Look at the smile on that face. This is the image I’ll be keeping in mind as I process the fact that Passports with Purpose 2009 has been a tremendous success and that because of this effort, some child may one day smile just like this. At a desk, in a school, learning to read and write.

Our initial fund-raising goal was $13,000. With the support of some excellent sponsors (see below) and a great community of travel-bloggers, we blew past this goal within our first week. As Pam said in her post on the PwP blog, where do we go from here? We met for coffee to discuss our options. Within minutes, we came to the decision to keep going and double our fund-raising goal so that we could supply the school with fresh water, basic medical care and food.

As of today, we’ve passed $26,000 and donations are still coming in. The prize giveaway is now closed and we’ll be announcing all prize-winners on Jan 5th. If you didn’t get to donate in time to win a prize, you can still support this effort here.

For my husband and children, my involvement with Passports with Purpose started out as “one of Mom’s projects”. They weren’t all too interested in hearing about what we were doing. Through December as donations have come pouring in and it became apparent that we were going to hit this bigger goal, my children particularly have been paying more attention. Now, I feel like I’ve benefitted from a two-for-one deal: participating in Passports with Purpose has been very rewarding for me personally; at the same time, there’s been a parenting lesson in action in my family. Yesterday evening, CAM declared out of the blue that he thinks he should start a fund-raising group at his middle school. “I’m sure we could raise $13,000”. Wow!

Without making an oscar speech, there are a few people I’d like to thank for their support in helping Pam (nerdseyeview.com), Debbie (deliciousbaby.com), Beth (wanderlustandlipstick.com) and I achieve our goal:

Thank you to the Fairmont Olympic and all the other companies and individuals for donating awesome prizes.

Thank you to all the bloggers who procured prizes, wrote about Passports with Purpose on their blogs, shared our posts and comments on Twitter and Facebook and encouraged their friends and family to donate.

Thank you, sincerely, to all of the hundreds of people who donated in amounts from $10 to hundreds of dollars. Every single donation helped make this effort a success.

Thank you especially to my friends, family and co-workers who I harangued to donate by phone, email and on Facebook.

And finally, thanks to our great sponsors. Your involvement helped us start with a bang and also helped keep momentum going.

Got Passport: Will Travel, We’ll Serve

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/550094936

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