Category Archives: Passports with Purpose

My Passports with Purpose Prize Picks

“Can we get a divorce?”, Murph’s question was almost plaintive.
“I mean I still love you, but if we were divorced, I could enter for one of these Passports with Purpose prizes, right?”
I’m honestly not sure whether my husband is joking or not. I mean, these are really great prizes!
Today is my wistful, wishful Passports with Purpose post. As a co-founder of this annual online fundraiser, I can’t enter for any of the fantastic prizes procured or donated by over 100 travel bloggers. Neither can my husband, or my kids.

But you can and so, to help you choose from this long list of holidays, hotel stays and other excellent travel goodies, I’m going to share my favorite prize picks (all of these are open to anyone, anywhere in the world). Maybe just thinking about these will distract my husband and make him forget about that silly divorce idea.

Remember, each $10 donation you make on the Donate page gives you an entry into a free prize drawing of your choice.

HomeAway 1000 Voucher
A 1000 voucher good for one HomeAway vacation rental stay. Choose from HomeAway’s worldwide vacation properties. Pick a place, pick a house or apartment and stretch out and enjoy your vacation. Cook for yourself or eat out. Enjoy having your own space. This is my favorite type of holiday accommodation.

One Week at the Fabulous Rancho La Puerta Spa
One week stay for one at the #1 Destination Spa in the World (voted such by Readers of Travel & Leisure Magazine 2010 and 2011). I’m a mom of two teenage boys (three, if you count the exchange student from Germany we added to our household for this school year), I work full-time and I try to blog on the side. I need a week at a spa.

9-Day Costa Rica Tour
Soak in the thermal hot springs of Arenal Volcano, search for the elusive quetzal bird in the cloud forest, watch the sun set over the Pacific. Costa Rica is on my destination bucket list. ‘Nuff said.

Isla Espiritu Santo Mexico Adventure
2 day and 1 night on Isla Espritu Santo, Mexico. Trip for 2 includes camping gear, excursion 2 swim with sea lions, hiking, kayaking, meals & transport. A pacific island idyll. Quiet, accessible only by boat. The only accommodation is camping. Can I go now?

Jasper/Banff 8-day wilderness tour
Rocky Mountains, hiking in national parks, standing on the Columbia Icefield: experience the Canadian Wilderness!
I’ve never been to Banff. I’ve heard it’s beautiful. It’s practically in my backyard. I should go, soon.

Those are my picks? What are yours?

Before you go, a heartfelt Thank You to Passports with Purpose 2011 Sponsors:

Round the World with Us is a family of travelers committed to raising awareness of global issues, help people to gain a greater understanding of other cultures, and encourage people (especially youth) to see that they have the power to make a real difference in the lives of others.
Travellerspoint is one of the web’s largest and most active travel communities with members representing every country in the world. To date, their more than 30,000 blogs have shared 175,000 stories and over 1.4 million photos.
HomeAway is the world’s leading online marketplace of vacation rentals, with sites representing more than 625,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout more than 145 countries.

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Passports with Purpose: Cambodia School Opening Ceremony

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This is a photo from the Opening Ceremony of the Passports School, in Preah Vihear Cambodia. Funds to build this school were raised through Passports with Purpose in 2009.

Standing in front of 100+ kids, most of whom came from homes with no running water, many of whom are lucky to have survived early childhood, and realizing that by building this school, my friends and I had just given each and every one of them a huge push forward towards a better future was something I didn’t expect but which I will never forget.

I’ve come home to Seattle even more passionate about the education of women and children in the developing world but optimistic that this is a problem where I, and you, can make a positive impact. There are great organizations already there, working with communities building schools and libraries and teaching. Fundraising for these organizations is the single best thing we can do to help them continue their great work.

This year the Passports with Purpose goal is to raise $80,000 to build two libraries in Zambia in partnership with RoomToRead. Here’s why:
– 86% of Zambians live on less than $2 a day.
– 34% of children do not attend primary school.
– 76% of children do not attend secondary school.

The (virtual) Passports with Purpose team works to choose projects that are community-supported. These libraries will be built next to existing primary school buildings with the communities donating 35% of the cost of building in volunteer hours and donated materials. This involvement is a better guarantee of community ownership and government of the facilities after the construction project has completed.
RoomToRead includes teacher training in the project scope – and books, lots of age-appropriate books.

