Passports with Purpose, the travel blogging fundraiser, is raising money now through December 17, 2014 to help farmers in Honduras with Sustainable Harvest International (SHI). For $10 a try you can enter to win one of dozens of fantastic travel prizes that range from a week in Provence to a tour of the Grand Canyon to $1000 toward a vacation rental anywhere in the world. Chances to win make great gifts – for yourself and for others. All proceeds go directly to SHI.
The goal of Sustainable Harvest International is to stop slash-and-burn agriculture in Central America while giving family farmers the tools and skills they need to farm sustainably. For each $5000 we raise, we will help one extended family learn to farm sustainably for five years, with lasting benefits for them and their community.
You can see the prizes and donate here. Each year we raise thousands of dollars $10 at a time and each $10 means so much. For every $5000 that we raise, Sustainable Harvest International will help one extended family in Honduras learn to farm sustainably for five years with lasting benefits for them and their community.
And donating isn’t the only way you can help out. If you have any kind of social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest), you can share the giveaway link there.
Still not convinced? I’ve put together a list of reasons why you should donate to Passports with Purpose:
You can trust our charities. The Passports with Purpose board works hard to vet the charities we choose to fund, starting months ahead of the fundraiser. Charities have to fill out an application and we go through a process of back and forth with them to make sure all of our questions are answered. We interview people on the board of the charity, look at the past work they’ve done, and make absolutely certain that everything looks good in their Charity Navigator profile. We only work with not-for-profits in the United States, although we also require that they partner with an indigenous charity in the country we are supporting. We also tend to work with smaller organizations that don’t have a lot of overhead – so you know that the money you are giving goes directly to the people who need it most.
Our projects get done in places of great need. We fund only discrete, bricks-and-mortar projects with visible results. Whether it’s schools, libraries, villages, wells, or in this year’s case, farm fields in Honduras, everything we do is verifiable. And in fact, we’ve often gone to see the projects for ourselves. Members of our team have been to Zambia to see the libraries we built, Mara Gorman went to Haiti for the opening of one of the wells, and board member Katie Aune headed to Mali this fall to see the schools we funded in 2013. Our projects may not be the biggest – but you can rest assured that every one of them is meaningful, lasting, and has a direct impact on peoples’ lives.
You can make a difference without giving a lot. Over the past seven years, we’ve raised over $400,000. Some of that came from corporate sponsors, but the majority was made $10 at a time. That’s right: just $10 helps us meet our goals. And since our entire fundraiser is run online by volunteers, our overhead is incredibly low. In fact, 100 percent of the money given through our catalogue of prizes (minus the PayPal fees) goes directly to our charity of choice.
We represent the power of community. At the moment there are dozens of travel bloggers signed up to help out with Passports with Purpose in 2014. They have sought out prizes, will write posts, and will share, share, share on social media until their fingers are surely tired. Why? Because they believe in their collective power to make a difference. Because they love to travel the world and want to give something back to the planet. Because they are thrilled to give their readers a chance to win wonderful prizes while doing good. Because there is joy in working together.
It’s fun! Who says generosity has to be a purely serious business? Our fundraiser offers a treasure trove of prizes to dream about, bid on, and yes, possibly even win.
