Project Location: Ghale Bala - Touran National Park - Semnan(Lat: 36.736536; Long: 55.700684)
1-Work up from the community level by establishing a community working group also trained in a local fund management and local tour leadership

2-Preparing a packages on eco tourism potentials of the area with focus on the National Park

3-Coordination with the government officials of DOE and Iran Tourism and Heritage Organization in a regular working groups with up to date power point presentations

4-Piloting eco tours for extracting the lessons and appraise the participation level of the locals
5-Presenting the pilot to the government for community eco tourism as developed based on the experience as developed in a booklet



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Project Activities:

On November 17 & 18th 2011, a tour was organized by cooperation of stakeholders. 120 tourists from Sharoud visited the area during a 2-day tour. The tour also included traditional music, visit to historical building in Biarjomand, greeting ceremony of Qalle Bala villagers, visit to Department of Environement's Wildlife Research Center in Touran National Park, patrol in the village and local forest of Eskanbil and watching the birds(Zagh Bour/Podoces Pleskei). Tourists stayed in villagers' houses over the night.
Number of local communities and governmental authorities were involved in the administration of the tour; provincial Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization issued required permits for visit to the national park and helped with preparation of advocacy material including posters and brochures, Biarjomand township authorities coordinated the sessions between satkeholders, Touran National Park Organization led the tour through the Park and also introduced the local wildlife and conducted the visit to Delbar environment patrol station, Birjomand municipality hosted the first day breakfast, Islamic Council and rural municipality of Qalle Bala cooperated the visits and patrols in the area and Kohajeran Behest Touran, the local community, funded and provided logistics and administration of the tour.
All the costs of the tour was paid by local cooperative and accomodation fees paid to villagers who hosted the guests.
Although this tour didn't bring back any additional income for the cooperative, local community is hopeful that this introduction tour as an investment will return more income for local community in the following years.