College Grad Spends Summer Traveling the World Doing Favors for Strangers

By Good News Network Monday, August 13, 2012

Inspired - General

An American college graduate named Daniel decided to travel around the world using a family member's free airline miles, but the grateful 22-year-old wanted to give back in return for his good fortune. He posted a message on the social media bulletin board, Reddit, asking strangers how he could help out.

"I want to have a Reddit-powered epic summer adventure," he wrote. "Do you want me to hand deliver a letter to someone across the country or overseas? Attempt to help you with homework? Volunteer at your organization for a day? Need an extra pair of hands to do that landscaping project you’ve been putting off for months? Know a sweet hiking spot but have no one to go with?"

The response from Reddit users was huge, with around 300 requests coming in from people all across the globe. The difficult part was paring down the number to set a feasible itinerary that he could complete in 11 weeks.

Many of the people simply wanted him to go on local adventures with them, which he was happy to do. Others needed help…moving a couch up a spiral staircase, weeding a garden, teaching an English class in Thailand, helping an injured man move into a second floor flat. (All of those he did accomplish.)

His first stops were in Asia and Australia before flying back to Canada and US cities before prematurely ending the trip, due to tooth aches and dental issues, in July.

He ended up donating money ($500) he raised on Reddit for filming costs after he managed to save so much money by living off of the hospitality of Redditers instead of paying for hostels.

His most moving moment of the trip was washing a car for "Oliver's mom", a parent of a boy with leukemia who doesn't seem to have enough time for anything else but caring for her son.

His final thank you post on the website showed a list of the places he visited and activities he accomplished.

"Soon I'm going to begin talking to the airline to explore the possibility of doing something similar next summer, but on a bigger scale/actually organized. Something where you could vote on where to send me a on week to week basis. In the mean time I'm going to work on turning the footage I took this summer into something (short documentary or music video or something)."

For more info, visit Daniel's Subreddit page, ReVenture - and see more accounts on his Facebook Page.