Red Road Foundation: How To Make a Sustainable Impact Traveling
Sustainable Volunteer Travel: 3 Mindful Practices
Sustainable volunteer travel tips are essential for travelers who want to make a real difference without leaving a negative footprint. When you volunteer abroad, your impact extends far beyond the work you do — it shapes how communities perceive tourism, influences local economies, and sets an example for future travelers. Rachel Riggio, founder of The Red Road Foundation in rural Cambodia, has spent over a decade perfecting the art of meaningful, sustainable travel. In this guide, she shares three mindful practices that transform volunteer experiences into lasting, positive change.
Author: Rachel Riggio
The Call for Sustainable Travel
Thankfully, sustainability is a hot topic right now! Everything we’re doing we want to be more sustainable. We don’t want to deplete resources anymore! We want a circular economy, regenerative practices with food, clothes and medicine. We want to know that money and energy spent will be replenishing instead of the quick fixes we’ve allowed in the past. With excitement, the travel industry is following suit and we want to leave places better than we found them. We want to leave our travel adventures with a piece of mind, knowing that there was a lasting impact. But how do we do so when we can only get away for a short bit of time?
The Challenge: Tourism’s Hidden Impact on Small Communities
During our trip, we want to make our time, energy and finances go as far as possible, benefiting the locals that make the place what it is. So many times, we see tourism, having unfavorable influences on the small little towns and communities that get bombarded and over-run. When you live in a small community like that, and you see the purity and authenticity get tainted, it really makes you think twice about how we can support these beautiful, far-away little treasures but still get to experience them.
So, how can we get away from the tourist trap and have an authentic, meaningful experience that benefits these inspiring small communities in a sustainable way? Well, as someone who has lived in and continues to work in a small little community nestled in the mountains of Cambodia for the past 10 years, I’m going to give you three tips.
Mindful Practice 1: Support Small, Local Businesses
Be sure that you’re giving your money to the little guys and not to the big resorts that make everything look like the country that we came from. Yes, they are harder to book online, and you might need to go there the old-fashioned way and figure it out through seeing it and talking to people. This is truly what makes the journey unique and it’s part of the adventure!
It feels really good to give our money (energy) to the local family-run businesses. We know that the money goes directly to supporting community members and not foreign investors that usually end up buying out the houses in the small communities and these gems begin to look like all the other places in the world.
Why Local Businesses Matter
Also, spending time at small local businesses will help you get a more authentic experience of what life is like in the place that you visit. This is equally true when picking volunteer experiences. Go with the little grassroots projects where you can really see what money is being spent on and who is benefiting directly. One of the most inspiring parts of travel is the people and life stories that you meet along the way. Let yourself go out of your comfort zone and take the risk to experience something new.
Mindful Practice 2: Bring Reusable Materials
Sustainable traveling practice number two is to bring reusable items with you like bags, water bottles, straws, and containers. Many of these sweet little places don’t have the type of trash systems that we do in the west. We should try and support small communities by not leaving a bunch of waste behind when we go. Also, plastic is fairly new to a lot of these small villages (it can even be a status symbol in some places), and when locals see tourists coming through being responsible with their waste, it can also inspire others to be more eco-conscious, as well.
Mindful Practice 3: Create Meaningful Energy Exchange
Sustainable traveling practice number three is more complex and geared toward volunteer experiences, and projects where you may be giving back. I have found that if I go to a place and just give people gifts, they may start to see me and people who look like me as just someone who gives free stuff away and I start feeling like “the hand-out lady”. This does not feel good and I worry it promotes expectations of handouts.
The Power of Reciprocal Exchange
It truly is the exchange that makes the gift and experience more meaningful for both parties. It’s a weird thing about human nature, when things are too easy to get, we don’t value them as much. So, I would say that making sure there’s some type of shared energy exchange in the gifts that you are giving is very important.
For example, I used to go in our village and hand out books and clothes, then, when I started going to the village people would ask me for free things every time I went in the street. There was an energy that made me feel like it was doing more harm than good rather than a co-creation of a beneficial force in the community.
A Real Example: The Plastic Bottle Brick Project
So, I started to run an exchange project where people could clean up all of the plastic on the road, and in their yards by making plastic bottle bricks (loose plastic stuffed into plastic bottles tightly) that we would use for eco-building projects. I would trade them 5-10 bricks for a book, an item of clothing, reusable water bottles or reusable bags. This felt amazing and I felt like it was a meaningful exchange of energy that had a sustainable impact on the community. This is something to keep in mind when aiding local projects.
Making Short-Term Impact Last: The Sustainability Factor
Now, when you’re traveling for only a week or so in a place, but you still want to have a sustainable impact, I would look to see if the projects you undertake can be passed along after you leave. For example, at my school, we have many volunteers who come through and I want to have each person contribute something meaningful for them. The key in making their contribution sustainable is making sure that they are able to teach someone the systems that they create on-site so that others are able to keep them going after they leave.
Another example is leaving volunteer projects with tools or concepts that can be implemented by locals over time, resources are a great way to have a sustainable impact. This process means really investing your time and energy into someone who values and understands the contribution you want to make. Even better, keep the relationship going when you get back home. These exchanges are mutually beneficial. I find that many people that I have tried to help are actually my teachers.
There are so many aspects of life in Third World countries that could benefit the way that we think in the west, so as you take your time to share knowledge, be sure to understand that you’re as much a student as you are a teacher. A lot of these small communities that don’t have the resources that we do have a connection to the natural world and community that most of us have lost. This exchange is deeply meaningful for all parties involved and when you’re mindful about your time spent, you can have a truly sustainable impact in a short amount of time.
Authentic Experiences Unfold in Real Time
Taking these ways of thinking into account, will definitely bring you into authentic and unique situations with people that you probably wouldn’t have otherwise met. Being aware of the impact that you’re having on a place, will also bring self-awareness to your own practices, which hopefully leaves you with a sustainable impact in your own life that’s been inspired by new cultures, new ways of being and seeing the world. Just like with all interactions, it’s a two-way street and we really do get out of it what we put into it.
Sometimes it’s a bit harder to plan ahead for these types of experiences, most of the little ma & pop shops are not able to be booked ahead of time and they’re not on TripAdvisor.
The Art of Unplanned Adventure
So, I recommend not booking everything in advance, go to these places and meet people who live there and ask them questions, and let your adventure unfold in real time as you process. I have found that traveling this way allows you to have really special experiences that are better than anything you could’ve ever planned.
Book a Guide: The Easiest Path to Sustainable Travel
Another great way to have this experience without the “what-if worries”, is to book yourself a guide or retreat that will handle the planning for you. Someone who lives locally, knows the best places, speaks the language, spends enough time to know the culture and the tips is truly an ideal way to support sustainable travel. It is one of my greatest joys of life to show people this incredible world that has shaped my life in such a positive way.
I have spent ten years doing my best to have a beneficial, positive impact in a small village in rural Cambodia. I can truly say that I have received double the energy that I have put in. These experiences have made me a more grateful and joyful human.
Meet The Red Road Foundation
My name is Rachel Riggio, I have a free education project in the rural countryside of Kampot, Cambodia. We facilitate internships, wellness retreats, and volunteer experiences that are sustainably minded as well as transformative journeys. We are called The Red Road Foundation and we love collaboration. Get in touch!
