Tribewanted Sierra Leone: Cross-Cultural Community Living

What if, tourism could help one of the poorest countries in the world become a success story?

What if it helped develop a local community, improved the biodiversity of the environment and brought cultures together?

What if we could return from our holiday a changed person?

Your best bet: Tribewanted... in Sierra Leone.

Four years ago, my business partner, Ben Keene, started an online-offline social experiment in the UK: to launch an eco-community online and bring its "tribe members" to the island of Vorovoro, Fiji, to physically build this eco-community from scratch together with the island natives. And so Tribewanted was born.

At the same time, I was producing my first documentary on the link between hip-hop in the US and blood diamonds in Sierra Leone. The experience changed my life, and I partnered with a newly founded nonprofit, Shine On Sierra Leone, focusing on sustainable development.

Four years later, Tribewanted.com has over 10,000 registered users and has brought over 1,000 "tribe members" to Vorovoro, resulting in over $1 Million of sustainable community development projects; while Shine On Sierra Leone has partnered with FAWE (Forum for African Women Education) and with SMT (Salone Microfinance Trust), sponsoring 5 schools and 5,755 micro-loan recipients, mainly women.

Now, Ben and I have partnered to launch Tribewanted Sierra Leone.

Tribewanted Sierra Leone will launch on the pristine beaches of John Obey, on the Freetown Peninsula of Sierra Leone on October 1 this year, right after the rainy season, for $450/week a person, all-inclusive. Initially, there will be, well... nothing aside from basic composting toilets and a fresh water well. Bring your own tent.

On the untouched, squeaky-white-sand beach of John Obey, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, "tribe members" will work together with the local fishermen village, population 352, to build from scratch the first eco-community resort in Sierra Leone.

What can a "tribe member" expect?

Together with the village of John Obey, "tribe members" will build earth bag eco-domes using innovative sustainable building techniques from Cal Earth. They will develop a permaculture garden and farm, water harvesting, sustainable fishing, composting toilets and solar power. They will even build their own wind turbine using only local material...

On any given day "tribe members" can learn how to carve a canoe, weave a traditional blanket, learn the local language, arts, crafts, music and culture; they can set out at dusk with the fishermen to catch fresh lobster or take a canoe upriver in the lush rainforest to see alligators and monkeys; they can teach at a FAWE school for an afternoon and leave a book behind for the school library, work in microfinance for a day, or just build a bonfire on the beach at dusk, drink local palm wine and fall asleep to the sound of the waves under a blanket of stars.

Tribewanted looks to be a sustainable community, sustainable for the environment, for food production, for clean energy production and sustainable financially.  All the revenues generated are re-invested into local community development. It will be a partnership between "tribe members" and the local John Obey village; working together and learning from each other.

Sierra Leone is poor, but it's at peace. It's missing basic infrastructure — electricity, running water, paved roads — but it is full of opportunities. The lush rainforest, the wildlife, the untouched beaches, the friendly people should make tourism the #1 export of the country.  Right now it's non-existent. The country still suffers from a terrible reputation due to the war, child soldiers and blood diamonds; it ranks dead last in a lot of humanitarian indexes. But it's safe. It's at a tipping point; you can feel it in the air.  It's also in danger of being damaged by the wrong kind of tourism: massive hotels that destroy the eco-system and the local culture. Tribewanted is trying to do it right, to show that sustainable tourism works.

Sustainable tourism. Eco-tourism. Volun-tourism, there are many terms used to describe what Tribewanted is doing. The Tribewanted model can be replicated in many other countries — it can be the future of tourism. The goal is to cherish and celebrate the local community, to create employment and opportunities, instead of exploitation. These beaches belong to Sierra Leone; they should help the people of Sierra Leone. This new form of sustainable tourism protects the local resources and bio-diversity instead of destroying them. For a week, two weeks or months at a time, "tribe members" experience an alternative way of living: less based on competition, consumerism and material success.  They return home more aware of the impact their lifestyle has on their carbon footprint, more enlightened, perhaps, about what's truly important in life.

Visit us at www.Tribewanted.com. Join the tribe in Sierra Leone.