At Passports with Purpose we like to encourage donations by offering prizes. We have prizes. Lots of prizes. If you want to win a tour in Thailand, a week in Maui, an Xbox Kinect (with games and an Xbox Live subscription), and overnight stays a bunch of fancy hotels in cities all over the US, check out the prizes. For each $10 you donate, you get an entry into the free prize drawing of your choice.

This post was a little longer than I intended for a photo post, but so it goes. Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

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Announcing Passports with Purpose 2011

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It may be because I was only a virtual participant in the 2010 Passports with Purpose effort. It may be because visiting the school in Cambodia that we built through the 2009 Passports effort was one of my favorite and most emotional motions of 2010. Either way, I’m excited. In fact, I’m thrilled that PwP 2011 starts today.

We have a party tonight in Seattle (5pm at Hotel 1000 if you’re in the area). We have over 100 great bloggers participating this year with some fantastic prizes. Two nights at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort anyone? A $500 gift certificate for BedandBreakfast.com? Those don’t tickle your fancy, eh? Well, how about this then…

This year the prize I’m hosting is an Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle – with extras. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that WanderDad (aka Murph) works on Xbox. That damn product has been part of my life for ten years – and I don’t even like video games!! I’ll concede that the Kinect is a great get-off-the-couch Xbox accessory even for non-gamers. The bundle will include two games and a year-long membership to Xbox Live.

This year Passports with Purpose has partnered with Room to Read. Supporting an early childhood literacy project goes right to the heart of what we love – reading and writing. With your help, our goal is to raise $80,000 to build two libraries in southern and eastern Zambia through Room to Read’s Reading Room program.

If you’re a gamer who’s been waiting to check out the Kinect or a non-gamer who wants to see what all the fuss is about head on over to the Passports with Purpose Donate page. Pick a prize, donate $10 (or more). We’ll give you an entry into a free drawing for any of the prize drawings you choose for each $10 donation. You can donate as many times as you like until December 16th. Head on over, check it out – and thanks for supporting a great cause!

But before you go, a heartfelt Thank You to Passports with Purpose 2011 Sponsors:

Round the World with Us is a family of travelers committed to raising awareness of global issues, help people to gain a greater understanding of other cultures, and encourage people (especially youth) to see that they have the power to make a real difference in the lives of others.
Travellerspoint is one of the web’s largest and most active travel communities with members representing every country in the world. To date, their more than 30,000 blogs have shared 175,000 stories and over 1.4 million photos.
HomeAway is the world’s leading online marketplace of vacation rentals, with sites representing more than 625,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout more than 145 countries.

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For $10 You Could Win A Luxury Hotel Stay

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This week I’m focusing on my favorite prizes in Passports with Purpose 2010. To enter, go to the Donate page, and for each $10 you donate, you get an entry into a free prize drawing for a prize of your choice. All the money raised (less Paypal’s fees) goes directly to LAFTI. Your donations will help build a village in India.

Since Passports with Purpose is the travelbloggers’ fund-raiser, we are supported by many travel companies including hotels and resorts. Today I’ve chosen my favorites from the long list of hotels supporting this year’s effort.

Naturally, I had to choose the four-night stay at five-star hotels in Ireland as my first choice within the vacations prizes. This is the part of Ireland where we spend most of our time when we visit family in Ireland. We got married in this area and we think it’s beautiful – and a really great destination for a family vacation.
Read more about this donation at IrishFireside.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation in Ireland. Donate HERE.

Thinking more of a quiet couple getaway, the 3 night luxury ‘BodyHoliday’ spa break for two people at LeSPORT hotel in St Lucia is very tempting. Here’s what TrainsOnTheBrain.com had to say about this prize: “It’s an all inclusive package including luxury room, meals, all drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), a full programme of fitness activities, plus one spa treatment per person, per day. The hotel is on the Northwest tip of the Caribbean island of St Lucia and sits directly on Cariblue’s crescent beach, surrounded by 42 acres of lush tropical gardens. It’s a thirty minute drive from the capital Castries and the George F.L. Charles airport”.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation in St.Lucia. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is a (drum-roll…) 5-night stay at any of the nine Paradise by Marriott resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico. How cool is that? As a family, we’ve stayed at various Marriott properties around the U.S. Marriott is a family-friendly brand with lots of different accommodation options but the Paradise properties truly look heaven-sent for families seeking to rest, relax and spend quality time together.
Full details of this awesome prize are at BestFamilyTravelAdvice.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation with Paradise By Marriott. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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For $10 You Could Win A Gift Certificate Worth Hundreds Of Dollars

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Today I’ve picked out my favorite unusual experiences from the Passports with Purpose prize list. Most of these are donated as gift certificates.

