We dreamt of a perfect holiday destination - A tropical barefoot beach paradise where you could enjoy complete tranquility in an extraordinary location, with excellent service and an opportunity to discover the area. The perfection would be sealed in the design, ensuring that the presence of each guest actively benefited the local community and environment.
The Inspiration
The dream was inspired from my time spent in Kenya. I was volunteering in a primary school and for the first time in my life lived shoulder to shoulder with people who had so little. We worked, laughed and ate together, but it was clear that there was a fundamental difference between us; the availability of opportunities. At the grand age of 19, the world really was my oyster; I could do anything. It was this injustice that made me see that I simply had to DO something to fight it. Bring some of these opportunities, which we in the west regard as fundamental human rights, to underprivileged families.
Previous to Kenya, I spent some time on a whale research vessel in Australia funded by tourists, which sparked the initial idea. Tourism seemed an obvious bridge for benefits to flow from the “haves” to the “have nots”. Tourism relied on beautiful environments and rich cultures. Then I realised, vulnerable communities and ecosystems have a very valuable asset.
Just a few months after returning from Kenya , while at university studying marine zoology and buzzing with these ideas, I met my now husband, Neal. Neal was in his final year after giving up a career in professional football. Neal is a realist and the perfectly matching ying to my blindingly optimistic yang. He loved the seed of the idea and we spent endless nights developing our dream.
The Search for a Location
Three years later, I graduated and Neal had become disillusioned with his new advertising career, we decided to look into whether this dream could become a reality. We created a business plan and started looking for the perfect location; somewhere with fantastic tourism potential but next to extreme poverty. All the desktop research was pointing us towards Mozambique. We landed in Maputo and 2,500km, five days, three tyres and one new suspension later, we arrived at what was to become Guludo Beach Lodge.
Our timing was perfect, the Quirimbas National Park in Northern Mozambique had just been opened. The region boasted incredible marine diversity, Africa’s most stunning archipelago, long white beaches and forests boasting 4 of the big 5 game. It was certainly an emerging destination and the government seemed to have learnt from the mistakes made in other East African countries and were applying a high quality, low quantity tourism policy.
But behind this stunning, film-set backdrop was poverty that took your breath away. Food shortages threatened the lives of thousands annually, life expectancy was under 38 years old and those babies that actually survived childbirth had only a 1 in 3 chance of making it to their fifth birthday. The 17-year civil war had cut off this remote part of Mozambique, so far from the capital where forgotten tribes were fighting for survival. Children were considered far to valuable a resource to go to school, the local water source was shared with elephants and medical care was through traditional witch doctors and a tiny, ill-equipped clinic. To make the situation even more desperate, people were flocking to the sea to find food and in doing so were devastating near-by reefs, whilst unproductive slash and burn agriculture was slowly destroying their forests. On paper, the Quirimbas looked perfect.
At the end of an adventurous 3 weeks traveling around the Quirimbas in search of our ideal location, we stepped onto the beach at Guludo and knew that this was to be the start of our journey. We looked at each other wide-eyed at the breath-taking beauty and simply said, “this is it.” Our certainty was so strong we organized a meeting with the Guludo village community that same evening to explain our ideas and ask them if they would like to work with us to make our dream a reality. Their response… “when can you start”?!
That was it. Our heats and minds were made up. The dream had a setting… the beautiful shores of Guludo.
The lodge...
Our idea was to develop the lodge in such a way that maximized every possible benefit to the local region while creating a barefoot luxury retreat.
The lodge was designed with the highest environmental, social and cultural integrity. Working alongside world renowned architect, Richard Nightingale, we encompassed local skills, materials and styles into the design. Almost all materials were from a stone’s throw away, thus keeping our environmental impact low and providing opportunities for local entrepreneurs. We reintroduced the use of traditional mud blocks, which a group of men made for us to buy; we created a women’s co-operative and helped them to adapt their pot making skills to make stunning floor tiles; fish-basket weavers made our woven windows; tailors made our cushions and carpenters learnt to follow designs to make beautifully handcrafted furniture. Old skills were revived with new pride and these newly developed or re-introduced skills were then used to improve homes in the villages.
Determined to prove the local tourism industry wrong, we recruited an entirely local work-force, with the exception of a few carefully selected managers to help with the training of the local staff and in assisting them to fulfill their potential.
Nema Foundation...
While the lodge stimulated the economy, Nema runs Projects.
Nema’s goal is to provide communities with the support and infrastructure they need to sustainably free themselves from poverty whilst protecting their invaluable environmental resources.
Our vision became more in focus as we talked with communities and developed a strategy that took elements from successful projects around the globe but kept each project tailored to the specific community and, most importantly driven by the community itself. As we got to know the issues facing the communities it became clear that every issue was interwoven with the next. Tackling each of these issues meant that projects overlapped and reinforced each other.
Nema’s holistic approach now reaches a total of 12 villages within Mozambique, totaling some 16,000 people. The projects cover all of the UN’s millennium goals and more, building strong foundations for the sustainable development of each of the villages. The projects are run by local volunteers and each project has a significant contribution from the village.
Through Guludo's support we could guarantee that 100% of each donation went directly to the grass roots project to which it is given. This not only encouraged guests to donate towards their chosen project but actively inspired them and others to get involved. Nema quickly gathered momentum, providing over 15,000 people with access to clean water, feeding 800 children at school every day, providing secondary or vocational scholarships, building primary schools, distributing thousands of malaria nets, household training in the areas of malaria, nutrition, sanitation and HIV and much, much more.
The dream continues...
Despite the global recession Guludo experienced extraordinary growth in 2009 and has continued to do so in 2010 and 2011. Philanthropically, in just a few short years Guludo and Nema have had a profound impact on the local region and momentum is growing. The many awards with which we have been recognized, have pushed Guludo’s model into university lecture halls, UN best practice frameworks and mainstream and industry media.
However, our dream was never just about Guludo, we wanted to enable the tourism industry to fulfill its potential in addressing serious world issues. To show that with creativity, a hotel can be commercially successful AND do good. The lessons we have learnt over the last eight years have equipped us to do just this.
The Next Chapter...
Now it is time to replicate this success through other hotels to have a wider impact. The dream is now to enable hotels around the world to responsibly contribute to addressing poverty, injustice and environmental harm within their local and global community.
To do this we set up Thin Cats Thinking; the antithesis to greedy Fat Cats. Proving hotels do not need to choose between profits & ethics. Thin Cats Thinking is a consultancy assisting hotels, resorts and spas to implement intelligent CR (corporate responsibility) strategies, which bring both profound local benefits and stimulate corporate growth.
Alongside this, Nema is also ready to grow and roll out our successful, low cost, high impact projects to reach new communities. Through the support of hotels who previously had no reliable charitable vehicle to channel their philanthropy, Nema can provide this alongside Thin Cats Thinking.
And Finally...
It is twelve years since I made that decision to do “something” back in Kenya. Looking back the journey has been colourful and difficult but most of all profoundly rewarding. We are proud of our achievements but not satisfied... there is still so much more to do.
Amy Carter-James
Co-Founder
Thin Cats Thinking
