Giving your team the opportunity to grow, bond and travel beyond the office for a well-earned reward is an imperative in today’s corporate setting. In order to make a corporate retreat especially memorable and meaningful, Discova focuses our offering for corporate event organisers, companies and various institutions on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Our CSR retreats blend in effortlessly with the numerous community development projects we have initiated over the years for our educational travel segment. What does that mean for you? We have close to two decades of experience in project management, Health & Safety logistics, local community liaison, and, just quite simply, making purpose-driven trips as easy as possible for our partners.
In this blog we take a dive into how we facilitate and manage CSR retreats with our on-the-ground connections and expertise, taking the admin out of planning your unforgettable corporate getaways and incentives.
Our experience in creating purpose-driven travel dates back to 2007. This is when our educational travel team formed and began working with communities throughout our Southeast Asia destinations on various development projects related to economic and social welfare and health promotion.
Today, there is a comprehensive list of community development projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos that your teams can get involved with. From building homes in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, supporting a high school dormitory construction in Loas, and contributing to expanding educational facilities in Siem Reap, Cambodia, to supplying extra hands-on support for setting up water filters in a struggling region of northern Thailand, there are endless small and big ways your team can contribute to communities in need.
Download our Community Development Report for January 2022 – June 2023
What do these projects achieve for the local communities? When you get involved, you’re supporting:
Discova provides professional project management services that allow our clients to effectively contribute to the economic and social development of the communities they visit. Project management services are conducted free-of-charge as part of Discova’s contribution to community development. In this way, we ensure that 100% of client donations go directly to the project. There are no management or administrative fees.
Projects are a limited activity to achieve a specific goal within a specified time frame. This might entail building a school or other village infrastructure or providing professional services. Our advantage is that 95% of our staff is local. That makes community liaison within each destination, for each project, all the more seamless and meaningful, especially where we have built long-term relationships with the villages and local authorities.
From January 2022 to June 2023 alone, we were able to successfully provide direct financial contributions to various communities, supported by 1,321 travellers and a fundraising campaign totaling USD 151,865. This included the successful management of 17 projects in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, focusing on educational, economic and healthcare needs, with total cost for all amounting to USD 88,842.
We handle the on-the-ground communication and management, while you make the life-changing contributions when you choose a CSR retreat over a conventional team getaway.
We’ve been providing travel experiences since 1994, and that history along with our passion for educational travel, has resulted in Discova forming a comprehensive Safety Management System.
When you book a CSR retreat with us, you get:
Our overarching Safety Management System aims to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, that transport, accommodation and activities operated by Discova are:
This system includes a Risk Score evaluation, guidelines for Emergency Procedures and Incident Reporting, an “Escalation Panel” to review any supplier risk issues escalated on behalf of the safety team, and Decision Making Flow Charts for when suppliers complete or refuse to complete safety data questionnaires.
All this means you can book your next corporate trip with us, knowing that your team is well looked after. Find more details about the Safety Management System here.
Corporate social responsibility retreats are growing in demand by both employers and employees alike. With good reason. They offer tangible ways for teams to make a positive impact outside of their working environment, and that alone results in a sense of reward that money can’t buy.
There are numerous ways in which CSR retreats can benefit businesses (we’ve summed up five of them here), and just as many, if not more, in which they impact local communities in our destinations. What to some may seem like simple infrastructural improvements and developments in education or health, result in life-long or generational ripple effects. The community development changes you set into motion with a CSR retreat can lead to increased school attendance, greater English and digital literacy, improved sanitation and health, stronger agricultural yields, access to safe drinking water, and so much more.
From Southeast Asia to Latin America, build a team trip that has a lasting impact on all involved.
Let’s talk purpose-driven events
Want to design corporate retreats with meaning and long-lasting impact? We’d love to hear from you!
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and stay at the forefront of new product offerings, Discova behind-the-scenes, destination news, travel trends and thought leadership articles from our on-the-ground experts.