Consider a flight on a zeppelin. Yep, that’s right, I said a zeppelin. Talk about way-out-there-unusual. I know my boys would love to win this one. If you’ve got a boy, or boy-at-heart in your life who’s got an engineering bent, I’d bet he’d be totally wow-ed with that as a holiday gift.
Read more about this donation at RoamingTales.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a flight on a zeppelin with Airship Ventures. Donate HERE.

Sometimes the tipping point in choosing a new travel destination is finding a great company to help you plan and book your trip and guide you in your once-in-a-lifetime experience. Indus Travels is devoted to bringing the best in both quality and value to custom tours to India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Dubai. The company concentrates on designing tours that introduce travelers to the amazing complexity of culture and environment, and they strive to offer these tours at unbeatable prices and with unparalleled comfort.
The full details of Indus Travels’ generous donation of a $500 gift certificate are at BreatheDreamGo.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a $500 gift certificate for an Indus Travels tour. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is a whopping $800 gift certificate with HomeAway.com. I’m a huge fan of HomeAway. For most of our travels as a family of four in the past ten years we’ve opted to rent houses and apartments rather than stay in hotels and HomeAway.com is my preferred website to go to research and find the “right” property. An $800 gift certificate will cover a one-week stay in a 2-bed apartment in most of the destinations listed on the HomeAway.com website.
The HomeAway gift certificate in the Passports with Purpose prize list was donated by HomeAway.co.uk with GranTourismoTravels.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this gift certificate with HomeAway. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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For $10 You Could Win A Favorite Tech Toy

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I’m a geek. I love gadgets and technology, so it should be no surprise that my prize picks today are all gadgets.

This is the Microsoft Kinect, one of the hottest-selling tech toys this holiday season. I’m familiar with the Kinect, in fact, intimately familiar: my husband worked on the Kinect team so I’ve been hearing about this device for over two years now. We had various beta versions of the device in our house for much of the early part of this year – which meant that my kids got to play with a cool new piece of technology but they couldn’t tell their friends about it! I’m not a video-gamer but I loved the way that the Kinect is a family entertainment device. I particularly like that it gets everyone up off the sofa for active game-playing.
Read more about this donation at CAroundTheWorld’s blog.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kinect. Donate HERE.

I’m a Kindle fan. I know, I’m biased, after all, I did work for Amazon.com for eight years. I can still spend hours in bookstores and am just ask likely to buy a new book in paperback or hardcover as I am to buy one on my Kindle. But. The Kindle rocks as a travel tool. Especially the Worldwide 3G version. In the past three months, as we’ve traveling along the spine of the Andes in South America, we’ve been in some pretty remote places. And you know what? If there’s wifi, you can buy a new book on your Kindle and it’s there in minutes. Boredom on 25+ hour bus-rides can be a thing of the past!
There are two Kindles in this year’s Passports with Purpose prize list. One each from BudgetTravelersSandbox and one from TheWorldIsCalling.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kindle. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is an iPad. I don’t own an iPad but I did have the chance to play with one before we left Seattle. It’s an extremely slick device. Since we’ve been traveling I’ve been jealous of my husband’s ability to stay in touch with friends and family using his iPhone – using just wifi connectivity (we’re not paying for international data service – that’s way too expensive). But, the iPhone is small and I find it hard to read a newspaper article. I can’t imagine trying to read a book on it. The iPad is a great combination device for travelers. If I could enter a Passports with Purpose drawing, I think this is the one I’d be betting all my money on.
The iPad in the Passports with Purpose prize list was donated by DSRB.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kindle. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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Eat Chocolate And Support Passports With Purpose 2010

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Yours truly, outside the Fenoglio chocolate shop in Bariloche, Argentina.

Passports with Purpose 2010 started earlier this week and my friend Lauren, who owns Chocolopolis, a specialty chocolate shop in Seattle, has kindly donated a chocolate-tasting event as a prize. There’s more to chocolate than a plain bar of Hershey’s or Cadbury’s would lead you to believe and with a $10 donation (on the Passports with Purpose Donate page), you can be in the running to host this fun event for yourself and a few good friends.

This year, Passports with Purpose is fund-raising for LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India. With $50,000 we will be able to build a village and provide some of these people with homes. You can learn more about LAFTI and their incredible mission in this short video.

