Pack for a Purpose is a newly founded nonprofit organization dedicated to providing needed educational materials and simple medical supplies to children around the world in places without these everyday necessities. The organization was founded on the principal that every little bit helps, and all it takes to get involved is to reserve a small amount of space in your luggage for supplies when packing for a trip abroad.
The concept is simple. Pack for a Purpose recently launched a Web site, www.packforapurpose.org, which lists the location and contact information for lodgings and sites around the world that already sponsor or support legitimate educational and medical community projects for children in need. A contact person at each listed location has submitted some of their specific needs to the Web site based on the types of projects they sponsor.
All travelers need to do is visit the site, find a listing for a location near their destination for an upcoming vacation, honeymoon or business trip, and bring a few pounds of the requested supplies in their luggage to drop off when they arrive. Each listing on the Pack for a Purpose Web site has been notified about the program, has agreed to participate, and will eagerly welcome all contributions from travelers.
“Just five pounds of supplies can be as much as 400 pencils or five deflated soccer balls,” said Rebecca Rothney, a former North Carolina school teacher turned entrepreneur who founded Pack for a Purpose along with her husband, Scott, and several friends. “The first time we packed our suitcase with supplies, we visited a local school in Botswana and the kids were playing soccer with a ball of rags tied together with string. It’s startling to see just how little some schools and clinics have to work with,” she said.
“We can all find a little space in our luggage for a small bag of supplies and if enough people make small contributions, we have the potential to make an enormous positive impact. While crayons, Band-Aids and similar items are very simple things that most Americans take for granted, many people in the places where we have travelled just don’t have them. We can help fix that one traveler, one trip and one donation at a time,” Rothney added.
Prior to founding Pack for a Purpose, the Rothneys had already been taking supplies with them on several different trips to Africa. The idea to start the organization came to Rothney while talking to her travel agent regarding a trip to Kenya in 2008. She asked the agent why his other safari clients did not also use some of their luggage allowance for taking supplies, and the agent’s answer was her “aha” moment – “Because nobody thinks about it.”
Rothney replied to her travel agent, “Then I need to provide some way to make it a little easier for them to think about it.” From that conversation, Pack for a Purpose was born.
One of the first contacts Rothney established for the program was Michelle Puddu of Wilderness Safaris in South Africa. Rothney and her husband had personally worked with Puddu to bring many hundreds of pounds of school supplies to South Africa and Botswana over the course of several trips.
“The idea is a brilliant one – it costs almost nothing on the part of the donor, just a great deal of kindness and a small amount of effort,” Puddu said. “Rebecca has proven on several trips how so very little can affect those who desperately need assistance to improve their lives. This is the type of goodwill that nobody really thinks about, but makes a big difference.”
Pack for a Purpose has identified 75 locations where travelers can drop off donations in popular tourist destinations across Africa, Central America, South America, Asia, and the Caribbean. The goal of the organization is to identify all appropriate locations on every continent and in every country where vacation travelers are already going and can make a difference. To facilitate this, visitors to the Pack for a Purpose Web site can go to the contact page and submit an appropriate location for consideration, which will be investigated and verified before being posted.
“As word spreads and more travelers participate, we have the potential to deliver several tons of needed supplies each year directly to the people who need them,” Rothney said. “Everyone wants to make a difference–vacation travelers, honeymooners and business travelers–and Pack for a Purpose was created to make it easy to contribute in a simple, but meaningful way.”
For more information about Pack for a Purpose, travel locations, lists of needed supplies and other ways to get involved, visit www.packforapurpose.org or email packforapurpose@gmail.com.
