Show notes
Anna Alaman spoke with us about her work in responsible and sustainable tourism through the Open Eyes Project. Anna was determined to build a social enterprise in India and focused on tourism. She shared the experiences that led her to establish the project, including lessons on “learning while doing” and the differences between “having the academic point of view and also the practitioner point of view”. From her experiences, she was able to help change tourism in India for the last 11 years. Tours are usually disconnected from the heart of the local people. Open Eyes Project relies on the authentic connection with the communities to create holistic experiences of the country and culture. Anna explained how the initiative integrates new aspects to reflect the social enterprise’s values; like bringing in more female tour guides and being inclusive of people with disabilities. Finding an alternative to “normal” business is a strength for the Open Eyes Project. Tourism is usually held in-person, but COVID-19 placed a stop to in-person gatherings. Anna shared how the team could not believe the pandemic lasted for over a year and added that dealing with the pandemic felt like starting from scratch again. I felt it was a great example of the way clarity about your purpose can foster the flexibility to adapt to what life throws. Being rooted in purpose, and understanding what you’re about, allows you to adapt to create your impact in a different way and shift. Open Eyes Project took years to refine the businesses methods used in their initiative today, and are still refining. Anna explained that it took many years to fully understand the balance involved with creating impact and having sustainable revenue to maintain a sustainable business model. In social enterprise, both the impact and profit are hugely important factors that indicate whether a social enterprise is truly fulfilling the intended purpose. Anna also shared that figuring out the correct way to communicate with the target audience developed over the course of three to four websites. Anna reflected on the community being part of the business model and emphasized that they cannot be outside of the business model. Initiatives would not exist without communities. From this idea, the conversation bloomed into the real-life story of why Open Eyes Project’s consumers trust the initiative. Tourists see the impact of spending their money with the Open Eyes Project by the interactions with the communities that are part of the tours. This is intentional and has been woven into the fabric of the experience so that the impact is clearly felt. Towards the end, we discussed pushing past the hurdle of getting something up and running. Anna’s take is an insightful mix of personas and life experiences. A world beyond the hurdle may include recreating around older narratives your mind lived with. Anna acknowledged a common thread in going past limits: “I can see there is more success for those who are open to really learn by doing.” If you would like to learn more, you can visit Open Eyes Project and RegenLab. Connect with her through Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. If you speak Spanish, check out Anna’s free course to give you the clarity and structure you need to start a social enterprise: http://bit.ly/2Nf7Rfy. Book mentioned on the podcast: Building Social Business from Muhammad Yunus Read Full Transcript Adam: [00:00:00] Welcome to People Helping People, the podcast to inspire greater social change and give you ideas on how to take action. I'm your host, Adam Morris. And this month we are focused on providing you with tools to sharpen your creativity, gain insight, to developing great ideas for businesses that can create a social impact. So I'm very excited to have Anna Alaman on the podcast today. She founded the Open Eyes Project over 10 years ago in India and has become an icon for responsible and sustainable tourism. Open eyes, organizes tours in India, around culture, mindfulness and education with a focus on the impact people are making through travel. Anna is also an international professor teaching sustainable travel at Ostella and a partner in sheintourism.com. So Anna, welcome on the podcast. Anna: [00:00:45] Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure. Adam: [00:00:48] Can we start off, can you tell us a little bit about the open eyes project? Anna: [00:00:51] Open eyes. It started like 11 years ago when I realized the concept of social enterprises in the book. That day changed my life. That was 2010. Open eyes came with an idea to implement a social enterprise in tourism in India. With that idea, with that curiosity, how we can say to have that mission to start something I thought I could do. I was believing in myself, I moved to India and then I started connecting with communities from different areas to really share my idea of hope, tourism. We could use tourism as a tool for development in the country. Yeah, and then I was for three, four months on the ground for the meeting communities and then sharing that idea. And after four months I went back to Spain, to Barcelona. I started doing the promotion and the first two groups started, and this is whole open eyes, really was launched. Adam: [00:01:48] That's cool. So had you been in India before you went over to start this? Anna: [00:01:53] It's interesting because everyone thinks that I went to India fall in love with India, and then it's when I realized I wanted to live there. And it's not my history at all. My history is that I came to India when I was 21 because my background is in marketing and business. And I used to do import and export projects. So I came with the company and I remember still very well that impact on my mind that I could never live in this country. So you can never say no. I think life sometimes brings you different, projects if you really want to manifest as well if you really want to believe in that. And yeah, so after 10 years is when I went to India again, I didn't have any contact. I wasn't sure that I wanted to live there. My initial goal was to really start a social enterprise for me was a new part of the map. I really wanted to implement it, to make that a tangible thing. Adam: [00:02:48] Now with sustainable tourism, what are some of the things you focus on in Open Eyes to make an impact? Anna: [00:02:55] So it has been also a very interesting journey because I didn't come from the background of tourism. So I was learning by doing, yeah. And I realized after three years that what we were doing, this was called sustainable tourism. And then our first idea was how tourism could be more as a force for sharing economy in the destination with the communities, with vulnerable communities. So we have been always a bridge between communities and the tourism industry. We have been providing capacity building and designing experiences, and then promoting them. So we were that bridge between both sides. And then yes, I realize, okay, this is called sustainable tourism because it's a very holistic approach. We were targeting also addressing problems on women's rights, gender equality, economy, plastic. So we were really focusing on that in a very holistic, we can say worldview of the tourism impacting destination. So when I realized it was called sustainable tourism. I decided, okay, I'm going to do a master. At research master project so I can really learn more and do research and implementation in the company at the same time. That was, I was doing that for 4 years and a half. And I can feel now the difference of, having the academic point of view and also the practitioner point of view at the same time. Adam: [00:04:14] Can you explain some of the things that happen with regular tourism? Anna: [00:04:19] The convention of tourism. Yes. I'm going to give you an example, very clear about what's happening in India, for example, the conventional tours that is seven days is called the triangle of India that they do Dehli, Japiur, Agra and these that are really bad habits with the drivers, bad habits with the local economy where they don't really stop in local markets in cooperative. Maybe run by a woman in offbeat places. It's usually at the same place sharing the same history from the same monument. That is not really a real interaction with the people with the destination, with the locals, with the host, we can say all of the places. So for us has been that we are designers of experiences. This is what we call Open Eyes. We are a tour operator. Yes. But definitely, we are a designer of experiences. Why? Because we are always up the ground and trying to design those experiences with the communities. What is the essence? What is the vision of the community about the place and how we can under the ancestral we can seek traditions and how we can create that experience design and then, make the bridge with the traveler who wants to go to the country scene either different nights, something more pragmatic and going to share 99.9% of drivers transport drivers in India are male. So we have been also very focused on gender in the last five years. So we worked with that, that 0.1% of the population. Yeah. So we work with women drivers, female drivers. With us, for example, when you reach the airport, there is a woman who will go and pick you up at the airport. And then that woman will be driving you to the hotel. And also we'll be showing you around Dehli. That makes a difference as well. We have been also training them to become a guide. So it's that, that different work home you can see, for example, that at the same place and women's rights, we don't promote any elephant rides since 2012, 2013, we were one of the first two operators, really not promoting elephant rights in none of our tours. So that is another aspect, a very holistic approach to how we can really be more. I always say that it's like, you can have a normal t-shirt and you can have an organic handmade t-shirt . So we try to be the most organic and handmade traveled to the mediator. Adam: [00:06:43] I love that. That's awesome. What are some of the other experiences that you designed into your tours? Anna: [00:06:50] Oh, we have a load of experiences after 11 years. One of the most difficult, but the most meaningful as well, it's been working with blind women in our tours. Yeah. So we, one of our, what. Impact that we wanted to address this whole week would integrate more people with disabilities in our tours as a part of the team, as a community