So I’m writing this from the airport as I wait(nervously) for my flight. The airport is quite empty for this time of the year. Except for some people not following the guidelines, the check-in went fairly smooth. While I take a sip from my tea, looking outside and watching the planes taxi in and out, I wonder, how the hell did I end up here?
Several weeks ago, I decided to help cause-worthy organisations with their goals, but there are so many, and where should you even start with this. I crawled behind my computer and opened up good old Google, and hit search. After a lengthy search and midnight emails, I came into contact with this particular NGO who has been around for some time now but are struggling in certain areas but yikes … they are not really quite around the corner, to say the least…
The pandemic is still going on, and a couple of months ago, I would not even think about stepping outside my house, let alone fly somewhere. To say I’m anxious about this would be an understatement, but then again, the chances of me getting run over a bus are higher at this moment. I won’t even get into the fear of the plane crashing and tons of other fears that crosses my mind.
Hello from the other side
The first contact was friendly off the bat. I always go with my gut feeling and analyse the heck out of everything. So when it comes to using certain words, how long someone’s sentences are and how long it takes them to respond or even the closing signature tells a lot about the person. I mean, I don’t have much else to analyse, so we set up a skype meeting. I remember it has been a while that I have had a skype meeting. I’ve been chilling a lot during the pandemic rather than doing meetings, and my personal situation didn’t help with it either, so it kind of felt like when you hadn’t driven a car for some time, then you have to drive across the country all the sudden with the Culture Route Society
“Hi!” I almost yelled while waving like an idiot into the camera. Across me, I saw a guy and a woman smiling back at me. They introduced themselves to me as Hu and Kate. I still remembered how excited we all were about the fact I’m planning to come over there. The excitement part kind of got pushed back rather quickly when I was brought back to the present when I hear the last call for my flight. Ah fuck, I need to hurry up; no turning back now, they are expecting me, and I am not going to play out the movie “Terminal” at Schiphol airport.
I grabbed my stuff and started looking for the correct gate, looking at my tickets, Gate G3. I can tell you, whenever you walk towards the gate you are either too late or early.. and lucky me, there is a line, so rushing towards the gate was a useless effort. After checking the ticket I went to the gate to be sure, departure 13:40, Antalya, Turkey, so here goes nothing!
Why there?
Here is where Kate and Hu run an NGO, “The Culture Route Society, “.They oversees Turkey’s cultural routes and hiking paths. They are an organisation with a clear focus on cultural values, and I will gladly help them out. The Cultural Route Society aims to maintain Turkey’s 18 existing culture routes, encourage new trekking trails and set standards for the best practises for their development and expand upon this.
Culture routes are a means of deepening cultural understanding–both within turkey, where city-dwellers are separated by space and life-style from their rural past. By showing international trekkers aspects of Turkey’s culture that would usually find difficult to access. The Society brings benefits to the areas through which the routes pass by involving local people in the routes. Especially in identifying old roads and offering them the chance to host trekkers in their homes and pensions.
The origin of Culture Route Society
Turkey’s first long-distance trail was the Lycian Way, launched in 1999; it runs between Fethiye and Antalya in SW Turkey. Users grew rapidly, and thousands of people enjoyed this trail; it encouraged other enthusiasts to establish paths. There are now 18 culture routes in Turkey, and more are being developed.
So along these paths, there are many villages and locals whose economy mostly depends on crops and farming. While this is a sustainable way of living, we have seen in other places like Italy where the younger generation moves out to the city, leaving their homes behind and slowly seeing their hometown turn into a ghost town. By creating pathways through these cultural and historical sites, you improve tourism which in turn improves the local macroeconomy of these villages. The byproduct is that the villages become financially more independent and especially when it comes to women.
In the last 10 years, the data shows that the women in these areas have slowly moved away from farming. To an empowering role as independent hosts for tourists that pass these routes and other roles within the tourist industry.
So for me, it was a no-brainer hell yeah, sign me up.
What does branding got to do with trekking?
It has everything to do with branding, marketing and everything sweet in between them. My goal is to identify what can be done to improve awareness for their cause online. But also work on the backend of their systems to create clarity for the visitors. Before that can happen, though, we must create the framework of what identity is. What do they stand for, and how we can create value for anyone interacting with them, online or in person.
I will mainly focus on mapping these values and creating a playbook to go by. I always make these plans based on people’s feedback and my own initial analyses. But once you get there and get into digging, it all changes. Keep an eye out for next week’s blog with more updates on this. Because even I don’t know what I am getting myself into. Which is part of the rush. Each project is like a little surprise. I look forward to getting some work done with the Culture Route Society.