In 2008, I quit my corporate job, sold off everything I owned and moved overseas with my husband Drew. Since then we've traveled around the world, started our careers over as creative types and nurtured our love of sleeping in late. Oh and we had a baby. Cole, our almost 2 year old has been traveling since he was four months old and probably knows more Thai than me (not that he brags).
3 Ways to Be Amazing, Get Free Stuff, Have Your Portrait Drawn and Fund a Small Business
Want to be amazing this year? Me too. Want to get free stuff? Well read on… (Don’t forget to read to the bottom to find out how to call my bluff).
ONE
We’re building a school in Cambodia. You know, like, a whole…. school. A bunch of travel bloggers have gotten together and donated stuff to be auctioned off. Not crappy stuff either. Try a 5 night stay at a swanky hotel in Costa Rica ($2746) or a private photo shoot with a Seattle based photographer ($110), or an iPod Touch, or a Tahitian Pearl ($200) or Free Tuition to a Travel Writing School ($350) or a fancy Ukulele ($590)
All you have to do is donate $10. And you get to pick which prize you’re competing for. So if 10 people bid on the iPod, you have a 10% chance of winning it. It’s a blind auction, but from last year’s event, I’ll tell you a little secret: I bet there is at least one item (or more!) that has zero bids on it.
Pick Your Prize(s) Here
I’m doing my part too… I got the awesome folks at Digital Foci to donate a free Photo Safe II, which is this great little device that lets you dump all of your photos directly from your digital camera’s memory stick, so you can keep taking pics while you travel– without having to bring your laptop with you. This is a genius idea, especially if you’re traveling to parts of the world with slower internet speeds (I have personally watched in horror as I tried to upload a few pics to Flickr and had the entire upload fail to complete after 2 hours because of slow speeds and connection hiccups).
Or if you just want to get this cool device straight out, you can always buy it direct:
- Product link: http://www.digitalfoci.com/photo_safe.html
- Price: $149 (160GB), $199 (250GB) (For this auction, it’s the 160GB model)
- Company: Digital Foci (www.digitalfoci.com)
- Toll-free order number: 1-888-NOW-FOCI (1-888-669-3624)
- Where to buy: www.digitalfoci.com, www.amazon.com, www.adorama.com, www.bhphotovideo.com
To get the Photo Safe II or any other the other very generous prizes, you have to start here.
TWO
My husband is a classically trained animator. That means he can draw Tigger from scratch, running around just like you see on TV. He’s also a little crazy, since this whole I’m-gonna-be-a-Dad thing. So he signed up for a race this January in the UK. It’s called the Tough Guy Race.
So what does that mean? He’s pimping out his art skills to raise money for charity. So every time you donate, he’ll draw you a picture, based off of any photo that you have. You give money and you get free art.
For this charity fundraiser, he’s done people’s avatars, anniversary presents, a couple as their favorite characters, Christmas presents for the grandparents, pictures of people’s kids, their dogs, their cats, banners for a blog, logos for companies, a business card for a nutritionist, and an animated video introduction for a certain travel blogger (not me).
If you can think of a reason to have a professional artist create some vector art (the kind you can resize however you’d like) then hop over to his site and make a donation. $35 gets you a basic head shot (like the one above), $50 gets you two and for custom work, shoot him and email and tell what you need. He’s very flexible.
To see more samples of his work go here
The money goes to Free Arts NYC, which is a ground breaking program in New York that is getting kids into free art classes. It’s important to him, as a working artist, because without that early expose to drawing, he would have never found his career.
And the Tough Guy Race? It’s in the UK, in the freezing cold, running 8 miles through barbed wire, fire (!), electrical wires, mud, horse poop, up walls, under tunnels, and crawling on your hands and knees. He’s video blogging his progress and the event, but to get a sense of the absolutely stupid stuff they have these people do, watch this ESPN coverage of last year’s event. (Click here if you can’t see the video below.)
THREE
Now what if there was a way to give money, but not actually give it? You know, you want to give, but wouldn’t it be nice if in a year, you got all of it back? Have you met Kiva.org? They do micro-loans to people who really need them. You donate your cash, they use the money to bankroll their business and after a period of time (set in the initial request) they pay you back.
Plus, these kinds of programs really work. They help people do simple things like buy a tractor or put in an irrigation system that takes them from being subsistence farmers to being able to send their kids to school. It’s not a hand out and there’s a huge rate of pay backs. It’s working. The best part, for you dear philanthropist, is that you can pick how much to give and who to give it to. Warning: you may end up spending way too much time reading these stories and their plans for your cash. It’s amazing and inspiring. Go to Kiva.org now.
Be Amazing
You didn’t think I’d let myself off the hook, did you? Ok here’s the deal. For every comment below I’ll donate $1. Tell me which of the three charities you like me to donate to (and if you pick #1 then tell me specifically what prize you want me to pick). I’ll donate according to whatever gets the most votes. If my donation gets a prize, I’ll randomly pick someone from the comments to win it.
Your Job:
1. Go to
2. Leave a comment and I’ll donate $1 to the charity of your choice (from the above three, you tell me which one.)
3. If I win any prizes, I’ll pick someone from the comments as the winner.