The Role of NGOs in Agritourism Development: Examples from Eastern Europe

The Role of NGOs in Agritourism Development: Examples from Eastern Europe

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I want to welcome everyone to today's webinar hosted by the global Agri tourism Network my name is Lisa Chase I'm with University of Vermont extension and the Vermont tourism Research Center and in just a minute we're going to be diving into the role of NGS in Agri tourism development and we're going to be especially focused on an example from Eastern Europe and we're going to hear from a great moderator and two very impressive panelists but before we get into today's topic and we introduce the moderator and panelists I want to take a moment to mention that this webinar is hosted by the education Committee of the global Agri tourism Network I see some familiar names and Fa here so well names anyway I can't see your faces but I recognize that some of you are members of the global Agri tourism Network and I want to thank you for the your involvement it's been not quite two years now the official launch of the global Agri tourism network was on April 11th in 2023 so we're getting on two years old and already in less than two years we have almost a th000 members from 101 countries it's currently free to join and if you're interested in being a part of this network click on the link Global Agri tourism network.org that will drop into chat or you can use this QR code to navigate to the global Agri tourism Network website and there you'll see a link to join this free Network the goal of this network is to bring people together from all different parts of the world and everyone working in Agri tourism so whether you're a farmer or a researcher or you do technical assistance or you work in tourism or you're a community planner or a policy maker we think there's great benefit to working all together and to learning from each other and that's why we've developed the global Agri tourism Network part of what the global Agri tourism network does is we host a series of webinars we also have several committees research education Regional committees policy regenerative Agri tourism all sorts of committees that focus on different topics and one of the things that we really like to do is get a hug huge variety of people involved so right now I want to get a sense of who is here in the room with us and I'm sharing the results and you can see that where about a quarter of us are farmers and ranchers let's see about a third are researchers another quarter are tourism professionals and then we've got quite a good mix of service providers nonprofits business owners and other when you're me introduc I should mention when you're introducing yourself in chat especially if you select other let us know what your what your other is I'm now stopping the results because what I want to do is on to introducing our moderator Dr Todd Coman Dr Coman is currently a consultant in the rural tourism sector but for many years he was a professor and Dean of hospitality and tourism management he's now retired from that but he is still as busy as he's ever been um he has spent the past 30 years working in the tourism hospitality and agricultural sectors and I met Dr Coman a little over 20 years ago when I first started working from University at work working at University of ront extension he was one of the first people who I realized had a deep understanding of Agri tourism in Vermont and around the world and he invited me to join him on a farm Adam's Family Farm in wil Wilmington Vermont which was a real leader in Agri tourism in Vermont at that time Dr keman has been working in planning and developing Rural and ecotourism experiences for 30 years now and also educating hospitality and tourism professionals at the University level here in Vermont and in other states like Massachusetts however before he got into Academia he actually ran an Agri tourism destination in Wisconsin this is back in 1982 um he and his family were running a small Country Inn located on a 140 acre working farm in Northern California and then in the 90s Professor Coman founded and directed The Apple Works an Agri tourism destination and organic apple orchard operation in Wisconsin since 2002 over 20 years now Todd has been conducting workshops on the topic of integrated rural tourism and he's provided tourism expertise for many different NOS non-governmental organizations as well as private Enterprises not only here in Vermont in the US but also in a number of countries including Romania Poland and bellus and his work in bellarus has had many offshoots including um leading up to this webinar today Todd I'm going to hand it over to you now thank you very much Lisa for that kind introduction and you took way too long to describe all the things I've done in 30 years but it's been a pleasure to be working with you and so many other people around the world and my greatest joy is to see This Global AGR tourism Network blossoming as we move forward uh Greetings From Snowy Vermont we're in the depth of winter here and now that I'm retired I spend time skiing either on Backcountry skis or downhill skis So Lisa makes it sound like I'm busy but really I'm spending a lot of time on AGR tourism today we have two distinguished guests from Eastern Europe uh European nation Belarus Dr Valeria kiten NOA and Daria pukas who recently completed her MBA from Colorado State University I want to congr congratul ulate Daria here in public because it's quite a quite an accomplishment for her coming from bellarus moving to the US and then completing a MBA program so congratulations today they will be talking about the rural and AGR tourism association called country escapes and