The Aim of Creating Sustainable Community Tourism
――― Transcending Borders and Differences to Build Synergy Between and Within Local Communities
As one means of resolving the pressing issues of local communities, the our aim is to create a Sustainable Community Tourism Network to establish, research, and propagate the concept of Sustainable Community Tourism as a new way to travel the world while measuring its effects as one way of fostering the creation and preservation of sustainable communities at the local level.
In particular, the intention is to engage visitors in various experiential exchange programs as well as exchanging 'know how' that is leading to the revitalization of our respective local communities. We also intend to measure the visible effects of such exchanges but also endeavour to research and study the invisible effects in terms of restoring the local identity and human bonding that often goes ignored and neglected as important factors at the root of sustainable community development.
SCT is intended to uncover the hidden aspects which bind people together into cohesive, happy, healthy, and productive communities.
Each community has its own limits. However, by joining together in a network of communities with diverse backgrounds and circumstances there is much that can be gained by all parties that are tackling the common and generally less visible issues of community disintegration, alienation, and loss of identity. This project has an important role to play in researching and developing various synergistic means and programs that enable future generations to inherit the will to survive as integral communities over time.
――― The Effects of 'Bonding' on the Health of Individuals and Communities
As an example, there is the famous story of a community in Pennsylvania (The Roseto Story＊1)where researchers found that the sense of 'connectedness' or 'bonding' was not only integral to the community's sense of security but also that it had major impacts on the health of the people in that community. This is indicative of how the invisible ties in a community can effect positively their state of health the underlying sense of security.
In this modern era where every country is intimately linked with others in a global society, it is extremely important that we transcend all national boundaries and find ways to help each other to foster the creation and survival of autonomous, diverse, and sustainable local communities that can link together and contribute to each others struggle to survive in an increasingly globalized world. We therefore propose to research and measure the invisible and visible effects as we endeavour to create a new way of interacting with other communities to create healthier and happier communities that can co-exist and thrive in a global context.
