Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, the Hurtigruten Group is an adventure travel company that aims to explore unique destinations in a sustainable way by working with green technology. The company offers travel packages to 250 destinations in more than 30 countries worldwide, including Antarctica, the Caribbean, and West Africa.

The Hurtigruten Foundation represents the larger company’s ethos in that it aims to create lasting and positive impacts on the various remote places the Group operates in by empowering guests to engage with local communities and indigenous peoples, thereby driving local community investment.

The Hurtigruten Foundation points out that during the pandemic they supported sustainable local initiatives which benefited indigenous communities and protected endangered species. They are now encouraging such communities to apply for funding grants.

“Our mission is to invest in the local communities our guests visit,” explains Henrik A. Lund, Managing Director of the Hurtigruten Foundation. “As the world locked down, we scaled-up and continued to support communities that needed urgent assistance.

“In fact, 2020 was our second highest year in terms of sizable donations from the Foundation, so we are very proud of what we have achieved and want to support even more projects now that we are moving out of the pandemic and returning to full operations.”

For example, the Foundation has supported projects such as the Oceanites Antarctic Site Inventory initiative, which monitors penguin population changes across Antarctica.

“Hurtigruten Foundation funding is critical for us, especially at a time when data collection was more difficult than ever, when the world was at a standstill due to the pandemic,” said Ron Naveen, President of Oceanites.

“Nevertheless, we were able to continue to collect data at penguin breeding sites and to update our analyses aimed at distinguishing the direct and interactive effects of climate change, fishing, and tourism.

“The project ensures that the best and most up-to-data and scientific information are freely available to all Antarctic Treaty stakeholders, and we are hugely grateful for Hurtigruten Foundation’s support in enabling us to continue our critical work.”

The deadline for 2021 application submissions is November 1st.