the belarian Greenways project that began over 20 years ago and which developed into an association with nearly 3,000 members representing home stays farm tours culinary activities and a wide variety of experiences in rural communities before we get started please be sure you introduce yourselves in the chat and now I want to share my screen uh just have to remember how to do that because I want us to situate ourselves in Eastern Europe which is what this uh presentation is focused on so here we have a small map of eastern Europe uh with many countries represented I think there's 20 or 21 countries in Russia to the East and then Western Europe to the west and I'd like to find out from those of you who are participating how many of you have visited any of these countries in Eastern Europe and if so which countries and I think Lisa has a poll so if you would click on all that apply that would be fantastic and you may have to scroll down as well because like like I said there are 20 or 21 countries in this very interesting and Rich region as we look at the map we can see that these countries make up a tapestry of cultures and peoples they have a lot in common which I've noticed when I visited Poland Romania and Belarus but they also have uh very unique lifeways based in part on their specific geographies geologies climates histories and sociocultural influences so as we're speaking if you could fill out this poll uh please and I'll introduce Valeria kitova who likes to go by the name of lra just shortened Valeria thank you she's been instrumental in the development of rural tourism in bellarus for the last 25 to 30 years for 25 years she was a professor of Tourism at the bellarus and State University where she loved working with students and indeed Daria is one of her former students she in loved introducing them to the exciting opportunities in the field of Tourism and indeed traveled with student groups doing projects in different countries in Eastern Europe she started out as a CEO of her own travel agency and was the manager of the duduki Museum of rural Heritage and culture which I had the privilege to visit with her and witness some of the Hands-On activities and demonstrations that are uh Focus the focus of this interesting Living Museum her work has taken her to many countries in Eastern Europe where she has collaborated with local leaders and presented workshops and lectures on developing rural tourism associations businesses and successful tourism destinations lra is the mother of AGR tourism bellarus and so much more to her students and her colleagues who have benefited from her knowledge and experiences over many years before we have lra get started on her presentation let's have a quick look at this poll Lisa well this is fabulous people have made many visits different countries in Eastern Europe some of you may live in one of those countries but Others May Live uh in Western Europe in the US in other countries around the world and have spent time in Eastern Europe so you know it well and now we look forward to hearing from Valeria kliton NOA and Daria pukas Valeria take it away thank you hello it's a little bit of belarussian to give you impression that it's different from Russia this is the topic of my presentation and I think that non-government organization play uh play Vital roles in this part of the world because everybody live during socialism time and it's a little B change the attitude people like networking they like each other and when they started to develop rural tourism there is no any entity organization which can help them uh next slide show my career uh to told already uh maybe I want to pay attention on that book about touris development in post Soviet Nations I wrote it together with my colleague from George medon University but what is special about this book we gave a voice of many researchers from Eastern Europe This is the result of their researches next please and uh uh this is just uh I think maybe most of you know uh main activities of rural tourism and Jo we have a lot in our part of the world of course it's represent and Lobby interest of rural tourism provider promote rural tourism educate develop uh tourism products like rural tourism and Agri tourism also provide quality standard certification do marketing and develop cooperation networking team building it's very important to to make a team from people uh this is different level of Institutions and z in rural tourism the highest level like a global level it's of course again Global AGR tourism Network next is inter Regional level for example uid now they call probably rural uh travel or tourism European Federation of rural tourism Belarus was a part of this uh Organization for a long time also National or organization or Association Regional institutional level and local like local tourism public Council sematic Villages e Museum Etc um this is our National Association of Eastern Europe why did I put these slid slides just to uh show demonstrate diversity and of course the logos and uh different organization they have different name rural tourism rural green tourism Farm tourism Agro and ecotourism Etc but this is a why it's complicated to uh separate Agri tourism from different kind tourism in a village because uh Eastern Europe is different from let's say USA or Australia people used to live for year Thousand Years there they live in a Villages it's mixed of Agriculture of intangible Heritage of folklore of different kind kind of monuments that's why uh this is like tourism in a village next slide please uh this is about our association we started it in 2002 there was nothing even no nobody used the word or like disc Agri tourism or rural tourism no word like that we just didn't have even