impact travel Archives — Thrifty Mommas Tips

2016 Personal Travel Reflections

Paula — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 18:23:47 +0000

Every day is a gift and an opportunity to live, love cherish, explore and grow. Sad celebrity deaths and strange politics aside, I choose to celebrate 2016. As a consultant, tech, health and Canadian travel blogger, as a business person and a Mom, this past year exceeded my expectations. These are my personal travel reflections as the year ends. Travel was my 2016 word of the year. And I challenged myself to travel once a month every month for 2016. So how did that go? It went amazingly. I earned a prestigious Shot @ Life fellowship and travel journalism flourished. Here are my 2016 personal travel reflections. With the exception of three months, I travelled every month in 2016. We kickstarted that in January with an amazing family adventure to Vermont at Smugglers’ Notch. We learned how to ski back in 2015! Not so long ago and now we enjoy doing this wonderful winter sport together as a family. In fact we will ring in the new year on a ski hill and travel soon to Vermont again to do what we love together. We barely returned from our family cruise in December last year when we flew to Vermont and enjoyed that wonderful experience together. February and March took us away on more ski adventures throughout Ontario. We were blessed to spend Family Day at Parkbridge Resorts and Blue Mountain again. Perhaps we will have time to return there in 2017. In April we visited Viamede just outside Peterborough, in the Kawarthas, and spent Easter there doing some fun family activities as well. Highly recommend this place and frankly The Inn at Mount Julian featured the most amazing food I could have ever imagined. In May I was scheduled to do a conference in California, but I opted not to go. The investment didn’t seem like a good one actually after I reflected on it closer to the event. May is always ridiculously busy here with Mother’s Day and Infertility Awareness Week and the content and business was overwhelming, so a conference wasn’t high priority. September and November were other down months too. October was the biggest event this year with the Shot @ Life fellowship that took me to Zambia. Had something important cropped up in November then I would have done it, but October was a huge event. And in November I went back and forth to Toronto for business weekly, so time was limited. This year many of my travel opportunities and decisions were guided by family. I write about family travel and that was where my heart was much of the year. When I was able, I took family with me for some amazing family travel opportunities together. Life is short and my family matters most, so I turned down a few hosted solo travel international opportunities, including a trip to Philippines and Germany. Those are still places I plan to visit, but being able to travel with family made more sense to me. Seeing my husband and kids zip line through the treetops, conquering their fears, just as I conquered mine was the most magnificent and rewarding aspect of our trip to Quebec and Arbraska this year. Arbraska LaFleche is about 20 minutes from Gatineau. Very worth the visit. June was me on my own traveling to Martin County in Florida and doing some more of the great things I had on my bucket list. I paddle boarded and learned how to surf. Surfing school was a hoot. But I might need more lessons if I plan to do that again in future. A turtle nesting walk was a highlight. This year I had a rolling bucket list of adventures I wanted to try: zip lining, paddle boarding, more skiing on bigger slopes and surfing. Currently trying to figure out what to do in 2017. I got back from Stuart and Martin County, Florida and our family spent the weekend at Ontario Pioneer Camp in the stunning Muskoka area of northern Ontario. The camp impressed me so much we sent our youngest there for one week later that summer. She’s now asking for two weeks in 2017. I plan to make that happen for her because this is a superb camp with really skilled counsellors and a great program for kids with any unique needs. July was our entire family driving to Outaouais and Gatineau and Montebello. What a great trip! This was one of my favourites this year. Quebec is such a stunning province any time of year. But in the summer here it is magnificent. In August we were all over Ontario to Collingwood and Barrie, the Muskokas too. In September back to school was madness here and travel took a bit of a backseat. But then, October came and the Shot @ Life fellowship meant that October began at home and then headed to New York, South Africa, Zambia and for an afternoon Zimbabwe. It was a once in a lifetime adventure. There will always be time in my schedule for impactful travel experiences. The trip to SubSaharan Africa with Shot@Life was immense. That fellowship and the people I travelled with and met will remain with me forever. Africa was a giant leap for me. Exhausting, and magical all at once. Of course I came down with bronchitis right before we left which made the flight there harsh. What did I learn from all of this in 2016? I am able to take risks and push myself further than I thought. Goals are always worthwhile. They help keep me motivated and inspired. Goals and risks will inform my travel decisions this year as opportunities arise. Every trip is different. Sometimes public relations teams and tourism bureaus invite me to come on a trip. Sometimes that is compensated as well in addition to flights and accommodations. Occasionally I pitch a destination and we plan an itinerary together in exchange for coverage and shares on social networks. There’s no single path to success. Do what works for you. Personal Travel Reflections: This year has been a gift. Many don’t have the luxury of a long life, or a supportive and loving family. Many people work at jobs they don’t enjoy just to be able to afford the experiences I get to write about as part of my job. I know I am fortunate and this year has been a great one. Looking forward to 2017 and where it will lead.

