Capacity building and community-based tourism projects

Besides striving to operate in a more sustainable business environment, we use our tours to support projects in environmentally sensitive areas and to aid local economic development. We feature here some of the most recent ones:

• In Moc Chau we worked alongside local people in a disadvantaged mountainous area creating a new guesthouse, training locals on acquiring a correct approach towards tourism and on managing successful tourism businesses.
• In Ngoc Son – Ngo Luong nature reserve we served the Spanish NGO FPSC in a consulting role for their project of nature conservation and livelihood improvement through the organization of eco-tours in the Reserve.
• In Vong Vieng, a floating village of Halong Bay, we partnered with a German tour operator to replace the houses’ polluting Styrofoam floats by long-lasting and non polluting floats.
• Through our educational tours, Handspan welcomes every year groups of students from international schools and colleges to stay with an ethnic community in remote areas. This is an opportunity for young people to play with their counterparts in simple earthen playgrounds, to promote tolerance and respect towards other cultures and lifestyles and to take social or environmental action for the community. For example, they build a schoolyard, plant trees or give a hand in restoring a classroom. The experiences from this sort of trips leave indelible memories in both guests’ and hosts’ minds and are also a great opportunity for us to support and enhance cultural diversity and identity, and to promote pride in local traditions.  
• The Primate Conservation Fund is an initiative Handspan took hand-in-hand with Flora and Fauna International, the world's longest running conservation organization. The money raised directly from bookings of nature-based tours helps to cover the costs so that local community rangers can patrol remote forest areas.

Awareness raising events

Each summer we organize a trip to Halong to remove litter and build awareness of the bay's environmental needs. The annual Halong Clean Up Tour.
The Corporate Football Charity Cup organized by Handspan and joined by several other businesses it is a friendly football competition held to raise funds to support street kids of Hanoi.

Though our daily operations, we keep on developing other projects aimed to have positive mid and long term effects in our communities. Stay tuned to our Blog and social networks!