If you’re a travel blogger, there’s one thing we know about you: You like to read and write about travel. We can alsoguess that you care about bringing books to those parts of the world where they may be few and far between.
That’s why we’re sure you’ll be excited to learn that the 2015 Passports with Purpose fundraiser will work in partnership with the nonprofit organization Worldreader to bring digital readers to five libraries in Kenya. The e-readers will provide about 6,250 children, teachers and parents with access to more than 50,000 books.
The readers will provide fiction and nonfiction books in both English and Swahili for readers of all ages as well as Kenyan textbooks. In addition to the e-books, Worldreader provides training to librarians and a solar solution that helps keep the readers charged when electricity is scarce.
This year Passports with Purpose will take place from November 8 until November 18, 2015 – these are very fitting dates, given that we are celebrating our eighth year.
How Does the PwP Team Do It?
Short answer: We do it with a lot of help from the travel blogging community.
Passports with Purpose is about as much fun as you can have online while raising money for a good cause. Travel bloggers use their network of PR experts and brands to help them find donated travel-related prizes – everything from luxury hotel stays to luggage. The PwP team creates and hosts an online catalogue and during the fundraiser donors can bid on the prizes – one bid per ten-dollar donation.
That’s right – we raise thousands of dollars, ten bucks at a time.
During the fundraiser bloggers post about their prizes on their own sites and we all hang out on social media – Twitter, Facebook, you name it – and drum up excitement. There’s nothing like watching that needle move and knowing that every dollar helps bring another book to a Kenyan library. That’s right – since many of the books are free and Worldreader has special agreements with publishers no book costs more than a dollar.
One hundred percent of the money that we raise with your help will go to Worldreader.
Sign Up Now
As we’re sure you can imagine, it takes some time to pull all of this together. November 8 is just over three months away and we’d love to know if you’re going to join us.
So if you are a travel blogger looking for a way to make a difference, please head over to the blogger sign-up page on the Passports with Purpose website. Whether you procure a prize or simply help by hosting a widget on your blog and spreading the word, we need you to sign up so we can keep you informed about how to participate. And if you’re a returning blogger, we still need you to sign up so we know that you’ll be coming back this year.
The PwP team also could use some volunteers to help with social media, communications, and website maintenance and design. If any of those things sound cool to you, please let us know at info [at] passportswithpurpose.org
And if you represent a travel brand that might be interested in sponsoring PwP, we’ve got lots of details about the kind of exposure you’ll get at our sponsorship page.
A Huge Thank You to TBEX
It takes a lot of work to pull off our annual fundraiser – and since we are a small team here at Passports with Purpose, we need help. That’s why we’re thrilled that TBEX has once again stepped up to sponsor PwP.
We wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the travel blogging community, which is why the team at TBEX – who do more than anyone else to bring bloggers together – is such a great fit for our work. We will have tables at both the upcoming Asia and North American TBEX conferences, so we hope to meet you there.
But in the meantime, be sure to sign up now.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Worldreader
MGormanAuthor bio: Mara Gorman has been a PwP blogger since 2008 and joined the board in 2013. You’ll also find her writing about family travel at The Mother of all Trips.
