Culinary tour triumphs

Giraudel/Eggleston Community Gardens Culinary Tour Captures Community Tourism Award in Dominica

Bordering Dominica’s natural World Heritage Site, the Morne Trois Pitons National Park, the communities of Giraudel and Eggleston have been challenged to create opportunities for themselves through a fusion of local expertise in gardening, conservation and culture into agro-tourism. 

This unique community-oriented initiative which started in 2006 secured the Community Tourism Award during Tourism Awareness Month 2011 in Dominica. 

Instead of importing the traditional model of tourism that replaces local activities with industry-designed packages that have minimal benefit to the local community, people of the community have designed and packaged a three-hour experience of their gardening, landscaping, conservation, craft-making, flower-arranging, music and culinary traditions as their own tourism product. 

Village authorities, women and farmers groups alongside hotel, heritage tour and horticulture businesses of the area now share in the management of this product and by common agreement, share in the financial benefit. 

The sites visited are home gardens and the guides to those sites are the homeowners themselves who open their kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms to the visitors.  Whatever work is being done on the day of the visit is shared with the visitor.  The pace of the tour is kept slow in order to allow for individual attention to inquiries. There is a two-way learning process between visitor, gardeners and homeowners.  There are opportunities for tasting the local fruits, beverages and prepared food and learning how they are handled. 

The tour has constantly been rated by visitors as providing the highest satisfaction and the secret is the opportunity presented for the visitor to become a part of the local experience, to feel at home and to learn about how the communities live and work. 

Visitors also gain knowledge on how Dominica has had the fortune of avoiding the environmental degradation that has visited many other places, offers open dialogue on issues of biodiversity, climate change, culture and farm production, and visitors learn where the strength of local community participation and empowerment remains a common practice. 

The Botanical Center in the heart of the village which is maintained by voluntary effort of members of the community is an expanding herbarium of local plants that will be the centerpiece of the next phase of the project. Projects like this Community Gardens and Culinary Tour which arise from the community have the capacity to show the way.