AltruVistas Foundation

AltruVistas Funds & Fellows Program

The AltruVistas Funds & Fellows program promotes transformational philanthropy in the sustainable travel industry through:

AltruFunds – Our strategic Funds program’s mission is to provide communities the financial power they need to improve their lives and harvest maximum benefit from the tourism sector with strategic investment and application of AltruFunds support. AltruVistas will offer grants and loans for $5,000 – 25,000 to vetted local communities, organizations and cooperatives so they can create their own travel-related service or product (from vocational training centers, restaurants, ecotourism services to agro-tourism hostels and eco-lodges.) The objective is to enhance local ownership and capacity building of diverse global and domestic communities to benefit from growing tourism receipts.

AltruFellows – Our professional fellowship program matches community grantees with emerging or service-seeking tourism professionals to implement community development programs, support the community’s capacity building efforts and to bridge cultural norms. The AltruFellows program will also support grants for research for investigation of endangered cultural forms of expression, from oral traditions and dance to arts and crafts.

The AltruVistas Funds & Fellows program exists to enhance the ability of local communities to take advantage of the vibrant and growing tourism industry and to support the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

Our goal is to offer a dynamic Funds & Fellows program that concretely addresses the global problems in the travel industry: capital flight and the globalized reality of socioeconomic stratification and absolute poverty.

AltruFunds will offer grants and loans to vetted, local community ventures, organizations and cooperatives to support them in creating their own travel-related service or product (from vocational training centers, restaurants, ecotourism services to agro-tourism hostels and eco-lodges). The objective is to enhance local ownership and capacity building of diverse global and domestic communities to increase their share of benefits from growing tourism receipts.

Grantees will also be partnered with an AltruFellow, someone who will live and work with the community for 3-6 months and who will co-create a basic management infrastructure necessary for a local, small business to thrive in the cybernetic world of tourism booking agencies and web-based review sites.

AltruVistas is actively boosting the prospects for success for these community enterprises by providing financial support and in-person expertise through the AltruVistas Funds & Fellows program.

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