Child Safe Tourism Training in the Field – Myanmar Responsible Tourism Institute

Throughout August the MRTI team have been conducting on-site trainings on Child Safe Tourism. We have held workshops in tourism hot spots areas including Mandalay, Chaung Thar, Kaw Thoung, Bagan, Yangon and Inle Lake.

The training programs are broken into four different sessions aimed at separate stakeholders to ensure that the curriculum is focused and relevant to the participants.

local government level
upper management of tourism businesses
mid management of tourism business
floor level staff of tourism businesses (including transport workers)

The objectives of the training are to

Local Government

To raise awareness in the community to show decision makers that child safe tourism is possible and desirable.
To indicate that there are possibilities to report and prove local stakeholders can take responsibility

Upper Management

To convince the decision makers within the tourism companies, (eg General Managers, owners, CEOs) to engage their company in child safe tourism and commit personnel to child safe tourism trainings.

Mid Management

To promote child safe tourism within companies by raising awareness among middle management on the impacts of tourism on the safety and vulnerability of children focusing on orphanage tourism and child sex tourism.
To assist companies to adopt policies and create reporting procedures
To indicate the importance to middle management to train all staff, especially guest services, inform clients and work with relevant stakeholders in the community to create child safe tourism

Floor Staff

To create support for child safe tourism amongst employees
To motivate staff to stay alert and know what to do if they have any suspicions