One of the world's most socially responsible hotels is in Thailand. Overlooking the Mekong River at the point where Thailand, Laos and Burma converge, the Anantara Golden Triangle resort offers refuge to work elephants and their human entourages. Anantara offers shelter, healthcare and schooling to the mahouts (trainers) and their families, recruited from Thailand's major cities where they often lived in the streets.

This luxury game lodge about an hour's drive east of Cape Town blends environmental and social activism in a foundation dedicated to preserving native landscapes and training unemployed or unskilled local people in how to make a living from doing the same. Graduates of the program have started their own nurseries and are helping government agencies manage and re-establish native plant communities.

Dozens of local kids are becoming the first in their families to attend school thanks to the efforts of this rainforest lodge on the Osa Peninsula. Carbonera School is supported by both cash donations and an online "wish list" that solicits books, games, sports equipment, flashcards, disposable cameras and other teaching materials.

When severe drought devastated northern Kenya between 1999 and 2001, the Ol Malo Lodge responded with a number of programs to help the local Samburu people. Their humanitarian slate runs a broad gamut from healthcare and clean water to education and cottage industries.

Originally created by the resort, Breds Treasure Beach Foundation promotes education, environmental awareness, healthcare, cultural heritage and sports in this rustic fishing and farming community on the south side of Jamaica. The foundation also supports the local response and recovery to hurricanes and other emergencies, as well as annual community events like the Gospel Christmas Party.

Thousands of Sumba islanders have already benefited from various health, education and economic stimulus programs created by the resort's eclectic Sumba Foundation. Nihiwatu also teaches by example - recycling all of its waste, powering its generators with bio-diesel, rescuing endangered wildlife, and offsetting its own carbon footprint with a plan to plant 160,000 trees over the next seven years.

Turning his back on the tumultuous modern world, Harvard-educated Richard Evanson bought an uninhabited Fijian island in the early 1970s and transformed it into the epitome of a rustic chic resort. Along the way he also started the Yasawas Community Foundation to fund local healthcare, employment and education initiatives. Turtle Island also helps local villagers help themselves by providing seed money for backpacker and budget accommodation.

This chic boutique retreat near the ruins of Angkor Wat supports a number of community efforts in and around Siem Reap including orphanages, schools, hospitals, home building, drinking water well drilling, a vocational institute for youth, and a sewing training center run by monks that teaches young Khmer women how to make a living with cloth and thread.

If Paul Bowles could do it over again, this is probably where he would set The Sheltering Sky - a wildly romantic resort in Egypt's Western Desert. Nestled beneath a red-rock cliff on the edge of Siwa Oasis, Adrère Amellal has become a pillar of the isolated desert community by stocking its kitchen with local produce and its gift shop with handicrafts produced by Siwa artisans. Through the Siwa Sustainable Development Initiative, the lodge is also helping to establish a micro-credit scheme whereby Siwans will be able to restore their rock-salt dwellings into boutique hotels and other tourism ventures.

Rather than poach skilled staff from other resorts, Vil Uyana decided to start its own hospitality school in the Sri Lankan countryside. In addition to learning English and Japanese, disadvantaged young adults enrolled at the academy learn all aspects of the hotel business, from people skills and public relations to cooking and catering. Graduates have found employment at Vil Uyana and other top resorts around the island.