Our Impact Report, 2022
Contents Our Values.................................................................... 3 Message from the Founder.............................................4 Areas of Impact......................................................5 - 14 Carbon Footprint and Offsetting Schemes.................15, 16 Social Impact...............................................................17 Our Contributions........................................................18 Key Targets for 2023....................................................19 Why True Travel?..........................................................20 To Conclude................................................................21
Our Values
Our Founder, Henry Morley, started True Travel in 2013 with the mission to enrich lives and create lifelong memories through authentic, tailor-made travels whilst always remaining mindful of the world around us.
In 2016, we cemented our commitment to sustainable and conscious travel and founded the True Travel Foundation with the aim of supporting vital charitable projects who provide tangible positive impact for both their local communities and global initiatives.
At True Travel, we are the antithesis of automated, packaged travel. Focusing on every single detail down to how our clients take their tea, we are dedicated to designing the finest holidays imaginable.
We recognise that each of us have just one life to explore the whole world and we exist to make every one of those experiences extraordinary. This is a belief we hold not only for the visitors but also for those being visited; it is this sentiment that lies at the core of our Foundation and drives us to pioneer positive impact in travel.
I strongly believe that it is up to those of us in the travel industry to lead from the front and help navigate our clients through their planning, so they are confident that they are making a tangible, positive impact. I am immensely proud to have watched the growth of our Foundation since 2016 and to see the support we have been able to give to our selected projects around the world. At True Travel we have always wanted to find solutions; not simply to help our clients offset their carbon emissions from their travels, but to go further and ensure they can have a carbon negative and climate positive impact.
Our blue carbon offset partnership with Seawilding is already having visible results and this has made us more ambitious than ever to raise more and reach new heights. Our goals for 2023 are to finalise our B Corp Certification, raise £100,000 for our Foundation and work towards our Net Zero target. Transparency has an important part to play if we want to make progress and have a meaningful impact. I am therefore thrilled to publish our first annual Impact Report for 2022, and share with you our commitment to inspiring real change and our dedication to encouraging others to do the same. We are well aware we are not perfect as a business, but here you will find an overview of what we have achieved in 2022 and our goals for improvement moving forwards in 2023.
Henry Morley, Founder & CEO
“ “
4
Areas of Impact
These next pages highlight our key areas of impact in 2022 and the tangible benefits we have seen from our investments in local communities, global initiatives and positive impact travel throughout the year.
5
4
Project partners
69
Tonnes of C02 balanced
£40,335
Raised for our project partners to date
6
About the Foundation
In 2016 the True Travel Foundation was created with one clear mission: ensure the funds we raise together with our clients make an actual difference to those in need, by seeking and supporting grassroot projects around the world. Since the Foundation’s inception we have supported three leading charitable projects who focus on community outreach, education and marine restoration. These projects are The Female Empowerment Programme in rural Zambia, The Rucksack Project in Jaipur, India and Seawilding on the west coast of Scotland, all of which the team at True Travel are particularly connected to and passionate about.
A young member of the Yosefe Girl’s Club practicing her public speaking as part of the Female Empowerment Programme
The young boys of the Taabar Shelter and The Rucksack Project in Jaipur during their morning teaching session
8
Senior Africa Travel Designer, Matt, gets hands on with native oyster restoration at the Seawilding HQ in Loch Craignish, Scotland
The Female Empowerment Programme
The Female Empowerment Programme, previously named the Kapani School Project, offers extra support to young girls in rural Zambia through academic workshops, extracurricular opportunities and empowering education. Their mission is to inspire young girls to believe in their self-worth and build on their self-esteem, literacy and overall academic performance.
In 2015, The Female Empowerment Programme started a Girl’s Club at Yosefe Primary school. The aim was to create a safe space and an environment for girls in which they could feel comfortable exploring different ideas outside of their normal classroom environment.
9
Through the club, the Female Empowerment Programme has introduced girls to a variety of different career options for women, exposed them to strong and successful local female entrepreneurs, held sessions on relationships, menstruation and sexuality, and at the girls’ request, implemented English study lessons to help them improve their reading and writing skills. Since we started supporting the programme, we have raised £7,300 and with that, fully funded 26 young girls to join the Female Empowerment Programme.
We have enabled the programme to double the number of girls they were able to teach; reaching another chiefdom that had no services for preadolescent girls struggling in school.
