A Tauck Bridges adventure is way more than an epic week of discovery. It inspires a lifetime love of travel, learning and adventure and helps kids discover an insatiable appetite for travel with an inspiring curiosity about the world they live in and a palpable sense of global responsibility. Families traveling with us on our Bridges trips often cite the local connections their children make with children from different cultures as one of the most meaningful and unforgettable parts of their trips.
When traveling with families on Mystical Peru, we visit a school in Urubama that includes bracelet making with the local schoolchildren. This visit proved to be life changing for the Mankes. Learning firsthand how difficult life was for these kids and how little they had, their 15-year-old daughter Chloe was inspired to give back to the school. When she returned home, she started making bracelets and selling them as a fundraiser for these kids and their school. Here’s what her mother Margot told us:
“We had such a great trip in Peru and we loved that this portion of the trip inspired Chloe to do something to help. She came home, came up with a plan on how to raise money to provide some aid to the children we spent the day with. We are very proud of her. We were so happy to hear that the school was able to find use for the funds that she raised by buying a refrigerator to keep the kids snacks cool. Especially because the director of the school said most of the children didn’t have refrigerators at home either. It was great to receive pictures of the children with Chloe’s bracelets on and with them in front of the new refrigerator.”
Chloe Manke added, “Visiting the school in Peru made me realize how fortunate we are to live the way we do. Some of these students had to walk over 2 hours to get to school. These kids really left an impression on me. They were so happy and so inviting to us I wanted to do something for them. They brought a huge smile to my face the day we visited them, I wanted to do the same for them. They made bracelets for us (which I still have today), and that gave me the idea to sell bracelets to raise money for them.”