nothing and for 20 years I think we did many things uh 500 it was our members we realized 40 International project today together with our partners from all over the world uh thousand seminars webinars uh International Conference Greenways and uh this is what we did for 20 years next slide uh this is history of our organization um Association Country Escape uh we United people this is was most complicated job first step uh because nobody understand what is this we wrote put lots of articles in a newspaper and describing people or telling them that not only agriculture can give you money when you are in a village it could be tourism because you know so many things which are exotic and interesting for locals and for foreigners that go ahead let's do it h and first people came then more and more so it was the beginning then we are organized very first Agri tourism Cong conference in our country Lithuanian Ukrainian expert came and government donors actually everybody like this idea because we have beautiful C country nice hospitable open heart people so let's do it uh we promote very seriously a law about Agri tourism or rural tourism because people from the village was going to do it it was very easy rules of game no complicated housekeeping nothing nothing complicated just give people to feel this business and to realize themselves uh we have a special Financial program and educational program I like our invention laboratory of rural tourism many people many experts all together it was like a Melting Pot for nice outcomes and different level for basic Advanced and special topics and standard and certification which was taken from our European um our European Partners next slide uh we develop um tourism products we realized more than 40 project and uh did a big promotional campaign one of the most Mo our last interesting was our own YouTube channel it was like our own TV we in introduced different Innovation cases for stakeholders and created a brand belos is a rural tourism country uh frequently ask questions this is what people are interested how did you start this organization I told you already how many people worked for the organization it was just a few me and my partner because before I had a a travel agency two or three people and a lot of students help us and volunteer uh budget actually nothing but we have first Grant from Ura Foundation this is organization from USA and uh we survive during 20 years why I tell you survive because in our country government does not support non governmental organization they accept them but we have donors we next slide show you where money goes from uh we have certain membership fee we have grants uh we be part of international projects this is when we have a a good salary uh lots of volunteers here in kind some people give us computer organization donation and personal saving you can see uh who used to be our donors NL this is dynamic we started from nothing but in 2022 there were more in 21 more than 3,000 homesteads next slide and this is how our how many tourist we have in our village more than a half of millions believe me that when we started nobody even could imagine that people can go a tourist to Village what are they supposed to do it was a question for everybody and we try to explain and understand and to attract people to Villages it's not Italy climate is not good there is no many monuments but there are many other things we promote there Hearts there nice food their nice landscape their knowledge their technology craft Etc and this is just a for period Main in our this process we started first when we started in 2002 it was the question we didn't have even a house with toilet or facility we start to invest a lot explaining people how to do it and standards and quality that we started to think about tourism product uh uh to create to United people and did something decent this is our achievement when we got from National Geographic travel Awards in 2016 first prize we were chosen as a country of AG tourism of course Russian voted because it was for Russian but it was uh 140 millions and then it's happened in 2018 and in 2020 when Co start we supposed to hold this uh event from World tourism organization and this is some main Trends in belarussian rural tourism creativity and Innovation we uh invest a lot in creativity trying to explain our people what is creative economy because using their knowledge talents Traditions they can create nice product nice experience as they were ex very successful in that also my students in our University we try to involve them in our activity and even created a branch of uh faculty of international Affair tourism on our organization it work Wonderful of course ecological safety uh accessibility we did a great project and now are trying to do all products access accessible Gastronomy pay a lot of attention not only because Gastronomy con connected with enderin seran in and make people happy but it's Traditions cooperation with tour operators we have many uh tour operators now they organize tour using interes places in a village um it could be Farmers it could be beastkeeper it could be folklore but they uh bring tourists which is very important sematic festival and of course selling farm products it's a good opportunity for Farmers uh a few words about green WS which Todd mentioned actually green W um was born this concept in USA but you know what is it a trail leading people to the nature or interesting Roots uh but in America they provide possibility for people to go to the nature but in our case nature is open forests belong to all you may go whatever you want wherever you want but we use these green ways to develop Village to develop economic to bring tourist to create something special and to