Travel
From girl's getaways to couples weekends away and family travel too. Find everything you need here on Thrifty Mommas Tips to make planning your next big adventure a breeze. Travel confidently with all of these tips and ideas for what, when and where to go. Learn to ski, go sledding on a dog sled near Tremblant, zip lining over the tree tops or snorkelling with mosquito jellyfish in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Most of this travel content has one common theme - it's all about traveling affordably for your family. If you haven't traveled, you haven't lived. Travel can be one of the greatest educational experiences undertaken in a lifetime. Seeing new areas of the world is extremely rewarding no matter how you travel or where you go. Whether you are a backpacking millennial or a cruising retiree, enjoy the content on Thrifty Mommas Tips and learn before you go, so that you can make the best of your time away. The family cruise content is comprehensive and an excellent tool if you are planning or dreaming of cruising in future. Read my in depth series that ties child sponsorship in Colombia together with travel to the South American country and then don't forget to peruse the Zambian fellowship series too. Impactful and meaningful, voluntourism serves a different purpose than a recreational family trip. But, there's quite a lot of both sustainable travel and impactful travel adventures coupled with family travel opportunities to make memories that last for years. Where will you go next and who will you take with you?
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Five Facts About the World Vision Gift Catalogue 2014 #WorldVisionGifts
By now you know that gifts from the World Vision gift catalogue 2014 matter. They matter to children like these girls who are able to attend school in Colombia thanks to sponsorship and often thanks to donations from the gift catalogue. They matter to the boys in this picture playing soccer and building a healthy outlook for life in an area where drugs, gangs and poverty are very real threats to children. They matter to children you might never meet all over the world in so many countries that need help. Tonight on twitter, we are talking about the impact of giving with heart from the World Vision gift catalogue,…
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Johan’s Story: What Becomes of Sponsored Children in Colombia
Johan Espinosa has been linked to World Vision for most of his life. He was sponsored at the age of five and grew up to be sponsorship coordinator in Bucaramanga, Colombia where I visited recently with World Vision Canada. His journey from sponsored child to inspirational leader building futures for sponsored children in Colombia is nothing short of remarkable. His story is a beautiful illustration of what becomes of sponsored children in Colombia. One of Three Brothers Espinosa was one of three brothers. They lived with both parents and their father worked, but they were still barely getting by. When you are poor, you often live a life…
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Last Day in Bucaramanga #WordlessWednesday #TMMWVC
The amazing team of workers we spent the last day with when in Bucaramanga, Colombia. It was a trip that puts the world in perspective in many ways and helped me to see advocacy at work on a global perspective for children. I am sharing my journey to Colombia with World Vision Canada here on the blog in a series. You can read Part 1: The Briefing Part 2: Where Hope Lives Part 3: What a Soccer Ball Looks Like Part 4: When I Sponsor a Child with World Vision Canada Part 5: Two Hands Are Enough Part 6: The Strength of Women in Morales Duque Sponsor a child and change a community. Or you can…
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The Strength of Women in Morales Duque, Colombia #TMMWVC #worldvisiongifts
The women of Morales Duque, in the south of Colombia, have gathered us inside a community centre. I am here to listen to their stories, as a representative of World Vision Canada visiting this country of contrasts. They hand us treats, and a traditional Colombian corn drink and a certificate signed by each member, thanking World Vision Canada. I thought I knew what strong resourceful women looked like. I know a lot about strong women in the context of Canada and the United States. I have never had to look far for brilliant female role models. My Mother, my grandmother, my daughters, my friends. I am surrounded, and I was…
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Two Hands are Enough – My Experience Travelling with World Vision Canada
People told me I’d be changed after travelling with World Vision Canada. That’s fair, of course and true and yet also trite. Inadequate. Changed Words sometimes are so thin, evasive and even limiting. Changed doesn’t begin to capture the depth or range of emotions that I felt when walking through Asimiflor, a brand new area development program in Bucaramanga. the saddest place I have ever seen children living. My week in Colombia with World Vision Canada was jam packed with big adventures and interviews and so many stories shared that I will be recounting them for a decade or more. Eye opening? Yes. Exciting? Yes. Exhausting and heartbreaking and…
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How Soccer Balls Make an Impact in Taminango Colombia
I never thought a soccer ball in Taminango Colombia could make me cry. Let me explain… How Does the Gift of Sports Change Lives? This is what the gift of a soccer ball looks like in Colombia. A team in the middle of a dirt field practising every night. Two young men, sponsored as children, now coaches, committed and clear-headed. Mentors in every way. This is the living breathing outcome of presents from a World Vision gift catalogue. A vulnerable space made into a soccer field in a community where drugs, gangs and crime are extremely big threats to a child’s safety. Poverty lives here every day. It can easily…
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Peace Keepers – Youth in Colombia #TMMWVC
I travelled with World Vision Canada as a guest so I could tell these stories. This week I am sharing my posts from my trip with World Vision Canada. These are two youths, Peace Keepers, we met in an area called Taminango, near Santander De Quilichao. They were incredibly inspiring. You can read about them tomorrow. You can read all of my stories if you follow my hashtag #TMMWVC or follow my blog and read about some of the incredible work being done in Colombia. Peace Keepers is a unique program here in Colombia that builds strong youth through activities and supervision. After school these amazing young men…
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Hope Lives In a School Called Policarpa – Defeating Child Poverty Near Santander De Quilichao, Colombia
Hope is the thing you see in the faces of the students here. Inside a small school called Policarpa, in an area of Colombia called Santander De Quilichao, where domestic heroin use rages and gangs and guns are very real threats to children and entire families. But here, inside this school the children celebrate Amor Y Paz Month – Love and Peace Month. What Hope Looks Like Here Words hang in Spanish on the pillars in the school. Loosely translated they read: Tolerance, Love, Punctuality, Respect, Friendship. It is September and I have flown to South America with World Vision Canada to see the work they do, to chronicle the…
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The Briefing: Colombia Trip #TMMWVC
My uniform for the week in Colombia We’re discussing guns, heroin and child trafficking inside a World Vision Canada meeting room in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. This is my first security briefing ever. I have squeezed this in to a frantic first week back to school. These are the practical details that can help keep you safe in the field, which in this case is various vulnerable ADPs (area development programs) in the Colombian countryside. Soon I am to be taking a Colombia trip with World Vision Canada. I am warned to get a money belt. Carry your passport with you everywhere. Take money, but split it up. Same…
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Bogota Airport Art #travel #WordlessWednesday
This is what greets you on entering the Bogota airport in Colombia. Part of the El Dorado Airport is under construction, but there are cheery artistic displays in many common areas. It was one of the brightest displays I have seen in an airport. I love that airports are getting so much savvier about their use of art in public spaces. This is some of the nicest and most colourful airport art I have ever seen. I recently traveled here with World Vision Canada to tell some stories about child sponsorship and the work being done in many areas of Colombia. It was an amazing and life altering trip. You…