The post 2016 Personal Travel Reflections appeared first on Thrifty Mommas Tips.

Jubilee Ministries, Lusaka #TTOT #vaccineswork

Paula — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 13:19:21 +0000

I have learned many tricks to keep from crying. But none of them work in this community in Western Lusaka, Africa. On an October day when still jet lagged we meet three Zambians changing Lusaka one heart at a time. Making an impact by ministering to the needs of Zambians in a community that sits on the outskirts of Lusaka. This is a neighbourhood devastated by AIDS and HIV. And this is the story that breaks my heart the most during our stay in Zambia. It’s our first day here and we have travelled all over Lusaka, Zambia. We started the day early and went from appointment to appointment, to learning lunch and then to UNICEF and more. Shortly after 3 we are all heading to the outskirts of Lusaka. Garbage is piled in mounds lining both sides of the road all the way out of town. The smell of burning garbage makes it’s way into the bus we are riding in, even though the windows are closed. There is no sign of a church nearby. Our driver hops out to ask numerous people if they’ve heard of Jubilee Ministries. To say that this place, this church, is off the beaten track, is the biggest sort of understatement. Jubilee Ministries church is down an unpaved road so narrow that our vehicle barely gets through. People line the side of the road in the western Lusaka neighbourhood. We drive through a market on the way and see people getting haircuts too in a barber shop built of recycled materials and plastic tarp. Many sit to the side of the road selling big piles of coal for home use. The air is smoky and it’s hard to inhale, but after numerous left turns and right turns and a phone call to the church, we finally come up beside the minister we are hoping to find. This is a stark contrast to the Lusaka we saw during the day. The centre of the city, where we were earlier today, has some moderate infrastructure. At least enough to handle the government offices and the NGOs that cluster there, making central Lusaka a hub of business activity for Zambia. We sit in a small room off site and the trio talk about the ways the church here had to change to meet the needs of the community. At first it was a church doing important work building membership and faith and then they saw that HIV and AIDS was devastating the membership. “We used to use our church for prayer,” says Wasifaru, a community outreach pastor. “But because of the HIV and AIDS issue we lost a lot of lives.” “We used to think it was not our issue. Jubilee Centre helped give us faith to sensitize us to what HIV is. We asked for guidance and then we understood HIV was also our issue.” Jubilee then also found their members had a great deal of food problems. When the father of a family passed away from AIDS, the wife had no income or job and the children would be unable to go to school. Food becomes impossible to buy. So Jubilee now provides food supplements to help. Malaria is also still a huge issue in Lusaka. Jubilee Ministries helps provide mosquito nets for families. All of that is important and impressive and yet none of it compares even slightly to the care given daily to people here suffering from AIDS. The AIDS and HIV positive status of people in this community is still very high. Some progress had been made but it is slow coming. Wasifaru leads us to the cement home of a family he tends to often. There are eight people living here in this space, a family of eight, and six of them diagnosed HIV positive. Sometimes progress is so small it is hard to see. The youngest two children in the family are not HIV positive. They are well. They are healthy. We crowded inside the tiny cement home and listened to the grandfather speak of his pain. Pain so awful that he begged to be taken to the doctor to ask to have his eyes removed. Wasifaru took him to the hospital at his request and the doctors told him there was little they could do. So he visits daily and prays and listens to what’s in this man’s heart and on his mind. I have learned many tricks to keep from crying. But standing inside the home of this man, flanked by his pastor Wasifaru from Jubilee Ministries I realize none of them work in Africa. And I remembered too that sometimes it is okay to cry when you are broken in pieces by a story. Sometimes hope and progress seem small, but stories of good people doing powerful things can be found everywhere. Here hope is the three in the picture, plus the two youngest grandchildren of the man who are not HIV positive. Now Babies born to women with HIV receive HIV medicines after birth and that sometimes is enough to give a child a chance. Many clinics carry HIV tests. Shot@Life campaign is an initiative of the UN Foundation and aims to ensure that children around the world have access to life saving vaccines. Shot@Life supports many partners like UNICEF and USAID on the ground in communities like Lusaka, Zambia where amazing groups like Jubilee Ministries give people hope, compassion, and support with complex health issues. You can help support Shot@Life by becoming a champion and advocating for better access to childhood vaccines. I travelled to Zambia as a guest as a result of the fellowship I received from Shot@Life and the UN Foundation recently.