unite people next slide one of the first and very successful was this not far from Minsk volan routs you see there are many uh I don't know operation working together next slide and this is uh how it started 20 active people homest stay owner Craftsman Farmers historic different and um this is what you may try when you uh travel around and this is NGO Cooperative of rural tourin development in this region they have a special even uh officially registered company and this is a logo of different and operation T rural tourism and Agri tourism which work together in frame of one project we manag to do with them their logo next and this is memor abilities and S or souvenirs you can buy when you travel along the Greenways and now a couple of example from uh homee from real real people this is real cases this is the uh Farm vilia Agro one of the very big around 2,000 hectar I must say you that we never had individual Farmers till uh 1991 everybody works for uh Collective farmers and people who decided to walk separately they were like heroes in that time because it's they went against all rules yes it was legal but nobody actually approved it but they they demonstrate that they may reach success and they did and I want to show you the very successful people uh this is basili uh he took about 2,000 hectares he has cows sheeps this is AGR tourism of course farming uh and he open even two shops for selling their products mini Zoo but he later created a big house big guest house for his wife who wonderful cooker his she sing songs and together they nice couple and they uh together enrich all this product and he next slide he is more uh in agriculture and she is more in Hospitality this is their house this is their different event next this is a farm uh they produce goat cheese goat milk and uh they are the first certified farm and his land more than 100 land they they owned it but they cannot sell it it's it's not really uh ownership but ownership for us and this is one goats and his product and this is we uh also help him to develop this Maze and cucko polish and when they open it was the first maze actually we've seen the best example in USA and in Poland and it's very popular next slide this is his certificate and this is some of his product now they are in the best Supermarket of our country this is another concept uh some people from the city Minsk and as City they moved to Village because they wanted to start this business something like agorism many of them started from Hospitality this house for example then they started to have guest this question came uh where are we going to take food because everybody wanted EOL local they started to take land and to do farming to do Agri tourism and this is one of the best and my favorite Farmstead Hanka H he's also musician very talented and his he they did wonderful facility for wedding Puppet Theater but his um daughter decided to do to be become professional in bread making and it's a one of the best bread now in our country but he took six 30 hectares of land to put a Ry and to have his own grain so farming is growing next slide and here you see as a group of English uh tour operator visited his they making bread participating is this master class and they do did his their own decoration and this guy he has this crafted bag with the logo of the farm and he's going to go next day to UK and bring this bread which tells a lot about AGR tourism next please and this is just two last slides about partnership yeah when people start to work together of course it's dilemma everybody has more for himself for herself but it doesn't work let's slide Dasha D and the idea is partnership is the best when everybody had his food and everybody happy next slide and I want to thank you for attention maybe I was a little bit too much but not too much thank you Valeria that was fabulous a great uh description of what you've done in the last 20 years and how far Belarus and Rural and Agri tourism has come now would you like to introduce Daria for us please yes his pleasure but first I want to thank Todd who came 20 years ago in our country help us a lot and I like his uh concept of integrated rural tourism because how can we distinguish or divide AGR tourism in our Eastern European country it's about impossible thanks for wonderful idea Todd and this is Daria Daria used to be my student and when she was I don't know the third year student she came to our organization because we have been working with University I was working there and she is I don't know for internship and stay for many many years she became a project manager she knows about as much people as I uh she been many many places and people like her she did a survey with our members and people who work in Agri tourism and now she went to Colorado State University MBA impact and I think that it help her and us in the future cuz Dasha nobody let you go out from this is darus uh hi everyone valer and thank you a lot for introduction and uh thank you all for joining us today it's a pleasure to see so many people from different parts of the world and I hope this experience this webinar will be somehow useful and inspiring for you and yes this is a little bit about me as Valeria told we've been working actually together already like exactly 10 years it's I still cannot believe how times fly by uh I just recently graduated from uh Colorado State University and I'm actively engaged in strategic plan Committee of Gan um and today I will continue Val's narrative about a role of nonprofits in AGR tourism development and I will share with you some some of the examples of the projects we did together as Valera mentioned it was over four of them and of course there's no way we can feed all of them in this webinar but