Updates

Making a real positive impact

Donating to charities and non-profits that are making a difference and having a blast doing it

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I can do to be make a real positive impact on this world. In addition to traveling and supporting local economies around the world, I’ve been seeking out volunteer opportunities and non-profits that I can get behind and donate to as a fundraiser. And I would also like to make it part of the ethos of the Globetrekker community to support worthy causes and give back to the world in very tangible ways.

One such non-profit that I’ve been following for several years now is The Ocean Cleanup. It’s goal as an organization is two-fold: 1) Halt the trash flow from rivers and 2) remove legacy plastics from the oceans simultaneously. What’s even more impressive is they are a technology driven organization that is designing new products and systems to eliminate all plastics from our oceans. And the results speak for themselves: since inception, The Ocean Cleanup has removed~48 million kilograms of trash and plastics from our oceans! The number for just 2025 is even more staggering – around 25 million kilograms were removed in the past year alone. How impressive! Here’s a video below summarizing their impact.

I’m sure different people have varying opinions on what is a worthy cause or which charities should deserve more of our attention. However, I believe cleaner oceans, rivers, and water for the entire world is an idea that all of us can get behind. As such, I recently made Always Be Trekking’s first donation of the year to The Ocean Cleanup and hope to make several more throughout the course of the year.

Doesn’t it feel good to make a difference? Looking forward to doing more of that together in 2026 and beyond!

Update 5/23/26: We made another donation of $25 to The Ocean Cleanup in May! This means total donations YTD now totals $50. Woohoo! 🙏 👏 🥳