Mongolia

A group of 30 explorers, scientists, journalists and luminaries in the world of adventure served on an advisory board for the nomination of this year’s top adventurers. The class of 2009 includes a BASE jumper, military veterans, an explorer, road trippers, a surfer, an astronaut, an ultra runner, an educator, a filmmaker and a scientist. They are:

-Khadija Bahram, supported by the aid organization International Rescue Committee, guided an educational program that stretches across five provinces in war-torn Afghanistan reaching more than 10,000 pupils, mostly girls, as well as disabled children.
-Stephen Bouey and Steven Shoppman crossed 69 countries and racked up more than 77,000 miles during a two-and-a-half-year road trip that circumnavigated the globe by road.
-Maya Gabeira, the only sponsored female big-wave surfer in the world, surfed the largest wave by a woman ever, landing a 45-footer at South Africa’s Dungeons break.
-John Grunsfeld, known as NASA’s “Hubble Repairman,” braved hurtling space debris to pull off the repair to end all repairs: Working at zero gravity some 350 miles above the surface of the Earth, the astronaut restored sight to a half-blind Hubble.
-Marc Hoffmeister, an injured Iraq veteran, organized a team of climbers, including his wife, Gayle Hoffmeister, his friend, Bob Haines, and injured vets Jon Kuniholm, Matt Nyman and David Shebib, to attempt the dangerous West Buttress route of Denali in Alaska.
-Albert Yu-Min Lin organized a high-risk, high-stakes project into Mongolia’s “Forbidden Zone” to search for the lost tomb of Genghis Kahn, using state-of-the art, cutting-edge mapping technologies.
-Dean Potter recorded the longest BASE jump ever — 2 minutes and 50 seconds — while wearing a wingsuit that allowed him to cover some 9,000 vertical feet and nearly four horizontal miles in distance.
-Louie Psihoyos assembled an “Ocean’s 11″-esque crew to expose and end the annual slaughter of hundreds of dolphins for meat in Taiji, Japan, a story told in the award-winning film “The Cove.”
-Diane Van Deren, survivor of a successful lobectomy, became the first and only woman to complete the Yukon Arctic Ultra, a 430-mile run across frozen tundra in the dead of winter.
-Katey Walter Anthony mounted an expedition to Siberia to seek out and measure beds of thawing permafrost — a major source of methane gas, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than CO2, yet is not factored into most climate change models.

The National Geographic Adventure Adventurers of the Year feature is presented and sponsored by South African Tourism, South African Airways and Budweiser American Ale.

The winners practice and advance the growing trend of geotourism: tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. They were selected from 10 finalists out of 611 original entries from 81 countries. Entries for “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place” almost doubled over the first Geotourism Challenge in 2008.

All three cutting-edge, innovative winners provide visitors with the opportunity to participate in sustainable travel; each winner will receive a $5,000 prize:

• Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon-neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. To date, Nature Air has compensated for nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through the protection of more than 500 acres. In addition, Nature Air recently helped develop Costa Rica’s first alternative fueling station through its wholly owned fueling company, Aerotica. Nature Air fuels all ground equipment and vehicles with bio-diesel (a mix of recycled vegetable and cooking oils) collected from employees and restaurants.
  
• PEPY (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”) is Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, providing adventure bike tours and on-site volunteer projects, like building rainwater collection units. All participants make donations to enhance education in impoverished rural Cambodia, where PEPY is based. It supports education for more than 1,700 families in 12 villages and six schools in rural Siem Reap Province, about 40 miles (65 km) from the city of Siem Reap, site of the Angkor temples.
  
• Wikiloc Community Maps in Girona, Spain, created by a software engineer with a passion for travel, is built on information — including maps, photos and video — submitted to offer honest impressions about destinations. Wikiloc is a great source of outdoor activities, from mountain biking to ballooning. The site also promotes thematic activities like gastronomic routes, sightseeing urban trails and walks in archaeological areas. Created in 2006, the site is already translated in 14 languages, and more than 65,000 trails are included.

“We’re excited to support three new innovators stretching the possibilities of geotourism,” said Charlie Brown, Changemakers’ executive director. “These winners are pushing us closer to realizing and sustaining a kind of travel that will enrich cultures and environments across the globe.”

Jonathan B. Tourtellot, director of National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations, said, “The winners are outstanding examples of geotourism practices that extend to good destination stewardship. They are committed to conserving and enhancing the quality of their locales while benefiting local people and providing visitors with authentic experiences. Geotourism is no flash in the pan: Travelers around the globe are seeking it out in both rural and urban settings. We’re delighted to showcase the winners and runners-up who are leading the way.”

