My family and I spent Christmas at a hotel in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, about an hour from Marrakech. The hotel, Kasbah Tamadot, includes information about Pack for a Purpose on its website, and encourages guests to bring supplies to benefit Berber families living nearby. (The hotel’s owners have also created various skills training programs for local men and women, through the Eve Branson Foundation.)
We looked at the list of the most urgently needed supplies and saw that a local Berber school had asked for laminated educational posters in Arabic and French. There are plenty of these posters online, so we ordered a selection. We rolled them all into a tube and filled the center of the tube with clothes, so they took up almost no space in my son’s duffel bag, and they weighed very little.
The staff members at the reception desk were pleased and surprised to see the posters, and said that they would deliver them to school. This was a small donation, of course, but it’s encouraging to think about the difference that thousands of travelers – each with a small donation – could make. It’s super easy to do this! We’ll continue to check the Pack for a Purpose website before we travel.