We have also enabled the programme to split Yosefe Club into two distinct groups based on the girls’ age. The next club was subsequently formed at a new school called The Matula Primary School which focuses on grades 5-7, and allows the staff to teach more mature content, particularly at the grade 7 level.
Our goal for 2023 is to raise £10,000 to keep the programme running at Matula and ensure that all the girls currently enrolled can complete the three year programme.
£7,300
Girls fully funded to join the Female Empowerment Programme directly from our donations. Raised to support the Female Empowerment Programme to date.
26
10
The Rucksack Project
The Rucksack Project in Jaipur, India is a collaboration with Taabar Shelter, an NGO that works specifically with boys who either found themselves living on the streets or were forced into child labour. The shelter aims to rehabilitate the boys, re-build their confidence, teach them basic English, Maths and Hindi and find their families. The True Travel Foundation financially supports The Rucksack Project with the help of donations from our clients, as well as fundraising initiatives within our team.
It costs £8 to provide one child with a rucksack. With each donation a rucksack will be provided to a child in the shelter, something that he can call his own and something that when the time comes he can take home.
11
Our goal for 2023 is to also raise £10,000 in order to provide a further 1,250 rucksacks for boys who join the shelter over the coming years.
841
Children in Jaipur provided with essential resources directly from our funding.
£6,735
Raised to support the Taabar Shelter and The Rucksack Project to date.
1 x Rucksack 3
Notebook 1
5
3 x Erasers 1 x Ruler 1 x
Sharpener 1 x Water Bottle 1 x Sandals 1 x Towel 1 x Toothbrush & Paste 1 x Soap Bar 1 x Hairbrush 1 x Toy 12 x Colour Markers 12 x Crayons 1 x Colouring Book 12 x Colouring Pencils 12
x
x Pencil Case
x Pencils
Pencil
Seawilding
This year, we are immensely proud to announce our blue carbon partnership with Seawilding. This partnership has enabled us to offset all of our clients and company’s carbon emissions. Seawilding, based at Loch Craignish, Scotland, is the UK’s first community-led native oyster and seagrass restoration project. Their aim is to restore lost biodiversity, sequester carbon, and to create green jobs. They are pioneering low-cost, best-practice marine habitat restoration methodologies and empowering other coastal communities to do the same. Together with Weatherby’s bank, we have marked this partnership with an opening donation of £25,000.
This donation will fund the training of four divers, which will reduce reseeding costs by up to 40%. It will enable the team to accelerate their Seagrass Restoration Programme and reach the goal of replanting 80 hectares of seagrass across Loch Craignish in a much shorter space of time.
13
Team members, Molly and Emily, harvesting seagrass seeds at the Seawilding HQ
Seawilding’s new scientific methodologies and research results will help inform the infant science of seagrass restoration. They go above and beyond to actively share their knowledge and provide open source guides for other coastal research projects worldwide in order to help them do the same.
In September 2022, the True Travel team took a trip to the western coast of Scotland to visit the Seawilding project in action. After spending an entire day immersed in the intricacies of their marine restoration methodology, the passion, determination and resilience of Danny, Seawilding’s founder, and the team was evident in abundance.
The tangible benefits of this programme will not only be felt in the Scottish and UK waters, but we are already seeing evidence of the positive impact of this restorative work as far as the Arctic. We are hugely passionate about supporting such a groundbreaking initiative and are enourmously optimistic about the potential it harbours.
The protection and restoration of existing seagrass meadows and native oyster beds is paramount, and we are immensely proud to support Seawilding.
We have now committed to raising a target of £100,000 for Seawilding by the end of 2023 to enable their team to continue developing their work in marine restoration at scale.
£150,00
Is the annual cost to run the Seagrass Restoration Programme including essential resources, scientific research and providing a living wage for the team.
133,000
Seeds could be harvested as a result of a total £100,000 donation at the end of 2023, enhancing thousands of acres of seagrass meadows across the U.K.
14
Carbon Footprint & Offsetting Schemes
This section of our Impact Report highlights how we are minimising the carbon footprint of True Travel and the initiatives we have implemented in order to actively address climate change and be part of the solution.
15
1 2 3
We measure the carbon footprint for every single element of each trip, including all suppliers involved, and offer them the opportunity to wholly offset their carbon emissions, through our blue carbon partner, Seawilding.
