This is how Beatrice is a Changemaker:
I have written a guidebook, The New Key to Costa Rica, since 1982. I update it every two years. When the book became a best seller in 1990, I was afraid that the book might be aiding and abetting the destruction of the natural wonders it was extolling. So, with co-author Anne Becher, we developed a system that rated lodgings on their commitment to conservation, to preserving local cultures and fostering local economies.
In the last ten years, the Small Grants Program of the Global Environmental Facility has funded campesino conservation organizations in Costa Rica to have their own ecolodges. These destinations represent what I had always wanted to see in Costa Rican tourism: locally-owned lodges that conserve natural resources, provide great adventures, and give visitors a chance to meet real Costa Ricans. Now I feature these lodges in my book.
All the community ecolodges banded together in 2001 to form ACTUAR, the Costa Rican Association for Rural Tourism. I am now their US sales representative. Because many tourists contact me through my website when they are planning their trips, i make sure that they know about these great community-based projects. People who contacted me for travel planning advice have generated over $200,000 in income for ACTUAR over the last year and a half. That income allows ACTUAR to serve as an interface between the communities and tourists, and provides income for ACTUAR members and their families.
The place for which Beatrice feels a fondness or connection:
All the ACTUAR member destinations
The change Beatrice passionately wants to happen:
I would love to see tourism develop in El Salvador in a way that honors the people I know there, that shows the living history that continues to be made there. i would love to see tourism that embraces the meaning of the Salvadoran civil war, rather than trying to negate it or forget it. I would love to see tourism be a catalyst for reforestation, recycling, water conservation, and organic agriculture, as it has been in Costa Rica. I would love to harness the economic power of all the people who are looking for meaningful travel to steer El Salvador away from the water-guzzling resorts and golf courses that have ruined the northwestern beaches of Costa Rica.