um I'll do some examples and if you're interested we can be in contact later and we'll share the rest of them uh but before that um I want to add some facts to what to whatever Valeria already shared with you about Agri tourism and and development of rural areas so we have kind of unique and interesting situation because during the Soviet Union times you know the majority of farms they were state-owned and even now many farms in belus they're actually state-owned and there are just few of private big farms so the situation is very different from northern northern America has and as a consequence uh the rural LIF style is a little bit different so many people live there in villages in houses they have a small piece of land but they're not Farmers they usually grow some products for themselves for their own consumption but they hardly sell it sometimes they do that but not that much um and um as a result uh AGR tourism as we understand it it's not just Farms but it's also some people who live in villages their own houses and they host tourists in their houses and show them the hospitality of our country and our traditions and traditions is very also important thing we have a lot of people who are doing crafts um cooking traditional meals and trying to promote this Traditions that we had over thousands of years um Al if you talk about AGR tourism communities play a very important role and we know many many many examples when people started their Agri tourism businesses in their rural area just because they were inspired by their neighbor and they saw that their neighbors bringing tourists to their area and they're like well I can do this and that and probably I can sell it and probably we can cooperate somehow with each other and do something better together uh and as already Valeria mentioned usually we didn't have much financial support from government or even International organizations and this is why people fostered their creativity a lot and many initiatives even what valer showed you already they were done with very small amount of money and just some pure enthusiasm which is very impressive but uh let's dive into some more specific examples of what we did and the very first project I want to share with you is Con with women entrepreneurship one of the regions in Belarus uh that was the project that was supported by the Coca-Cola foundation in 2019 and well uh we worked a lot with farmsteads with farms copsmen in rural areas and we noticed that we have a lot of women who uh has some Hobbies but they're kind of like very busy with their house holds to make it a profitable business or they probably are too afraid just because they don't have a lot of like education not a lot of enough I don't know knowledge about promotion or starting businesses or they simply don't have money and we when we've heard that Coca-Cola has the very ambitious project it's called 5 by 20 when they promised to educate 5 million women around the world by 2020 we decided that it's a perfect opportunity that we can use use and we created sort of school when we educated 500 women living in rural areas on different topics start with accounting finishing strategic planning and promotion we conducted over 30 educational events and out of this 500 women we selected five business initiatives that received fin cial support and here you can see some of the pictures how everything was going on that time so we actually had some International experts on the bottom photo you you probably can barely see but uh there was one expert from Sweden who who is the head of European C Heritage Network and he shared some insights about culinary tourism with our participants and and there were a lot of different study visits very interesting very inspiring for our women oh and uh what I didn't mention is that we targeted at three main areas it's farming AGR tourism and crafts so we did a lot we we supported financially very differently so we purchased some EP uh equipment for cooking or clay modeling where we bought chickens cows goats uh equipment for making honey herbs like very very very different things and it was very inspirational for us because we didn't expect such amount of creativity from our participants and we decided to pull it out together and make some promotional materials as promotional booklet and we did the whole movie about women and business and I believe shaa will share with you the link to this movie and I highly recommend you to take a look at that because it's it's just it's very special and it's very inspiring to see this women talking about their businesses and how they decided to do that and how they're enjoying doing that and every time I watch it I love it um so what helped us to pull it all together MX successful project first we didn't afraid to connect different stakeholders we um partnered a lot with local authorities local nonprofits and experts uh we select promotional tools tools very wisely because you know sometimes it's kind of struggle to work with rural areas it's very hard to reach out the people you want to reach out and we did some ads in local newspapers we uh made promotions on Instagram like we try to reach every woman of different ages of different occupation and I think we did it quite successful because we collect like we had 500 women I think for 9 million population country it's quite impressive and we maintain contact constant contact with our project participant we organize a lot of formal Network informal networking among them and this project in many ways inspired us to the next one and it's connected with creation of the tourism cluster in the same region in breast region and it was a part of big uh undp European Union project and so when we work with so many women who did