Impact
RPJ Helping Hands
Nominated by: Insight Vacations TD Mark Moresby-White
The Central Business District of Cape Town is home to this organization of volunteers that aim to ‘Serve with Love’ and assist community members in need, and they’ve been graciously doing so for the past 3 years. By providing meals every Sunday and Thursday – averaging 2,000 meals per month – this group of friends, family, and colleagues focuses on providing for the homeless and hungry in their community.
RPJ Helping Hands volunteers don’t stop there; they’ve also expanded their reach to collecting essentials for these residents, and are now also sponsoring a local program that aims to keep children safe from violence.
Smiling Children Italia
Nominated by: Insight Vacations TD Karin Kollarova
This charity is so much more than a passion project; it was created several years ago by Karina’s fellow Insight Vacations TD, Lorena Schiavon. Through Smiling Children Italia, Lorena leverages the reach of her colleagues to find sponsors for over 40 children in the north-eastern region of Kenya.
The sponsorship funds raised are integral to help provide school tuition, transportation, school and personal supplies and clothing for students in need, and it has evolved from Lorena’s personal initiative into something so important to the Insight TD family as a whole. Lorena is truly passionate about the communities they are able to support through this charity, and she brings interested TDs to deliver supplies and visit the communities during their off-season.
Clean and Proud
Nominated by: Trafalgar Tours/ Costsaver TD Colette Engstrom
There is so much that can be done on a local level in the war against single-use plastics, and the Clean and Proud team has taken it upon themselves to repurpose the plastic waste of Malawi into something beautiful. This project not only collects and sorts plastic waste in the community, but it then transforms it into handicrafts that can be sold to tourists and handicraft wholesalers.
This organization employs seven individuals who are able to create an income by upcycling local plastic waste into beautiful accessories, and their next mission aims to use their funds to obtain a greener power source, in order to reduce the need for diesel power in the rural Malawian community they call home.
Walkers4Water
Nominated by: Trafalgar Tours/ Costsaver TD Aryan Taefi
Access to clean water is something so many of us take for granted, and this TD-supported initiative aims to support local water projects in developing countries. Inspired by a trip to Africa, Walkers4Water sponsors a different local water project every year, led by Charity:Water, with the goal of helping one community at a time.
Since the inception of this initiative in 2017, they’ve helped to bring clean water to almost 2,000 people through two projects in Mali to date. Walkers4Water is now focusing on their next project which they hope will be their biggest of all.
