How To (kind of) Settle After World Travel

May 6th. Chungju, South Korea.

Our daughter Miru is now 4 months old and a wonderful baby. Having the responsibility of an infant changes priorities, and in this month's post Kamiel sketches, with some revolutionary fervor, what we envision for the future: A modest piece of rural land to live responsibly, invite our fellow idealist travelers, and create a base to return to.

Exciting news to start 2013

5 February. Seoul, South Korea.

This is the monthly update of the founders of Charity Travel. In this issue:

1. We are happy parents now of our daughter Miru!
2. Kindmankind.net is still working! The platform for independent volunteering that we set up in 2011, is still going strong. And it will remain in the ether in the foreseeable future, so keep sharing.
3. We are planning to settle in the Spanish countryside! This seems to be the place to go if you want to live relatively independent of the "system".
4. Kamiel is working as a Wordpress developer and can help you out with your charitable website!

Happy New Year!

December 31. Seoul, South Korea.

On the verge of the new year, we would like to wish everybody a bright and hopeful future and a very good start of 2013. As for Charity Travel, we hope that more people will share, especially their knowledge, with those who need it most. And there is other news.

Message from Korea - Books - Guest posts - Creative Choice

November 3. Muju, South-Korea.

We are living in the Korean countryside now, where we have a great time waiting for our daughter to be born in late December. We are both writing books: Yeon is working on a children's picture book and Kamiel continued an old novel. We're also learning about permaculture, which is part of our next chapter.

Hoppy the bunny - children's book by Yeon

Presentations in Seoul - The future

September 9. Seoul, South Korea

We've given some presentations about Charity Travel in an Arts Center in Seoul, for middle school children who spoke no English. In such cases it comes in handy that Yeon speaks Korean. The presentation was a nice distraction from our preparation for December...

Supporting Rainbow from South Korea

June 25. Seoul, South Korea.

We - the original charity travelers - are happily reunited in Seoul since a few days and are working on the preparation for exciting projects ahead. Again, we will do a lot of work online connecting minds (for Rainbow, Amaidi, and others), while taking first steps in dreaming bigger dreams awake.

Living at Rainbow

21 May. Kisian, Kenya.

We have been in Kenya for a while now, and the work on the Rainbow-center is going well. Phillip (the director) is busy preparing for the Harambee (traditional fundraiser). Sending the invitation cards, dealing with political subtleties, organizing a party, holding many, many meetings. Kamiel lives inside the office of Rainbow since yesterday, which allows him to do more work here, combining digging, drilling, shoveling, raking, slashing, plowing with editing, writing, browsing, proofreading. There is more interest for Rainbow from the community now, and we are reaching beyond our district.

Exciting grassroots projects at the Rainbow Center

3 April, 2012. Kisian, Kenya.

It has been more than 2 years since we left Kisian, the little village south-east of Kisumu where we built a "Community Excellence Center". We are back now and very excited about kickstarting some low-tech high-impact projects, network with other communities in the area, organize theater or art workshops, all while having an amazing time here. If you are near Kisumu, or know anyone who is - this is a great opportunity to experience enthusiasm at the very grass roots.

Touchdown and first days in Nairobi

March 19, 2012. Nairobi, Kenya.

We are in Nairobi now for almost a week and found the place more or less unchanged since we left two years ago. This time, we didn't plan much in advance so we are now looking for places where we can help. We will go back to the Rainbow Center in Kisumu and probably visit a community in Nakuru on the way there.

Flying to Kenya tonight

12 March 2012. Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Finally, plans materialize and we are flying one-way to Nairobi tonight. We're very much looking forward to seeing our friends again, helping the "Joy Valley" orphan home cum school in Kayole and learn a lot about hands-on local development. We don't have exact plans in Nairobi. All we know is a place to stay during our first days, with couchsurfers of course, and we'll take it from there.