Using Crypto to travel and help the Philippines

Hello Steemit world! First and foremost I'd like to introduce myself as this is my first post on this platform. My name is Alex and I'm a crypto enthusiast. I live in Montreal and I work for an airline that allows me to travel given I have time off. My girlfriend of 6 years now (surely to get married soon hehe) is of Filipino origins. She currently lives in Montreal, but her parents still live in the Philippines so we go visit them when we can. We absolutely love it there. I love going on trips to the philippines to see its natural beauty, landscapes, people, culture, riding jeepneys and just overall having a great time.

Here are some pictures showing this beauty:

El Nido Palawan

Big Lagoon

Snake Island

My future house :P

Would you do this? haha

Making friends along the way (this is in pinay near Calinog) 1 hour away from iloilo

I funded the trip thanks to cryptocurrencies. I've been in the game since late 2012, and been researching and accumulating these currencies from that point. I love it because I think it's a game changer to well, pretty much everything. It's boring how I used crypto to fund the trip as I simply just converted what I needed to fiat via the Satoshi counter located in the Bitcoin embassy in Montreal.

With all the fun I was having on my recent trips, I couldn't help but notice some of the people living in poverty. Let me get this clear. there are big wealth disparities between middle class and lower class. It's a make it or break it society. This is why many leave the country for a better future/opportunities. Sadly, not everyone has the means to even leave the country let alone get a job in another. Now, only just two blocks away from my girlfriends house lies a slum of approx 2000 people, mostly families. Many of the dads there are tricycle drivers and can barely support a family of one or two let alone five or six. As a result, many of these kids simply don't have the funds to go to school, or to acquire necessities that we take for granted such as shoes, slippers, backpacks, food, and the list goes on.

This time we decided to do something about it. The idea originally came from my mother-in-law, but she didn't have the funds to execute the idea. That's where I stepped in to pay for most of the supplies. We decided to donate slippers and school bags to the kids in this community.

We invited the families whose kids were around the grade school age. Anyone from 0-12 years of age.

Here are the results:

Meeting at my girlfriend's parent's house

One of the many boxes with slippers/Schoolbags

Lining up for their gifts!

Happy guy!

Yeah!

Friends

Entrance to the slum

All of this would have not been possible without my initial investments in crypto. I would like to do this again on my next trip. I love seeing the happy faces of the kids who received something as simple as schoolbags and slippers, but it makes a world of a difference for them!

I'd be forever gracious if you do end up donating a small amount. I'd also like to know if there's a way that I can directly buy slippers or schoolbags with crypto without converting them to fiat?

Bitcoin address: 17E9htFvwtrppju5vc43zXppQkMJNCXPd3

Ethereum address: 0xA0Bb2DDB75db32413Fc65982e75113a286C68d44

Be the change you want to see in the world!

Have a good one everybody

Steemit rocks!