Decotourism has surpassed mere trend and promise: it has become lifestyle, an ethos which reformulates the travel experience into inducing life changing transformations for both visitors and their respective local communities. With the heart of decotourism is “traveling for purpose”, which is about making a minimal footprint on world ecologies while the visit itself made a meaningful positive changes to the lives of visiting communities. It is between exchanges of know-how, culture, and experience that we come together even more meaningfully as human beings as well as with the places we experience.
It is possible in the fertile and verdant landscape of Lio, Indonesia, that this belief is more than an attitude-it is also a lifestyle. Here in Lio, our identity can be described in three very strong words: lika, iné, oné. It speaks to the way we bring ourselves very close to one another and the land. For we are people of one hearth, one mother, and one house, where every person is treated just like a family. Travelers are invited to come and live that patronizing experience by joining us in our activities: gardening, coffee picking, pig feeding, and planting rice. Ancient villages, megalithic gravesites, and natural hot springs await visitors, where the texture of life in our culture is woven into every stone, plant, and breath of the air.
For us residents of Lio, our lives are based on five major relationships; relationship with our God, relationship with the ancestors, relationship with nature, relationship with fellow humankind, and relationship with self. Such relationships form the backbone of this community, and they illuminate the pathway through which one walks in the world. We call this sacred connection “Du’a Gheta Lulu Wula, Nggaye Ghale Wena Tana,” which transforms into “Heavenly Father and Mother Earth.” That is to say that while honoring the relationships, we bring in balance and harmony in our lives, enriching well-being for the community and the environment at large.
Years ago, the inspiration for what is now the Remaja Mandiri Community (RMC) sprouted from the presidential campaign of Joko Widodo in 2013. It had emerged one evening while sitting around a bonfire with friends discussing this new project. They started as a literacy movement mobilizing book donations from Java into schools in Lio, over time morphing into an effort to empower youth and build a community that is self-sustaining. In 2014, I left to study Ecotourism Management in the USA, where I learned more about the practice of sustainable tourism. By 2016, I had returned to Ende to work with Swisscontact on rural community-based tourism and solid waste management projects but wherever I happened to be, RMC was always very much in my heart.
In 2018, I went back to Detusoko, and together with my partner Eka Rajakopo, we launched an English course. What was different with this project was that students were required to pay for their lessons by depositing recyclables in our waste bank. With no outside donor funding, Eka and I exhausted our own personal resources to fund RMC, realizing that we were going to need more clear-cut direction if we wanted to make a real impact. This was the point at which we defined our four main programs informal education, sustainable agriculture, social enterprise and Decotourism.
These programs work together to strengthen: the resilience and self-sufficiency of the community. Through informal education, we train the Lio youth to take ownership of their present and future through skills and knowledge. Sustainable agriculture upholds the tenets of the land while bringing for our sustenance, and social enterprises put food on the table to sustain our programs while acting as a means of expressing local artisanal craft. In all these, Decotourism establishes a link from our community to the rest of the world, showcasing our lifestyle while supporting our programs.
The next five to ten years: should see RMC grow into a full-blown training center for local youth so that skilled life skills would become an asset during lifetime. Also, it gives the business potential of becoming an international brand. But the ultimate aim is for them young people to be inspired to come back to the village, farm, and continue the legacy of sustainability and community bestowed upon them by the ancients. We see one hope in the future-that of the farmer: the time for the youth to create value-added products and services from their land has come.
Through Decotourism, we invite our visitors to not only behold the beauty of our culture but to partake in it. When you visit Lio, you are not just a tourist-you are a guest, and you leave as family. The relationships you build, the events you experience, and the teachings that touch upon your heart contribute towards a much broader understanding of our world and the relationships that bind us all as one.
Lio is open for exploration, and we invite everyone over to come experience what there is to offer with us. Come enjoy the warmth of our community; the richness of our culture; and the peace of our natural surroundings. Let’s make a journey-with a purpose-together.
Join us in our commitment to sustainability, cultural diversity, and the development of a self-sufficient future in Lio. Together, we can make a change.
