We had the pleasure of meeting with Intiwawa on our last day in Arequipa and getting a tour of their non-profit organisation. And what great work they do!

Intiwawa is a dynamic organisation that fights poverty in the slums in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Founded in Peru and Germany in 2007, today their network consists of multiple teams in Holland, France, England and Hong Kong. Their main focus is in a small settlement on the outskirts of Arequipa called San Isidro.

We dropped off our donations and got to meet some of the kids. Thanks to our amazing supporters, our GlobeDrop was larger than normal and our donations consisted of notepads and pens, cereal (both hot and cold), sewing needles and threads, toothpaste, toothbrushes, safety pins, soap, water paint and balls.

Intiwawa are always looking for volunteers and donations. You can visit their website at www.intiwawa.org. Alternatively, if you would like to participate in your own GlobeDrop, you can visit GlobeDrop's website at www.globedrop.org.

Any donation, no matter how big or small, is worthwhile.

Travel often - travel meaningfully!

When you travel on a long term basis and world school at the same time, you are bound to get asked a lot of questions. While we do try to answer these frequently asked questions, when they arise, we have decided for ease to list some of them here.

How long have you been travelling as a family?

I guess the simple answer to that is as long as we have been a family. My husband and I travelled extensively before we met and when our daughter and son came along, we just never found a place that felt like home so travelling became the norm for us. We are currently coming up to over 10 years of travelling.

How do you afford to keep travelling?

That is a tricky one to answer. We partake in what we term slow travel – we generally spend a long period of time at each destination so we have the ability and capacity to earn money as we go. I am an online ghostwriter and e-book publisher and my husband is an experienced hotel manager and English teacher. We manage to make it work for the most part.

Do your kids go to school?

While world schooling is a big part of what we do – facilitating learning from the world around us, we dip in out of online programs such as Time4Learning, Minecraft Homeschool and Reading Eggs. History is brought to life with excursions to such interesting places as Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines. Emilia has been to school in Australia, Canada and Peru and has participated in dancing classes, singing classes and writing groups. When in Cusco we joined up with a hiking group for regular outings – we believe that a solid education is found from all parts of life and not just in the classroom.

Where have you travelled to?

For us it is not so much the number of countries we have visited but the experience we get from each destination. We have lived in China, Canada and Australia on a long term basis and have travelled to the United States and Thailand as well. We aim to add many more destinations as we head home to Canada in our VW Kombi.

Where is home?

While Michelle is originally from Australia and Matt from Canada, at the moment we don’t have a permanent base but that may change in the future. We are hoping to settle in Canada for a while once our South America to North America journey ends to regroup however we may find another more suitable alternative along the way. For the most part we don’t tend to plan too far ahead.

We get asked a lot how people can help us with our journey. So for ease, I thought I would put a blog post together letting you know just how you can help us. We have a myriad of supporters - some just follow our journey, others share our stories, some have pre-purchased our book, others have donated some money along the way. We have hostels and lodges who have opened up their doors for us in exchange for promotion or social media assistance and we have brands who are happy to share a meal or provide a product in exchange for our honest feedback. Here are some of our suggestions for those who would like to see us continue on the journey ahead.

Like our Facebook Page
Stay in the loop at And Off We Went and keep up to date with where we are and what we are doing.

Subscribe to our Newsletter
If you would like to subscribe to our newsletter to hear all the behind the scenes activities, send us your name and email details and we will add you to the list.

Pre-order our Travel Book
If you love hearing about our travel adventures, then I recommend you pre-purchase our book "And Off We Went". Visit our pre-order page for more information.

Book Michelle's Writing Services
Michelle is an accomplished ghostwriter and content writer and would love to help you with your next blog post or article. Click here to view her rates or email Michelle at michelletupy@hotmail.com for more information.

Sponsor us
We are open to a variety of corporate sponsorship options including book advertising, product endorsement, promotion or otherwise; contact us for more details.

Accommodate us
We are only happy to review or write an editorial feature about your hotel, bed and breakfast, hostel or lodge in exchange for accommodation. Matt is a hotel manager by trade and is more than qualified to help provide honest reviews about the way you are managing your hotel. Michelle is also a whiz at social media and blogging and is only too happy to provide advice on the subject should you need it. 

GlobeDrop Donations
From time to time we will ask for donations for various GlobeDrop charities and we would love if you could support us and them. We will shop for the items and hand them directly to the charity in need - no need for a middle man. Meaningful travel is very important to us.  

Volunteering and Housesitting
If you know of any volunteering or housesitting opportunities available during our travels, we would love to hear about them. We are travelling with open minds and seeing where the road takes us.

Donate
Any and all monetary donations are welcome. While we work and volunteer as we travel, sometimes the money doesn't stretch as far as we would like. We seem to have quite a number of wonderful supporters who are living their dreams vicariously through us and we appreciate them all.

We welcome all the support that we get from our friends, corporate sponsors and supporters and know that we couldn't have gotten this far without each and every one of you. We don't know how long our journey will take or what we will encounter along the way so every little bit helps.

Thank you from the bottom of our heart.

We signed up with GlobeDrop last year (in fact they are a huge supporter of our travel journey and the book we are writing) so it was with much anticipation that we were finally able to add our first experience to the long list of blog posts I had to write. We would have done it earlier but there aren't many GlobeDrop organisations on the list in Peru - in fact there are only 3 at present; 1 in Cusco and 2 in Arequipa - so as soon as we arrived in Arequipa, it was our mission to help out immediately.

As part of our meaningful travel plan, we planned to donate items to Casa Hogar Luz Alba, a children's shelter in Arequipa (http://www.casahogarluzalba.org/). They were in need of antibiotics, children's clothes, balls, pens, band aids, blankets, books, pencils, cotton buds, toys, diapers, juice boxes, jump ropes, paper pads, pasta, powdered milk, rice, soap, socks, sugar, tooth brushes and water paint so we had quite a task ahead of us.

Emilia and I had a budget - 300 soles - so we set off to the grocery store to buy as many of these things as we could - we needed to make our money stretch as much as possible. It was a great exercise for Emilia - she was helping me decide what we should purchase and then we would look at the costs and see what was the best option. The final tally came to 298.05 - not bad at all.

Following our shop, the experience was fairly simple. We logged onto the GlobeDrop website and let Casa Hogar Luz Alba know exactly what we would be donating - choosing a 3 day window delivery period. The drop was confirmed and we made our way over to the children's shelter with bags in hand.

Casa Hogar Luz Alba were very appreciate of our little effort - they noted everything we had donated in a notebook and gave us a tour of their premises. We got to meet some of the children and had a peek into the nursery where all the babies were sleeping. And it was great for Emilia and Matthew to see how directly we were able to help another organisation.

GlobeDrop.org is a social enterprise that allows travellers to contribute to social welfare establishments and NGOs around the world while travelling. They offer a free web and mobile application that can easily connect travellers to verified social organisations - no middle man required.

They carry the motto, “Travel Meaningfully”, which concisely describes what GlobeDrop.org and our trip from Cusco to Niagara Falls is about. In their own way, they promote responsible travelling by locally buying in-kind donations to help the community livelihood. Using the GlobeDrop application can also create social awareness through immersion when travellers buy goods to be turned to in-kind donations in their chosen local market communities.