Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations
InCommons Collaboration Challenge
Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations
Tourism is now the world’s largest industry. In Minnesota in 2008, tourism generated $11.2 billion, accounted for 245,788 jobs, and grew 38% over 8 years. As an economic development engine, well-managed tourism offers an incredible opportunity to Minnesota’s ethnic communities, if they participate. Among the advantages are:
• Injecting new dollars into the local economy.
• Creating job opportunities, especially for young people (tourism is labor-intensive).
• Creating business opportunities.
• Encouraging preservation of an area’s environment, heritage and inherent character.
• Catalyzing residency.
• Stimulating new and improved infrastructure.
• Providing intercultural experiences and broadening minds.
Although ethnic destinations exist throughout Minnesota, they are disconnected from the tourism industry. The purpose of the Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations Collaborative of Saint Paul (ECTD) is to bridge that gulf by making connections between ethnic populations, economic developers, tourism planners, cultural and historical site managers, chambers of commerce, community development organizations, elected officials, funders and those with an interest in closing pervasive and worsening social and economic gaps.
ECTD leads an initiative to model sustainable, comprehensive approach to culturally-centered tourism development in Saint Paul. We seek to capitalize and leverage our ethnic cultural assets for the economic benefit of ethnic populations, our neighbors and the city.
Contributor
Lisa Tabor2010-10-29 16:35
1 Comment
About You
About You
First Name
Lisa
Last Name
Tabor
Country
United States, MN, Ramsey County
About Your Organization
Organization
CultureBrokers Foundation
Organization Website
Organization Phone
651-344-0664
Organization Address
917 Selby Avenue
Organization Country
United States, MN, Ramsey County
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Your Story
Collaboration Title
Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations
Country your work focuses on
United States, MN, Ramsey County
Describe your locally-based collaboration and the problem it sought to address
Tourism is now the world’s largest industry. In Minnesota in 2008, tourism generated $11.2 billion, accounted for 245,788 jobs, and grew 38% over 8 years. As an economic development engine, well-managed tourism offers an incredible opportunity to Minnesota’s ethnic communities, if they participate. Among the advantages are:
• Injecting new dollars into the local economy.
• Creating job opportunities, especially for young people (tourism is labor-intensive).
• Creating business opportunities.
• Encouraging preservation of an area’s environment, heritage and inherent character.
• Catalyzing residency.
• Stimulating new and improved infrastructure.
• Providing intercultural experiences and broadening minds.
Although ethnic destinations exist throughout Minnesota, they are disconnected from the tourism industry. The purpose of the Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations Collaborative of Saint Paul (ECTD) is to bridge that gulf by making connections between ethnic populations, economic developers, tourism planners, cultural and historical site managers, chambers of commerce, community development organizations, elected officials, funders and those with an interest in closing pervasive and worsening social and economic gaps.
ECTD leads an initiative to model sustainable, comprehensive approach to culturally-centered tourism development in Saint Paul. We seek to capitalize and leverage our ethnic cultural assets for the economic benefit of ethnic populations, our neighbors and the city.
Tell us about the community in which this collaboration took place
• In 2009, MN had the 2nd highest unemployment gap in the nation.
• Saint Paul’s population is 287,151 persons; 39.4% are minorities. Approximately 75% of students in Saint Paul Public Schools are minorities speaking 126 languages and dialects.
• Saint Paul has 4 ethnic cultural corridors, with more proposed.
Issue Selector
n/a
Partnership
Who was involved in co-creating or implementing your collaboration (other organizations, leaders, community members, etc.)?
There are more, but founding members were:
• Lisa Tabor, Art Weddington, Art Coulson - African American Heritage Corridor
• Va-Megn Thoj, Terri Thao - Little Mekong
• Ted Davis – Visit St. Paul
• Paul Hardt, Nieeta Presley - World Cultural Heritage District
• Janice LaFloe, David Glass, Kevin Martineau - American Indian communities
• Brian Gioielli - District del So
To what extent does your collaboration involve partnerships that are outside or cross traditional organizational or sector boundaries?
In addition to inherently working across ‘traditional’ cultural boundaries, we are involving elected officials, Mayor Christopher Coleman’s office, U of M Tourism, MN Chicano Latino Affairs Council, LISC, Saint Paul Planning & Economic Development, MnDOT, Saint Paul RiverCentre, and Saint Paul Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity. We welcome all interested parties!
Innovation
What makes your locally-based collaboration innovative and unique?