The post Jubilee Ministries, Lusaka #TTOT #vaccineswork appeared first on Thrifty Mommas Tips.

Every Child Deserves a Shot at Life -Vaccines Work

Paula — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 12:33:18 +0000

Every child should have a Shot at Life. All children have a right to health. But, in developing countries around the world many families face overwhelming obstacles to accessing life-saving vaccines. Shot@Life is an organization that helps and advocates for funding to deliver lifesaving vaccines to those in need. I visited Zambia as part of a fellowship with Shot at Life through the UN Foundation recently. It was an amazing experience. Over the next few weeks I will share posts about that trip and the many clinics and aid organizations we visited. Yesterday I shared my first post about Preparing for the Zambia Fellowship. But today I want to share a bit of background about Shot at Life. A Shot for a Shot at Life Here in North America, we often take vaccinations for granted. A simple shot protects our children from flu strains, measles, mumps, rubella, polio and all kinds of other diseases and illnesses. Many of us take our children to the doctor and follow the vaccination schedule. We know it’s an important part of a child’s health care. Our vaccines are readily available and easy to get. But, not everyone has similar access to quality health care and vaccines. Around the world today, children are dying from 100% preventable disease simply because they don’t have access to preventative measures. This year 1.7 million children will die from diseases that have largely disappeared from Canada and the US. Why is that? Because many can’t access lifesaving vaccines. That’s What Shot@Life is About Shot@Life gives children everywhere a chance at life by increasing access to vaccinations. This organization encourages education, advocacy, and fundraising to decrease vaccine-preventable childhood deaths. Shot @Life literally gives children in developing countries a chance to grow up healthy. The History The United Nations Foundation started Shot at Life. The UN Foundation strives to build public-private partnerships to address pressing global problems. They broaden support for the United Nations through advocacy and public outreach. The common goal is always to try to keep children and adults in need healthy. This is the same group that does the get a shot, give a shot program with Walgreens. Together the UN Foundation and Shot@Life work with many US aid organizations to build a better life for children in need. A Shot at Life. A Shot at Happiness A Shot@Life strives to ensure that all children all get the life saving vaccinations they need to live happy, healthy lives. I believe strongly in the work they do, and I’m honoured to have been a part of it. Stay tuned for the rest of the stories about Zambia, the obstacles and progress made towards giving children everywhere a shot at life. I received the UN Foundation Shot at Life Fellowship this fall and I travelled with the organization to Zambia, so I could share the work this group is doing globally.

The post Every Child Deserves a Shot at Life -Vaccines Work appeared first on Thrifty Mommas Tips.