The Azores are defined by their connection to the ocean. For travelers, that often means kayaking on quiet bays or spotting whales offshore. For locals, daily life is shaped by their historic seafaring ties. With that connection comes a responsibility for stewardship, and one local nonprofit is leading the way.
Save Azores Waves is a grassroots organization working to protect coastal ecosystems across the islands. They do this by organizing beach cleanups, leading educational workshops and hosting community events. Their focus is as much on long-term awareness as it is on immediate action, and their work reaches both locals and visitors.
My Portuguese family has long admired the serenity on the slow-paced Atlantic islands and urged me to visit. Upon seeing it with my own eyes in 2019, it wasn’t just the lush beauty that amazed me, but the local and quiet charm that persisted on the islands despite their growing popularity as a tourist destination.
A few years later, when I met Andre Avelar, cofounder of Save Azores Waves, at the United Nations Ocean Conference, my ongoing curiosity of the Azores hadn’t ceased. I had just completed a thesis on sustainable tourism, and naturally I was fascinated by his work to increase tourism in a locally focused and inclusive manner. From his perspective, tourism had to keep local interests and environmental stewardship at its heart. And safeguarding the Azores meant opening its story to the perspectives and interest of outsiders.
So far in 2025 alone, Save Azores Waves led marine literacy workshops at more than 30 elementary schools across four islands (São Miguel, Terceira, Graciosa and São Jorge), reaching hundreds of students with hands-on environmental education. They also cohosted the Azores’ first women’s surf film festival, which drew over 500 attendees and highlighted ocean advocacy through culture and storytelling. But their work goes beyond collecting trash or hosting events. It’s about instilling pride, awareness and responsibility in the community, laying the foundation for long-term conservation and resilience in the face of change.
This year, Save Azores Waves will host the first-ever Azores Wave Conference, bringing together leaders in sustainability, tourism and marine science. The goal is to spark dialogue about the challenges facing the islands and to build momentum for solutions that will keep the Azorean coastline healthy.
Through our Give Back Field Project (GBFP) program, Backroads is supporting their effort with a $2,000 donation. Introduced in 2025, the Program provides paid hours for volunteerism as well as donations for Backroads field staff to support initiatives in the communities where they live and we travel. Collaborating with local nonprofits, initiatives focus on the intersection of environmental action and active tourism. Other completed projects have been as varied and wide-reaching as supporting community bike rides in Cuba to investing in recreation center infrastructure and programs in Nova Scotia.
In the Azores, the GBFP contribution will help cover the costs of facilitating community beach cleanup events, leading marine literacy workshops, hosting educational workshop events for the public and advocating for environmental policies that will protect the natural environment.
For Backroads, supporting this effort is both constructive and values-driven. Our trips in the Azores include ocean activities like whale watching and kayaking. Working with an organization that protects the very ecosystems we visit ensures these experiences remain possible for the future.
More so, it’s the knowledge we collect and the questions we ask ourselves while traveling that make the experience so valuable. On Backroads trips, we taste the salty air, hike the winding coastal trails and wade into the gentle summer waves. By visiting São Miguel or the other Azorean islands in such an immersive way, we see firsthand why conserving the land and sea is so important for residents and travelers alike. It’s a standard that not only shapes how visitors experience the islands but also draws them here, creating a powerful feedback loop of environmental stewardship.
