SOLM is a nonprofit organization working to make tourism and hospitality more regenerative, inclusive, and locally rooted in Cabo Verde.

SOLM works at the intersection of hospitality, skills development, culture, and local economic participation to help shape a more regenerative tourism model. We focus on creating pathways for women and youth to participate more meaningfully in the tourism economy while strengthening the cultural and environmental systems that tourism depends on.

We believe tourism has the potential to circulate value more locally: creating dignified livelihoods, supporting local talent and production, and allowing communities to actively shape the future of their own regions.

At our core, we exist to help ensure that the growth of tourism also regenerates.

  • We create hands-on training and upskilling programs that prepare women and youth for real opportunities within the hospitality and tourism industry.

    Through initiatives like our Skills Lab and SAB Intensive, participants gain practical experience, professional exposure, leadership skills, and pathways into employment across hospitality, creative production, tourism operations, and locally rooted supply chains connected to hotels, restaurants, retreats, and guesthouses.

    Our programs are designed not only to support employability, but to strengthen long-term local participation within the visitor economy.

  • We believe tourism should operate in closer relationship with the ecosystems, cultures, materials, and communities around it. Our work focuses on helping hospitality become more locally rooted, community-connected, and regenerative in practice.

    We do this by:

    • working with hospitality providers to rethink operational practices, sourcing, guest experience, and community engagement

    • helping design more locally integrated hospitality models and experiences

    • creating stronger connections between tourism businesses and local makers, artisans, producers, and service providers

    • integrating local craftsmanship, cultural knowledge, and place-based design into hospitality spaces

    • modeling regenerative practices through our own studios, training programs, events, and community initiatives

    • supporting hospitality businesses in developing more thoughtful approaches to materials, production, land stewardship, and cultural preservation

  • Tourism shapes how places are experienced, understood, and remembered.

    We work to preserve and elevate local identity, craftsmanship, oral histories, material culture, gastronomy, and local narratives through programming, collaborations, exhibitions, storytelling, and documentary capture.

    Part of our work includes documenting cultural knowledge, creative practices, food traditions, local histories, and community stories through photography, film, interviews, and visual storytelling initiatives that help preserve and share the evolving identity of place.