Tips On How To Pack Your Travel Bags For a Worthy Cause?

You can use your travel weight allowances to carry items that can impact the lives of the people in the country you are visiting positively. Pack for a Pupose, an NGO, can help you pack what's relevant

Travelling to Kenya offers an experience that cannot be easily forgotten – at least not in a jiffy. The unadulterated sceneries, the great gaming safaris and of course the hospitable people who go out of their way to make you feel like royalty just have a way of leaving a mark in your life that lives on long after you have left this enchanted land.

But as you continue to come back to re-live the magic of Kenya, at some point you begin to wonder how you can equally create a lasting impact to the lives of the local people you interact with in your safaris. That is when you quickly find yourself staring at a huge challenge – where, when and who to create this impact on.

This is where Pack for a Purpose, a non-profit web site which provides information to enable travellers to bring requested supplies to lodgings that are sponsoring community projects, comes in. In five minutes, a traveller can go to the site, find the lodging and the requested supplies and see how to pack them. The underlying idea behind Pack for a Purpose is that giving back to the communities a traveller visits is a great way to enhance a trip.

The supply lists for destinations on their website are provided directly by the local community-based projects that will receive them, enabling travellers to make informed decisions and bring items which meet the needs of the people who will be using them. This way, a traveller knows that they are truly meeting the demands of the community they will be interacting with – talk of a great way of answering the where, when and who.

The idea of Pack for a Purpose emerged out of a travel experience the founders had when they first came to Africa. They realized that while they were limited to 18.14 kgs of luggage on safari, the airline they travelled in had an allowance of 45 kgs of checked luggage plus a 18.14 kg carry-on.

This was a valuable lesson learned and on their second trip they looked into visiting a school near the lodge they would stay in while in Botswana. On contacting their travel consultant, they determined the needs of that school. They were able to deliver 64 kgs of school supplies, including soccer balls, to the school.

This proved such a rewarding endeavour that saw more trips and ultimately the birth of Pack for a Purpose. The project has managed to deliver about 453 kgs in donations of clothing, school and medical supplies through travellers visiting Africa.

The concept is quite simple and cost-effective. By asking travellers to pack 2.27 kgs of supplies, they can be involved to add value to their trip by participating in delivering supplies directly to the traveller’s accommodation. This way the traveller makes a lasting impact at no extra cost.

Next time you are travelling to Kenya and want to know how you can help make the lives of people who need it better, pay Pack for a Purpose a visit – their list is also a good starting point to ensure your Kenyan travel in not only memorable to you but also to the lives of those you meet while on safari.

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