providers, we can say , suppliers. And then we connect us what we always with work with community partners. And then we realize that well, blind woman, they have a really good sense on their hands and some of the blind woman in, in Dehli, in organizations, in what train as a therapist. So we thought, okay, why not design something where we can bring the therapies in tourism and they can really earn money because the problem is that sometimes NGOs, they have the capacity for training, but not for marketplace. And then it's when Open Eyes acts. How we can really make that connection between that training, that skill that the community has with the market. Of course, in the tourism industry, that isn't our focus yet as a tool for development. Yeah, we design a welness retreats in the North of India and the Himalaya as what is a pretty holistic approach as well. Where blind woman work, our team members, they come from Delhi. They are in very, a big trouble with the group and they are as well in the retreat and they have a therapy. They treat all of our travelers every day with a therapy with a massage. And this is fantastic. I remember these are Japanese medical massage. They have to be trained for two years. So it's a proper, they can be working even in the hospitals. So yeah, it's giving them the opportunity as well to really have the same opportunities as we have whole vulnerable communities, how we call it tourism can help vulnerable communities to have the same opportunities. Adam: [00:08:50] Now I'm assuming with the COVID in the past year that's probably impacted open eyes, quite a lot. Anna: [00:08:57] I think, yes, that he's the before and after. I think it was middle of March and it was one group that we had from United States. It was with us. And then I remember saying, bye bye today. And all these, this COVID was going on. And I remember the were a couple of travelers. Would it be afraid what to do? What coming back to you, going back to the United States or not. And that moment was the second week of March, in that moment, that period I remember I had that feeling that something strong was coming. I had that feeling. I remember they were seeing my, or what guests, because I like, it's always, that someone who says welcome. And also we say farewell on the last day, and I remember that day, it was me. And I remember there's something was a feeling of the sadness of as well, a feeling of an intuition that there is something big is coming. Yeah. So at that time I remember the frontiers or the airport were closed in India after the week or two, and yes, in this event came and all the airports were close and that is when we realize that whole week it was four, four emails inbound to the visitors. Yeah. So since April, definitely we had not had any guests. In the, in it's been, it's going to be almost a year now. I cannot even believe it. We always thought no. In three months he would pass in six months. it would pass, maybe nine months it would past, but it's gotta be more than one year now. So what's happened. we are very resilient and think because we are a company with a very strong purpose a very strong mission behind the company the organization is not only about the commercial factor that we are looking for . So when that stopped, we realize all the team okay. What we can do in order to really continue with our mission. Yeah. So we, weren't doing some things related to tourism, but after six months we realized tourism not the same is not going to open and no matter what you do it for educational tours, et cetera, et cetera. , I felt sometime that I was going back 11 years ago when I started, so that, that process, that transition. And I realized that for me, and I believe I'm a stronger believer that social enterprises, conscious company that are meant terminology terminologies. Now for me, social enterprises companies who, because companies focused on people, profit and planet companies who have the same value and they. They are because he wanted to solve a planet problem. . So they are born because of that mission. They see a problem and then they create a solution through a business model . That for me has been the why always I went to India because I am a strong believer of social enterprise that we can create a much better world. I can have the dream that imagine with all the companies were social enterprise is we really have that drive and mission of really solving a society, problem or planet need. And we created a business model behind, so the economy the impact has to be always at the same level. So I thought, okay, so let's continue with that mission. And then because I'm also happy educating and working in the university for five years. Helping entrepreneurs to really understand this paradigm of social enterprises in tourism and also in different areas. To start, I did a big transition to move online because I felt that online is that it's the, now that they want it now, online is the new market? So it's okay. We need to make the transition to online. We will do it. So I invest in myself again. Even when there is a lot of uncertain, period, time and we don't know what it's going to happen about the incomes, et cetera, et…
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