so many different things we realized that we have a lot of crafts and traditions that we need to preserve and promote somehow and we have so many different players in different corners of these regions and it would be a good thing to make them work together collaborate with each other and promote everything what they do to local International tourists and we also know that they compete a lot with you know corporations and big retail stores and it's it's very hard to do it on your own when you don't have so much money as big corporations do but when you're together you can do a lot and this is why we decided to make a tourism cluster where we included Craftsman local food producers local museums Farms hom stads uh in order to help them to support each other and promote something big together and how again you know it's area and we were thinking how we can reach out all our potential participants so we did local announcements in local newspapers we did Publications in national press and a lot of people in barus press nowadays we did PST some projects Partners websites because we had like around six Partners from business nonprofits and local authorities and we set some criteria for our participants that their product should be local crafty so sort of unique and environmentally friendly because we care a lot about our environment and we pursue our sustainability goals actually belus is one of the I would say probably leaders in implementing sustainability goals uh sdgs set by un and I want to know note that it was very first experience of creating such a cluster in barus and we knew that brand usually plays a big role in promotion of such initiatives and that our brand should reflect all the three criteria sorry that we set and we called our brand nov coli which uh yes which is um thank you very much very close by thank you very much you've done a super job and I know you could go on and on but we do have a few questions and I think one of them is an interesting one is how big is how important is domestic tourism in bellus as opposed to International tourism are people from Minsk the main city traveling to these rural communities um po yes now a lot because you know after 2020 we were we have a sanctions and not uh plane fly to our country and and no much tourists especially in covid time and since that time belarussian went and discover uh their own country because they travel abroad and they didn't know how much was done and most of tourists are locals I mean it's in all Agri tourism for the exception maybe Italy but we have foreigners yeah that and more than half of million tourist goes to villages to AG tourism yeah we Sor go ahead so domestic and international Travelers are very important to cater to it sounds like sure they bring money to people who started this business for them it is business and we should support it profit it should be profitable otherwi only beautiful words right now another question came through and I don't know if it take too much to explain the decree 318 I don't know what that is decree is the the highest level of law in our country because president is on the top and his decree higher than any lws and we wanted to protect and promote these people that's why and we wanted for them very special conditions and only President and his decree could provide it they are were free from any taxes for sometimes they could do Hospitality they can cook they could organize Excursion many things which are actually like a professional business but they were allowed to do it just to keep they keep Village alive because in that time it was very hard for them for V villages to survive now this decree is about over a lot of changes but for 20 years we've got a many strong bright people who Pro this Agri tourism rural tourism is a great business so it's a great business for people it's a great business for society uh because it's based on our tradition and uh great thank you so in other words from the very top there was a tax holiday for people in rural Villages who were engaged in agrid and Rural tourism and this helped incentivize people to get into this type of business yeah just like that thank you other questions that are out there uh Lisa do you have any questions yes well we've had some interesting questions about um land ownership um you know how that works between the government owned the collective Liv in the privately owned land and along those lines we also had an interesting question I think it was from Silvie about um Sylvia how in the in many parts of the United States um Farmers doing Agri tourism are sometime sometimes they have to reclassify their land as commercial and not agricultural depending on the activities that they're offering on their farm and we're the question is you know can you tell us more about the land ownership situation in bellus and the classifications in terms of what's allowed under agriculture versus commercial activities yeah with with pleasure in our country we do not have private ownership for the land I mean in classical uh version because you can't sell your land you can't sell land you can sell your house and a half or a quarter of hectares around but not really land when uh Farmers first individual Farmers appear they took land from government probably for free and they should work and make profit and it belonged to them but they can't sell it uh they can inherited all their uh children uh will be the owner of this land this is about uh ownership and when you live in a village you have land around your house it's normally a a quarter of hectares you can take another a quarter or a half of G hectares for agriculture or you can uh rent more land for uh doing agriculture that something like that but you can't buy land in our country