The ManicaPost
Stephen Ephraem Post Correspondent
LOOK-and-learn tours can be described as trips in which people leave their places of education or work to visit other places where they are offered an opportunity to observe and learn activities that are not available at their institutions. Such trips can last a day or more.
Look-and-learn tours can be taken as informal education activities, that is, learning away from a normal classroom or workplace without using textbooks and other tools used in a normal classroom environment. Usually, it’s learning while having fun. Even if the visitors are students, being given an opportunity to learn from someone new to them is so enjoyable and the memories are long lasting.
Tourism look-and-learn tours are usually done at places of interest like museums, historic sites, cultural villages or nature reserves.
Such tours bring a lot of benefits to the students. One-day tours give people a chance to interact with fellow workers and hosts during breaks and meals. Tours that are more than a day give tourists a chance to enjoy camping and fire-place discussions during the night. Such experiences are refreshing to the delegates.
Those who tour foreign places can enjoy learning a new language, a new culture and experience new food. They also enjoy understanding how cultures differ from each other. They also understand how environments differ and how other people strive to live in their conditions.
The other benefit of look-and-tours is that they offer the opportunities for the tourists to perform hands-on learning. Usually, the tourists are made to get involved in most, if not all aspects of the practical lessons touring the tour.
Look-and-learn tours are usually led by specialists who know exactly what will benefit the tourists in their given time. Instead of covering too many topics, guides provide specific information that is ideal for each and every visiting team.
Look-and-learn tours promote team or group work. Team work promotes good behaviour and discipline. Places like The Outward Bound in Chimanimani and The Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve’s Hakamela Camp in Chiredzi are popular for such practical activities.
Look-and-learn tours are bearing fruits. In a development that will empower communities around the Great Limpopo Trans-Frontier Park in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa, Centre for Cultural Development Initiatives (CCDI), a Chiredzi based community development organisation in partnership with a South African based businessman, Mr Carling Henning, facilitated the first phase of cultural look-and-learn tours for great Limpopo communities.
Mr Henning of Elim in Limpopo Province, South Africa was raised in Zimbabwe. His family grew sugar cane in Chiredzi at a farm known as KwaMuchangana owing to the family’s love of Tsonga/Shangaan culture and their fluent speaking of the vernacular language. Mr Henning funded the trip’s logistics and hospitality expenses.
The partnership saw Mrs Esnath Matatise and Miss Loveness Kazamula heading for Malamulele in Limpopo Province, South Africa from September 15 to October 14 this year to learn how to run successful arts business for women in tourism under the guidance of a Mrs Thandi Mazibuko.
In turn, the two CCDI members shall train other women to run successful rural tourism businesses in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique.
The Great Limpopo area is surrounded by Ndau, Tsonga/Shangaan and Venda communities in the three countries.
The CCDI duo whose main focus was designing cultural attire, bead making, marketing of products and value addition of cultural products feels that look-and learn tours are a key aspect in the development of rural tourism.
Said Miss Kazamula: “It is quite inspiring to learn that communal women can unlock various opportunities in tourism in different communities.
Most of our women are failing to sail through due to poor marketing strategies and poor networking. After the look-and-learn tour, Zimbabwean women shall be empowered in tourism.”
After the look-and-learn tour, Mr Carling Henning went a step further by donating two electronic sewing machines to CCDI for the use of training local communities.
The machines comprise of a basic (straight) one and another an over locker.
Training of communities shall commence as soon as CCDI’s cultural village at Boli Muhlanguleni in Chiredzi South get solar power installation to enable electronic machines to operate.
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