insight Interview in full and for free at The “Good Tourism” Blog.