especially if you are Foreigner about second question was about uh uh classifying it sounds like you can't don't need to classify your land as business or commercial yeah we don't have this kind of uh classification but if you take land for but we have a category of land for agriculture activity and these nobody can touch now especially president is looking and controlling because this is our land this is land we can give a food to the country so if you take land you should use it for agriculture we when we started our Museum we took H we uh took like 200 hectars for for agriculture but started Museum on this yeah it was Museum of rural uh culture but it's not really Agriculture and we had a proog prog B conflict and problem but we solve it and uh we do agriculture on most of our land but we have a museum building we have windmill then stable SAA on the river bank but in general the rest of land we use in agriculture you should do agriculture if you take land for activity like that I think we have time for maybe one more question and this um last question I'm looking at apologies to everyone who put in a question that we don't have time for this last one is a general question that I'm going to give Todd the opportunity to answer and also um an opportunity for lra and Daria to give final words so this question in chat is is Agri tourism an alternative form of Tourism to mass tourism or is it another form of mass tourism in general what's your take on that Todd lra and Daria and please combine with that your final words for the webinar well I think it's a great question and I'm sure that the Gan steering committee and many other others have been grappling with where does AGR tourism fit into the entirety of the tourism mix and I would say since it takes masses amounts of bed spaces and restaurants and food service to host Mass numbers of tourists that rural communities do not have that kind of capacity and that infrastructure so Agri tourism is really a niche form of Tourism that's you know situated within tourism in general but it's definitely not mass tourism because you can't have masses of people descending on rural communities there's nowhere to stay no bathrooms little infrastructure so to me it's a it's a niche form of Tourism and I think it will stay that way L what do you think I agree I think it's a a type of sustainable tourism because we are demonstrate a different attitude and different principles when we invite guests to rural Agri tourism they see another attitude to Nature to people to your Roots that's why I think it's very sustainable tourism of course it's not M tourist and never been I guess because not much infrastructure and nobody want to have a such a pressure on the land and on the local community it should be rural it should be different Dar Daria your perspectives and closing words please yes I most agree with Valeria yes we should definitely do that in sustainable way but I've seen one of the comments in the chat that it depends in the country and I sort of agree with that because for bellarus AGR tourism was and is one of the most popular types of Tourism and we have many people coming to rural areas and we have actually we are starting having enough facilities to accommodate all the tourists come to rural areas for so for Belarus it's sort of kind of mass tourism but yes I feel that we should do that in sustainable way and I see nothing bad in Mass tourism for sure but at the same time we should put some boundaries I mean in environmental and social uh matters so yes but that's it thank you that's a great a great final comment Dari that you're really open to exploring the possibilities and uh I'm glad the younger generation is picking up the mantle and moving forward as we uh go out to our Vineyards and go skiing and leave it to you so thank you very much for that comment thank you to uh Lisa Chase for helping us organize this webinar thank you to all the participants to Daria and Dr lra kiten NOA who's been a very longtime friend and I hope to see her soon here in the United States thank you yes thanks to toddler and Daria can you see my slides now yes looks okay all right just a couple final slides as we wrap up here um this has been a great conversation today thanks to Todd lra and darar and thanks to all of you who sent excellent questions and made comments in chat we want to keep the conversation going in bellarus but also all over the world and the global Agri tourism network is putting together a series of webinars and we also have several committee meetings Regional committees research committees that are also putting on webinars so Sean is going to drop a link into chat and here's a QR code if you would like to learn more about the uh different ways to stay in touch in the upcoming events hosted by the global Agri tourism Network and finally I will say that one of the things that helps the global Agri tourism Network really stay in touch with everyone who's participating and also provide information for funding that we don't yet have but that we're working on getting um is surveys and feedback so before you close today if you wouldn't mind clicking on a link into chat that sha is g to Dr and I'll or click on this QR code and it'll take you to a short survey that that just asks you how did today work for you this webinar and most importantly what else do you want to talk about in webinars and conferences and really the big question is what else can the global Agri tourism Network do for you your farm and your organization to help us all work better collectively and support Agri tourism and with that I want to close today and say let's stay in touch and thank you all so much

2025-01-30 01:18

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