World Heritage Hosts (Welterbe Gastgeber) are certified quality hosts providing accommodation and services inside the World Heritage property of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The programme was initiated in 2007 by the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Association with the aim to improve the local tourism offer and avoid the loss of quality in the services provided. Today 18 businesses are certified as World Heritage Hosts. They are known for their high quality accommodation and services. They also act as ambassadors for the region having exceptionally knowledge about the many castles, legends, sights and adventure opportunities in the region as well as local products, including wine and cherries.

The certification is awarded to businesses that play a key role in the promotion of the wider World Heritage area on the basis of four criteria: quality of information and communication on the World Heritage value; active participation in local networks; quality of the products and services provided; relevance in relation to the World Heritage status.

In order to obtain the certificate, local hospitality businesses need to be certified by a national quality procedure (Service Quality Germany) and/or graded in accordance to the DEHOGA standards (German Hotel and Catering Federation).

The World Heritage Academy (Welterbe Akademie) is a training opportunity created to raise awareness on the OUV of the World Heritage property, other heritage values and the wider heritage of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The academy aims at fostering local traditional knowledge, professional and practical expertise to build capacity in local communities and local actors living and working within and nearby the World Heritage site. The academy organizes seminars and workshops in cooperation with local artisans and professionals as well as experts in the field of restoration and heritage, and topics treated vary from important and central themes like tourism, green energy, and specific building and conservation techniques like the construction and restoration of dry stone walls.

The Academy offers inclusive and innovative means of engagement for local stakeholders and actors to build knowledge and capacities to face future challenges.

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Local Action Group (LAG) is the steering body of the LEADER project. The group includes members from 28 local organizations representing public authorities, the economic and social sectors, and civil society.

The LAG implements the Local Integrated Rural Development Strategy (LILE), which sets objectives for the funding period between 2014-2020   and formulates fields of action for the strategy around four themes:

1. liveable settlements of the Middle Rhine;
2. sustainable tourism and economic structures;
3. preservation and sustainable development of the cultural landscape of the area;
4. society and communities in the World Heritage property.

Members of the LAG advise and decide on projects that are submitted to the calls for funding on the basis of their pertinence with the LILE strategy.

The area of interest of the LAG is very similar to that of the UNESCO World Heritage as it includes the associated communities of the Rhine-Nahe, St.Goar-Oberwesel and Loreley and parts of the Rhine-Mosel municipalities and parts of the cities of Boppard, Lahnstein, Bingen and Koblenz.

The LAG also exchanges with national and transnational partner regions on joint cooperations. Currently,

the LAG is working on the application for a new funding period 2023 – 2029.

Since 2005, the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Association (Zweckverband Welterbe Oberes Mittelrheintal) is in charge of conserving and managing the World Heritage property of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. It includes representatives from the 52 municipal authorities, 5 districts and the federal states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. The Association’s structure is divided into five bodies:

• a board in charge of day-to-day business on behalf of the Association;

• a secretariat working as a contact point for all municipalities, as well as dealing with the implementation of plans and projects;

• an Advisory Board, an interdisciplinary expert group providing advice to five specific themes - landscape and viticulture, architecture and urban development, tourism, city and regional economy, as well as  art, light and architectural conservation;

• two permanent working groups, one focused on the safeguarding, maintenance and development of the cultural landscape, and the second one on tourism which is held in cooperation with providers of tourism services.

The Association meets twice a year to decide on the key planning and operational matters, including the annual budget and to ensure that the association's fields of action is in line with existing World Heritage guidelines.

Through our relief campaigns and educational programs we built deep partnerships with the local communities. This is critical to achieve our objective of bringing about permanent behavioral change.

Green Hope Foundation uses ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) as a transformative tool to bring about behavioral change in local communities, enabling them to learn about their biodiversity, its current state, what the challenges are and how they can mitigate them. The communities we work with have never been to school. There are also language and social barriers, especially with regard to the participation of girls and women in these conservative societies. To circumvent these challenges we use innovative mediums of learnings, such as Art, Music, Dance and Drama to educate the young people in these communities. Since we are youth, this form of peer to peer learning is more effective. 

We utilise the youth of these communities to become the drivers of change mechanism in these communities.

PREYO team members participated in the training at the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) a youth-led movement of daring social innovators where we learned a lot. That’s when the network with different people started to grow and more ideas were coming in. Some people quitted their projects and joined us because of the efforts we invested in promoting our work and innovative ideas.

PREYO team comprises 10 permanent workers and more than 200 temporary workers who are waste pickers, also gender is observed. People involved have different talents and skills, including people with Vocational Trainings, responsible for fabricating the machines. So teamwork has made us take a step further and reducing the cost of production

RFCx has created project-specific solutions for monitoring biodiversity and detecting illegal activities. Our hardware offerings include the RFCx Guardian and the RFCx Edge, both with specific strengths and goals in mind. 

Our AI model for chainsaw detections are modified and strengthened with support through our partnership with Huawei, and all data collected in our Huawei-sponsored projects is stored on the Huawei Cloud. Huawei has cooperated with RFCx to develop more accurate intelligent algorithm models based on Huawei's advanced artificial intelligence service (Huawei Cloud AI) and tools (ModelArts) to achieve more accurate identification of illegal forest activity (the sounds of chainsaws, vehicles etc.). In addition, Huawei is helping RFCx build intelligent models that detect and analyze the sounds of fauna, providing information about their habitat, threats, and even life habits, helping local partners protect endangered species.