The seven Geotourism Challenge runners-up:

• Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through noncommercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people.
  
• Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much-respected public park and nature exploratory center.
  
• Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building.
  
• Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, United States, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects in each of the cities where it operates.
  
• RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips, Arunachal Pradesh, India, help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions.
  
• Trout Point Lodge, Nova Scotia, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.
  
• Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom, Rua Bom Jesus, Brazil, commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley.

For more details about the innovative work of all 10 finalists, go to the Geotourism Challenge 2009 website at www.changemakers.net/geotourismchallenge.

A panel of expert judges selected the 10 finalists in July, while the public chose the top three winners through online voting during a four-week period this summer, ending Aug. 12. The expert judges were Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement; Keith Bellows, a vice president of the National Geographic Society and editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine; Erika Harms, executive director of Sustainable Development, United Nations Foundation; Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet; Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted; and Dr. Yang Yuming, vice president of Southwest Forestry University, China.

About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding, and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building, and the sourcing of funding opportunities.

Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining, and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems.

About National Geographic
The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 370 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com. To learn more about the mission and work of the , visit www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/.

For images of the three 2009 Geotourism Challenge winners, visit http://ftp.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/geotourism_challenge/

All the finalists practice and advance geotourism: tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents. They were selected from 611 entries from 81 countries. Entries almost doubled this year over the first Geotourism Challenge in 2008.

A panel of expert judges — Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement; Keith Bellows, editor of National Geographic Traveler magazine; Erika Harms, executive director of Sustainable Development, United Nations Foundation; Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet; Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted; and Dr. Yang Yuming, vice president of Southwest Forestry University, China — selected the finalists based on their innovation, social impact and sustainability/viability.

Said Maathai, “The entries really address community needs, teach, entertain and are accompanied by a lot of passion. I admire the finalists’ enthusiasm and wish them much success.”

The 10 finalists are:

• Evergreen Brick Works of Toronto, Canada, is an adaptive re-use of the heritage structures at the Don Valley Brick Works, converting the city’s abandoned ravines into a much respected public park and nature exploratory center. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/fr/node/23438)
  
• Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation links visitors with genuine nomadic families and guides as a way to stimulate cultural understanding through non-commercial outdoor activities and to provide alternative incomes for these Mongolian people. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/23485)
  
• Nature Air, the 100 percent carbon neutral airline in Costa Rica, offsets 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions to encourage reforestation of tropical forests in southern Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/20613)
  
• Virgin Islands Youth Heritage Exchange Farm Excursions focuses on food as the basis of youth identity and education, with visitors contributing to local mentoring through hands-on workshops and nature-based lifestyle-skill building. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/24143)
  
• Context Travel, based in Philadelphia, offers walking seminars in major European cities. It encourages sustainable ways to visit urban destinations and contributes funds to cultural preservation projects — such as an artist apprenticeship — to benefit local residents. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21933)
  
• RiverIndia.com’s Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips help protect India’s Siang River through increased conservation and locally guided rafting, kayaking and fishing expeditions. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/19044)
  
• Trout Point Lodge, a Five Green Key-designated nature retreat in Canada, has revitalized backwoods and Acadian French cultural tourism through its Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and staff naturalists providing guided access to the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/21375)
  
• PEPY, Cambodia’s Educational Volunteer Tourism Program, is where on-site learning projects combine with donations to personally invest visitors in sustaining and enhancing education in Cambodia. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/node/21931)
  
• Wikiloc Community Maps, created by a company in Girona, Spain, are built on information provided by visitors and hosts to offer honest and authentic impressions about destinations.
  
• Reality Tour Viagens e Turismo Ltda’s Route of Freedom commemorates the “Memory of the African Diaspora in Brazil” with seven interpretive trails winding through 15 cities of the Paraiba Valley. (http://geotourism.changemakers.com/en-us/node/24996)

“This year’s entrants truly demonstrate how tourism is transforming the world at the global and local level,” said Charlie Brown, Ashoka’s Changemaker’s executive director and facilitator of the judging process. “Not only do they provide insights and practical lessons for an effective tourism operation, but they also highlight some of the most important destinations for travelers to visit now.”

About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, online competitions and relationship-building. Changemakers creates opportunities for those who want to be at the center of social change by offering competitions that are supported by philanthropic organizations. The competitions and the community connect those who are passionate about change and make ideas come to life. For more information, visit www.ashoka.org or www.changemakers.net.