En cours - Best initiative in Social Responsability
Les Hôtels Arvis
Campaign - Hostel du Père Pedro
Cette candidature n'est disponible qu'en anglais / This application is only available in English.
Have you ever heard of a hotel’s income entirely dedicated to a humanitarian organization? This is what Hostel du Père Pedro is made for.
Our program
The Hostel du Père Pedro program consists in building a fair-trade school-hotel in Madagascar for a Malagasy relief organization called Akamasoa. The organization will own the hotel and benefit from the income.
This amazing project has a 2-year duration. It started in October 2019 and should end in December 2021.
The Hostel du Père Pedro will help Akamasoa and its 35 000 people. 35 000 people to feed, to educate, to treat and to host. Akamasoa receives the numerous people who used to live on Antananarivo’s garbage dump, homeless kids, young reformed delinquents as well as wives who have been left by their husband with several kids or even women that have been beaten by their alcoholic partner.
On one hand, our project aims at financially helping Akamasoa, and on the other hand to contribute to the organization’s youth education but also to Malagasy tourism and general economy development while taking in consideration the country’s culture.
What does a fair-trade school-hotel mean? Fair-trade refers to fair-trade tourism which is a type of tourism in line with the country’s culture, its people and their environment. Fair-trade tourism is supposed to help local economy to grow by transferring the tourists’ money directly to the local populations.
How are we reaching our goals? We will provide a hospitality management and a culinary training course to Akamasoa’s young population and job creation. We highlight Malagasy culture through crafts by decorating the entire hotel with local crafts and by placing a Malagasy crafts items store for our clients within the hotel. Our project’s funding refers to the notion of solidarity which is our project’s essence: we should always help the ones in need. The Hostel du Père Pedro’s funding isn’t based on investments but on donations. By being united and acting all together, we can help those in need.
United professional volunteers for a solidarity
Jean Arvis, LHA’s chairman (Les Hôtels Arvis) has been friend with Père Pedro for more than ten years. Together they have been raising funds for several humanitarian projects. After visiting Akamasoa village in Madagascar, Jean Arvis realized a hotel was missing in order to host the numerous tourists who visit the village and attend Pere Pedro’s mass. Therefore, LHA’s chairman committed to build a hotel. The humanitarian organization will own it and benefit from the income. The purpose is to help raising the 3 million euros needed per year for the village to prosper.
Malagasy youth is the country’s future. They are dynamic and highly motivated. Nevertheless, they are lacking monetary, equipment, infrastructural and education means. Thus, it appeared as an evidence for Jean Arvis to provide a professional training and a place to practice to Akamasoa’s youth.
Most of the project’s members are volunteers.
Our team is made of French and Malagasy members. Just as Jean Arvis and Pere Pedro’s friendship, it seemed important to implement a French-Malagasy joint effort within the team too.
- Marie-Odette Ravaoarivo (Akamasoa Organization’s chairwoman)
- Madeho (Parisian hotels’ development company)
- Laure Zucconi & Chloé Beretti (DZ Architecture – Interior architect’s office)
- Rindra Andrianjafiarimanana (Qualiconsult – Technical consultant)
- Bernard Mariet (GEPRIF - Contracting authority)
- Nicolas Duchêne & Bruno Le Moal (Cabinet Le Moal – Architect’s office)
The only members who are not volunteers are:
- Tovo Malala Rakotojaona (EGC2A – Civil engineer)
- Victoria Brossette, Guillaume Saxod & Andie Rajemisa (Intern project managers)
We are able to lead our program successfully thanks to our partners:
- The Fondation Aldinie under the aegis of the Foundation de France collects our donations.
- P4H, a Malagasy digital marketing & communications agency offering us their photography services for free as a donation every 2 weeks. Thanks to them we can manage and witness the construction progress.
- Dry Forest, a Malagasy NGO who provided us some drone shots of our hostel.
- École de Félix, culinary school within Akamasoa Village shares water and electricity with us.
- Madagascar Hôtel Consultant will train our staff to sustainable practices within the hospitality industry and will provide a certificate.
Communications & management
- Our project is part of the LHA’s intern newsletter.
- Each volunteer team member communicates on the project through their own company by posting about it on their social media.
- We already have partnerships with some Destination Management Companies (DMC) who share our projects on their social media and to their clients.
- We contacted catholic organizations to introduce our project in order to get more visibility and communications within this community.
We have follow-up videocall meetings with French and Malagasy team members every 2 weeks.
- Weekly reports from our Malagasy civil engineer.
- Weekly reports from Père Pedro.
- Pictures & videos from the Malagasy digital agency P4H.
Assessment
SEE FULL ATTACHED PDF DOCUMENT
Does our program deserve to win?
9 Malagasies out of 10 live below the poverty line, therefore with less than 1,5$ a day.
On this project we have gathered motivated professional volunteers who dedicate all their free time and give their best to reach this amazing and unusual journey’s goals and help the 35 000 people of Akamasoa. Just as the famous Native American Colibri Legend says, the only way to success is that everybody makes their own contribution to reach unity. Through this project, we have learned how to help one another, and this is why the Hostel du Père Pedro deserves to win: our project is all about solidarity.