How Does Servas Promote Peace, Tolerance and Environmentally Sustainable Lifestyles?

Updated

Servas promotes peace and tolerance by connecting members across more than 130 countries as hosts, travellers, or supporters, so that people from different backgrounds meet, build friendships, and broaden their understanding of the world. It encourages environmentally sustainable meetings and lifestyles with less ecological impact. These aims are stated on the Servas homepage and are reflected in the site's "Caring for our planet" and "Ethical Code for Servas Members" pages. The mechanism is direct personal contact rather than abstract advocacy: the network's own description ties peace and tolerance to members making contact and forming friendships, online or in person.

The core idea: connection as the peace mechanism

Servas describes itself as "a network for global friendship." Its stated logic is that when members connect as hosts, travellers, or supporters — whether online or in person — they build friendships and broaden their understanding of the world, and this in turn promotes peace and tolerance.

That means the peace and tolerance goals are not run as separate campaigns. They are treated as outcomes of the ordinary member activities the network is built around.

How the three connection roles work

The homepage lists three ways members connect:

  • Hosts — members who receive other members.
  • Travellers — members who travel and make contact with hosts.
  • Supporters — members who take part without hosting or travelling.

All three are described as ways of "connecting," and the network says these connections can happen online or in person. So a member does not have to travel internationally to participate in the peace-and-tolerance side of Servas; supporting and online connection are presented as valid forms of involvement.

Where sustainability fits in

Servas states that it encourages "environmentally sustainable meetings and lifestyles with less ecological impact." The site also carries a dedicated "Caring for our planet" page, which is where this commitment is developed in more detail.

Two practical implications follow from the wording:

  • The sustainability aim applies to meetings (how members come together) and to lifestyles (how members live day to day).
  • The stated goal is less ecological impact, not a specific certification or offset scheme — the homepage does not name particular environmental standards.

If you want to know what this means in practice for a stay or a trip, the "Caring for our planet" page is the place to check, since the homepage only states the general principle.

The Ethical Code as the shared baseline

The site lists an "Ethical Code for Servas Members" alongside its legal and policy pages. Because members stay in each other's homes and represent the network to strangers, a shared code is what makes the trust-based model workable.

For anyone deciding whether to join, the Ethical Code is worth reading before applying — it sets out the behaviour expected of hosts, travellers, and supporters, and it is the document that turns "peace and tolerance" from a slogan into rules members are asked to follow.

Beyond hosting and travelling

The site's navigation shows that Servas activity extends past the host–traveller exchange. Listed areas include:

  • Servas at the United Nations
  • Youth and families
  • Language exchange
  • Peace schools
  • Servas Artists
  • Servas singing
  • International conferences

These give members additional ways to connect around the same peace-and-understanding aims, and they also give people who cannot host or travel a route into the network.

What to check if these goals matter to you

If you are evaluating Servas specifically because of its peace, tolerance, and sustainability claims, the site points you to a few concrete places:

  1. "Caring for our planet" — for the environmental side.
  2. "Ethical Code for Servas Members" — for the conduct standards behind the tolerance and trust claims.
  3. "What is Servas?" and "Who runs Servas?" — for how the organisation is structured and governed.
  4. "How to join Servas" — for the membership process, since the peace-and-tolerance aims are delivered through member connection and therefore require membership.

The homepage itself is a summary: it states the aims and the connection model, then directs you to these pages for the detail.