Making a Difference in New Orleans with Tourism Cares

Six Collette employees recently visited New Orleans to participate in an industry volunteer event with Tourism Cares. Tourism Cares unites the travel industry to benefit the places and people that our industry depends on. This event in New Orleans celebrated past volunteer events, before and after Hurricane Katrina, and also demonstrated the benefit that the travel and tourism industry can have in building and sustaining communities.

Collette was among the first tour operators to return to New Orleans after Katrina and the money we brought into the community by traveling there, along with the rest of the industry, facilitated economic recovery after the hurricane – jobs, investment, and hope returned to the community. At Collette, we know that Responsible Travel matters and is the way forward.

Our volunteers worked on projects for Recirculating Farms, which builds eco-friendly farms that use recycled water to grow local, accessible food and create stable jobs. The farms use a system of hydroponics connected to fish tanks to circulate the water so that the nutrients from the fish help the plants grow and vice versa. We moved lots of dirt, mulch, did some staining and set up some facilities for more planting.