Head on over to DeloiciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

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Chocolopolis Supports Passports with Purpose 2010

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It’s time for Passports with Purpose 2010 and today I have the pleasure of participating in the kick-off of this year’s fund-raising activities and introducing you to my friend Lauren, owner of Chocolopolis.com and two speciality Chocolate shops in the Seattle area.

First, let’s do a little review of Passports with Purpose. This will be the third year that I’ve worked on this online fund-raiser with my friends Debbie, Pam and Beth (from DeliciousBaby, NerdsEyeView and WanderlustAndLipstick respectively). This year we welcomed Meg Paynor, a PR-gal extraordinare into our little team. In 2008, we started small, raising just $7,500 which we donated to Heifer International. Last year, we set a modest goal of $15,000 with which to build a school in Cambodia (with American Assistance for Cambodia). With the support of a great set of sponsors and a long list of engaged and enthustiastic travel bloggers, we blew past our goal and raised almost $30,000 – allowing us to build a school and fund some facilities at the school. We recently got some photos of The Passport School from AAfC – you can see them here.

This year we’ve set our fund-raising goal at $50,000 and we’re partnering with LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India. With $50,000 we will be able to build a village and provide some of these people with homes.

Which brings me back to Lauren and chocolate. I’m not at home right now, I’m in the Argenitian capital of chocolate, Bariloche but you don’t have to go to South America to taste great chocolate, you can do so right in Seattle. In her stores, in Queen Anne and at The Bravern in Bellevue, Lauren stocks artesanal chocolate from all over the world. She is an expert on the subject of chocolate from cacao cultivation to the production of sumptuous morsels with all kinds of interesting and unusual flavors.

That’s why I’m thrilled to announce the prize Lauren has kindly donated to Passports with Purpose 2010: a chocolate tasting event. You may have heard of tasting wines or beers or even whiskeys. Trust me, chocolate tastings are way more fun. as Lauren says on her website: “Similar to a wine tasting, a chocolate tasting gives you and your guests the opportunity to taste and compare chocolate made with cacao from different parts of the world while learning about artisan chocolate and cacao farming and production. Our chocolate tasting parties provide an opportunity to discover the best chocolate the world have to offer!”

Just like in the previous two years, Passports with Purpose 2010 will operate as an online free drawing. This great Chocolopolis prize will be listed on the donation page. For each $10 donation that you make, you get a chance to enter a free drawing for this or any of the other prizes listed. It’s that simple. Go, check out, the prizes, donate $10, $20, $50 or $100 and on December 17th 2010 we’ll announce the winner of each prize.

The Passports with Purpose 2010 sponsors are: BootsnAll, LiveMocha, Round the World with Us, HomeAway, Traveller’s Point, Hostelling International, Quintess, Raveable, TravelPost, and Uptake.

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Scholastic Mythlopedia Giveaway

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If you’ve got a kid with a fertile imagination (who doesn’t?), who’s ready to move up from Where The Wild Things Are, this is a great time to introduce him or her to Greek gods, myths and legends. Scholastic’s Mythlopedia books are a great way to do so.

I consulted with my resident nine-year-old fan of all things related to Greek gods, myths and legends for his review of these books and here’s what he had to say:

* The layout of the pages in these books is very fun with lots of information.

* The books are a bit disrespectful of the gods themselves (this is a big deal for a Percy Jackson fan), but if you don’t know anything about the gods when you start to read the books you won’t even notice.

* I learned about powers that gods had that I didn’t know about before.

mythlopedia4

* Overall, I think these are a great introduction to the fascinating world of Greek gods, myths and monsters.

Thanks to Scholastic Books, I’ve got a set of the four books in the Mythlopedia series to give away.

How to Enter

You get one entry for each way that you connect with WanderMom.com. This giveaway ends on Wednesday June 23 at 11:59pm.

WanderMom

Inspiration for where to travel with children

Category Archives: Passports with Purpose

My Passports with Purpose Prize Picks

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Passports with Purpose: Cambodia School Opening Ceremony

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Announcing Passports with Purpose 2011

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For $10 You Could Win A Luxury Hotel Stay

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For $10 You Could Win A Gift Certificate Worth Hundreds Of Dollars

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For $10 You Could Win A Favorite Tech Toy

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Eat Chocolate And Support Passports With Purpose 2010

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Chocolopolis Supports Passports with Purpose 2010

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Scholastic Mythlopedia Giveaway

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Support The American Red Cross in Haiti

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