HERE'S THE PREMISE: a bold few sign up to be members of a 'tribe', which will create an eco-community on an idyllic Fijian island. Organised on democratic principles, they will elect their own chiefs, vote on how to develop the place and help build their own living quarters and other basic facilities. Sound like the outline for a new reality show?
In fact, it's an offbeat tourism scheme by two young British entrepreneurs, Mark James and Ben Keene. Billing it as a real-life adventure in which participants can influence how a new community develops, they are selling memberships to 5,000 people around the world, who will then be allowed to visit the island for up to three weeks each year.
The partners, who have leased the island of Vorovoro from the local chief, issued an invitation over the internet last month for people to join their tribe. When the first members visit Vorovoro, 25 minutes by boat from the second-biggest Fijian island of Vanua Levu, others can monitor their progress on the website - tribewanted.com - and add their input. The result is a cross between two of today's hottest trends: adventure tourism, and the burgeoning world of online communities such as MySpace.
Keene views their venture as offering a vacation with a difference, combining adventure travel with community development. 'The tribe will benefit from an experience that is so much more than just a week's holiday on an island,' he says. 'The global tribal community will have a purpose - to develop an eco-community in a real place. That challenge will bring rewards as the tribe will be empowered to take part in something rather than simply be guests.'
Keene and James, both 26, also hope the project will benefit indigenous islanders as jobs are created, and visitors buy locally produced food and goods. The organisers will also contribute to an education fund for the island.
The pair met online in December after James, a TV industry gopher, came across Keene's travel website, careerbreakcafe.com. James had been 'looking at trends in online communities and online ideas, and at how that could be taken offline into real space, a real place', while Keene was interested in sustainable development, having run volunteer projects in West Africa.