We have also measured and offset all of our team’s carbon footprint for all of their personal annual travel as well as their commuting emissions for 2022. We agreed that we would measure our total carbon footprint for the year, and then double the offset. Last year we produced 34.5 tonnes of C02, therefore, we have offset 69 tonnes of C0 2 through donations to Seawilding. Our team is already taking steps to travel in more sustainable ways and we are proud that the emissions required to operate True Travel are relatively low by industry standard. However, more can be done.
Looking at the bigger picture, we know carbon offsetting and managing emissions isn’t the long term solution, and of course it is not the only way we are tackling the challenges of climate change. As part of our long term commitment we are taking steps to establish our Net Zero target, working with our selected global charity partners and funding the research and development of blue carbon initiatives.
Social Impact
Alongside our commitment to reducing carbon emissions as much as possible within our business, we also strive to continue to have a positive impact on the destinations we love. We choose to work with independent and locally run businesses who clearly demonstrate their support in giving back to their local economies, communities and environmental causes.
Where we can and where it is possible, we demonstrate in each of our clients bookings how much of their trip is helping support community and conservation projects and initiatives.
We understand how important it is to be transparent. One of our aims this year is to gather more reliable data wherever we can, so that we can demonstrate how the funds raised have helped support specific suppliers, national parks, foundations or conservation initiatives.
Our Contributions
Africa is an area where we already have transparent data. Here is a breakdown of our contributions in Africa and how we have helped support each destination’s environmental, social and conservation causes for 2022. These figures are based on park and conservation fees donated.
In addition...
In December 2022, we donated 20 fleeces in various sizes to the Kewa Lhakhang Temple in Gangtey valley, Bhutan, to provide urgent, immediate help to both child and adult monks to make it through the freezing winter months - at a total cost of £300.
18
Founder, Henry Morley, delivering fleeces in BhutanDecember 2022
Key Targets for 2023
Measure and offset all our Scope 1 and 2 emissions
1 in addition to the Scope 3 2 emissions that we already offset.
We are B Corp pending. We want to become a certified B Corp by the end of the year. 3 Research and set our viable Net Zero target and create a timeline plan.
1 Scope 1 and 2 emissions are our direct emissions as a company that we have complete control over, such as sources owned by our company and our office emissions.
2 Scope 3 emissions are all the emissions indirectly generated by our company that we play a part in but cannot totally control. For example, business travel, employee commutes, transportation, distribution and more.
3 The B Corp certification process is a lengthy and rigorous examination of our company’s processes and sustainability efforts. Becoming B Corp Certified means obtaining an ongoing commitment to being socially responsible and environmentally positive. As a business, we are always looking for ways to improve year on year and by becoming B Corp certified we can ensure our actions are directly tied to our promises.
19
To Conclude
We know we are far from perfect and that we don’t have all the answers; however, this first Impact Report establishes self accountability on behalf of our clients to understand our priorities, and how the company is operated. It also provides our team with a baseline for how we measure our progress and plan to improve going forward.
We want to use this Impact Report to be as transparent and thorough as possible with the whole True Travel community and our wider network of partners, in order to encourage collective action throughout the travel industry.
We will always strive to do more, but we are very exicted to illustrate how we, as a business, are taking steps in the right direction to become a flag bearer for positive impact travel. Taking accountability and action holistically is crucial to making a real difference and becoming a leader in travel that acts as a force for good.
We hope you will join us in the movement of re-defining conscious travel and ensuring the safeguarding of our planet so that life-long memories can be made for many years to come.
If you have enjoyed reading about the charitable projects that we support and would like to get involved personally, donate or even simply learn more, please reach out to our Positive Impact Manager, Imogen Fitzjohn at if@true.travel. We are always available for a chat to discuss how your support can make a huge difference to the projects we are so passionate about.
Alternatively, if you would like to visit these projects yourself or are planning a trip to any of these areas, our travel team are more than happy to help incorporate a visit if you are interested.
20
The Art of Travel Why True Travel?
Specialist
Our unparalleled expertise comes from extensive, first-hand experience in our specialist destinations, alongside decades of hands-on travel curation.
Conscious
Being mindful of the world around us.
Always considering the impact of every itinerary and ensuring conscious travel is front of mind.
Curated
Each itinerary starts with a blank canvas, guaranteeing a truly unique experience that is hand-crafted in every detail.
Independent
Ensuring inherently authentic experiences, guided by our autonomy and independence.
Curious
A shared wonder and insatiable desire to discover everything the world has to offer. We are infinitely curious.
21
www.true.travel +44 203 137 1247 info@true.travel