ECTD may be the only group in MN established to connect ethnic communities directly to the tourism industry and those who influence it. We create space for aligning our shared goals to create new economic development solutions that result in sustained social benefit.
ECTD synthesizes several working models into an idea new to MN:
1. The social entrepreneur’s investment model of not waiting for government or the business sector to solve fundamental issues in our communities. We are getting involved and with even minimal investment attempt to make a difference in solving the seemingly intractable problem of our growing racial and ethnic gaps.
2. The World Tourism Organization’s ST-EP model of leveraging visitor spending in order to deliver practical benefits to the poor. We have adapted their seven philosophies to focus results on our ethnic communities, who are also disproportionately poor.
3. The Council of Europe’s Intercultural City Programme which seeks to shape the way a city conducts its work and creates environments that enable people from different cultural backgrounds to mix, exchange and interact for mutual benefit.
Did you take risks in establishing this collaboration? Explain
Cross-cultural work is inherently risky, but we are generally familiar with many of the players. In working to strengthen ethnic communities and reverse the deficit paradigm which so many leaders apply to our communities, we take the risk of leaders and influencers pushing back or becoming defensive.
How did this collaboration differ from the normal way of doing your work?
CultureBrokers Foundation promotes interculturalism and collaboration is our natural way of working. But we have never before tried to entice government agencies and public officials into supporting this revolutionary an idea. Thus, we are challenged to be more creative, more patient and more strategic than ever before.
Impact
How do you know your collaboration has been effective?
Some of our members have been asked to speak on the subject of ethnic cultural tourism, and the idea has gained some traction in some of those places. The positive energy and asset-based approach seems to be very attractive to many people, taking on the aspects of a movement (albeit an underground one at this point). Tourism and interculturalism concepts are now elevated to a more public arena, including state legislators’ offices, City Hall, neighborhoods and educational institutions. Some of our destinations are even part of the comprehensive plans of Saint Paul’s District 8 and Central Corridor Station Areas.
What progress or impact has been made?
Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter has agreed to be a champion. We have planned and initiated fundraising to produce the MN Ethnic Cultural Tourism Conference on Feb. 22, 2011. This first-of-its-kind conference will offer practitioners, funders, elected officials, agencies and institutions information from national experts, destination planners and legislators.
Next Steps
How would you go about continuing, expanding, or replicating this collaboration?
To continue our work, we will use the conference as an opportunity to establish our collaboration’s value as an important resource for information, advocacy, and networking. We will leverage the conference to generate more members. We will reinforce our value as often as possible throughout the year through regular communications, events and public relations. This will help us grow our reputation and secure more partners and resources.
For longer term sustainability, we may establish a membership fee structure which could allow us to have a consistent source of income, increase our influence and reach, and grow to scale to better serve Minnesota.
Others will be able to replicate our collaboration because we have been diligent about keeping good records. We will establish a website and post all of our documents to the public.
Describe the current stage of implementation and desired next steps
We had our first meeting in January, and officially launched in April. We are now completing the first iteration of the cycle of group development (forming, storming and norming). We have moved into the performance phase with our first project, the February 22 conference. We expect to have 150 participants for the day-long educational opportunity.
By December, 2010, we need to finish fundraising, complete the conference program, and begin conference marketing. We would also like to have secured one more political champion and one funding champion.
As a function of the February 22 conference, participants will have generated ideas, needs and issues most important to them in furthering ethnic cultural tourism. So, by March 2011, we want to follow up on those by either making connections to existing resources (such as convention and visitor bureaus) or by adopting them as core goals for an ECTD strategic plan. By the end of that month, we would like to have a website active to post this information and attract new members.
We also want to identify a comprehensive benchmarking system for measuring the impact of ethnic cultural tourism on communities, as well as baseline data for Saint Paul. So, by June 2011, we’d like to have this research initiated. The goal would be to complete the system and present and distribute the system at a second ECTD conference in 2012.
By October, 2011, we’d like to have held at least three community forums in Saint Paul around ethnic cultural tourism.
By the end of 2011, we’d like to have:
• A membership and committee framework with 50 members/allies (we are currently at 18) actively engaged in furthering the strategic plan;
• Funding secured for administrative support of the collaborative; and
• Funding secured, and plans in place for a second conference.
| 101 weeks ago mini smith said: preservation of environment and employment opportunities are the best result of the tourism. As this industry helps in the creating ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > | |
| 137 weeks ago Lisa Tabor updated this Competition Entry. | |
| 137 weeks ago Lisa Tabor submitted this idea. |
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