WESSA Annual Review 2020

capacity at our public beaches will be extremely important as new, unusual standards such as social distancing, regular sanitizing and enforced use of personal protective equipment will be required at public sites. In addition to their work on education and safety at the beaches, our Beach Stewards will also be contributing to our new Child Safe Agents Project which is funded by the Childhood Foundation in Sweden. This project aims to fully assess the risks for vulnerable children at our public beach sites and put measures in place to provide support for these kids. This programme makes use of volunteers and members of the tourism community to act as Child Safe Agents at specified beach sites and WESSA will facilitate the training and mentoring of these agents. This project is following the successful ChildSafe Beach Programme implemented by Friends International in Cambodia and Thailand. The pandemic has caused incredible disruption to the success and growth that the tourism sector has experienced in South Africa over the last few years. It is, however, our responsibility as a progressive organization to maintain momentum and support all the stakeholders in this sector to “build back better”. It is our hope to use this pause on tourism operations to reinforce the message that we want to re-build a tourism sector that is just and environmentally sustainable as a business priority and not just an afterthought. Through WESSA’s membership on the IUCN South Africa committee, we have contributed to a dialogue with the Minister of Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) to workshop ideas for rebuilding our nature based tourism sector and ways to ensure more sustainable financing of conservation efforts that expand further than just tourism. The team of the WESSA Sustainable Tourism division are not just employees of an organization, they are true ambassadors of the environment, youth development and conservation. taken on critical roles as youth mentors, counsellors and educators over the past year. Their ability to adapt and transform their roles to get the job done has been at the heart of our division’s’ success in 2020. We are excited about the future of sustainable tourism and its critical role in supporting protected areas and job creation in the green and blue economies. BUILD BACK BETTER Our coordinators and project managers have extended themselves beyond their role as environmental practitioners and have all also

Building a tourism sector that is just and environmentally sustainable as a business priority

Annual Review 2019-2020

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