Offering a adventurous stay in a traditional rural, Rwandan village that has existed for centuries living with and next to mountain gorillas in Parc National des Volcans. Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village gives you a rare chance to meet local people, in their environment, with a taste of our culture and traditions. The community you visit will genuinely welcome you as a special guest while they proudly p
resent to you aspects of their traditions and beliefs. This will truly be an experience of a lifetime as you home stay with the community and become part of their family. Back Ground for Iby’iwacu cultural village
Iby’Iwacu (literary means, treasures of our home, our heritage). For the last 7 years, Rwanda Eco-Tours has been involved in developing initiatives and supporting community projects around national parks aimed at enriching local people through providing linkages and incentives for conservation around national parks in particular around the gorilla’s Parc National des Volcans, in different aspects. In particular our aim has been targeting poachers to curb down poaching acts in the park, provide alternatives ways of alleviating poverty which is a root cause for poaching to improving community livelihood and increasing conservation education, awareness and involvement within the community. Through our research, we found out that alleviating poverty needs much more and goes beyond agriculture. Following successive community involvement and workshops, tourist surveys, a cultural village came up, thereby a rebirth of Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village: A Community Based Tourism Initiative. Rwanda Eco-Tours invested more than 20.000$ towards to development of this village and has provided training facilities and study tours to community leaders in community based tourism development and management for the sustainability of this cultural village. We believe this is one among other alternative ways that would benefit communities DIRECTLY and link them to conservation, thereby curbing poaching, involve communities in income generating activities to alleviate poverty and link communities to conservation. A number of people who visited our different projects were not only interested to learn more about our culture, traditions and local ways of living but also wanted to have a hands-on experience. Rwanda Eco-Tours now offers the opportunity to visit the village, participate in community’s daily activities and stay at the village for a day or a night. We want to thank you all that have visited Rwanda with Rwanda Eco-Tours, all we have done wouldn’t have been possible without you, and we believe with more to come, we can reach out to more. Also through Rwanda eco- Tours a mother company to the cultural village, clients/ tourists visiting Rwanda especially for Gorilla trekking, voluntarily donate a goat to an ex- poacher’s family under the Community development and conservation project that was introduced in Jan 2011 by the C.E.O of Rwanda eco- Tours Mr. Below is how it works;
“$50 community development and conservation fee charged is used to buy a goat through “the goats for gorilla’s project” that is given to a former poachers’ family after trekking the Gorillas, you will hand over this goat to one of the families living around the Gorillas Park at the Iby’Iwacu Cultural Village. This is an incentive for communities to protect and conserve the gorillas and their habitat and a way for you to give back to both community and conservation. You can read more at http:
