You and I, we are blessed. We are blessed because I am writing this on a $1,000 laptop and you are reading it on a device likely costing more than what much of the world hopes to earn in a year. We are blessed because when we were young a basic education was a forced necessity, not a distant, unlikely dream. We are blessed because our parents taught us how to ride a bike instead of renting us to a man in a garbage dump where we would be forced to scavenge recyclables, bottles and tin, cutting our barefoot feet on barbed dross.

Let’s be thankful, not guilty, for what we have. Let’s not hide from the realization that we are in a place to do more than appreciate our good fortune. Let’s take action. We have the time, the treasure and the talent to do things, small and large, that reach with genuine concern to create real differences.

This past Fall I spent some time with one of my favorite charities in Guatemala, The Integral Heart Foundation. I spent time with Maria and Carmen, who are currently beneficiaries of their program. Four years ago when I met these two, they were in a garbage dump, living the sort of life described above.

This year I went to the Travel Blog Exchange in Toronto. These are a group of intrepid writers and travelers, worldly and reaching. After both of these experiences I came to the conclusion that tapping into this unafraid group of unbridled energy, directing that good will at a cause could lead to leaps of change in the world.

To this end, working with my editor Matt Stabile at The Expeditioner and The Integral Heart Foundation, we put together the first annual Travel Bloggers Without Borders, an effort to raise $10,000 to put 55 kids in school. As a reader of this blog, I want to thank you for what’s been a great year. But I also need your help. We need your help to hit that 10k mark. I’ve met some of these kids that will be benefited from this fundraiser and I can tell you with every ounce of earnestness I possess that they deserve that chance at an education that we have all had.

If you’ve enjoyed my blog over the past year, please do two things for me: Share this link, encouraging others to donate, and give what you can. For some that might be $50, others $20, some maybe just $1. But all of us can do something, and we should. The world is changed and bettered from where we sit—from the ground up, little by little, and one by one, let’s even the playing field and give these kids a chance.

Please click here and be generous today.