At 74, Barbara Threet has visited 77 countries and counting. Along the way, she’s made more than 100 donations to important causes around the world through The Intrepid Foundation. We chatted with her to find out why she gives.
It was just over 12 years ago, on Barbara’s first Intrepid trip – a month-long adventure through Thailand and Vietnam – that her philanthropic journey kicked off. The trip included a visit to a local non-profit in Vietnam called KOTO. Barbara and her fellow travellers learned how the grassroots organisation in Hanoi was working to provide hospitality training and job opportunities to disadvantaged youth in Vietnam.
The way she tells it, seeing how other people lived during her travels and hearing how the organisation worked, triggered a lightbulb moment that changed the way Barbara approached life from there on out.
‘Many people don’t travel to places where they see the world being really different,’ she says, ‘and I think that makes it hard to understand what’s really going on in the world. It’s hard to understand what life is like in India, for example, if you haven’t been to Delhi. It’s just, it’s not real – it’s too different than what it is here.’
‘Here’ in Barbara’s case is the East Coast, USA. Back home after that trip, she made a donation to KOTO through The Intrepid Foundation.
‘If you’ve seen how people live in other places and what matters to them, it’s hard not to feel some sense of connection with them,’ she says.
Since that trip, she’s been on nearly 30 more Intrepid adventures and has made over 100 more donations to The Intrepid Foundation, all in the spirit of that moment she had 12 years ago in Vietnam.
A whole world out there
Barbara hadn’t travelled much out of the US until the early 2000s but had a lifelong desire to see Vietnam. She was in her late 50s when she found an Intrepid trip that would take her there.
She says, ‘So my initial thought was, ‘This will get me to see Vietnam, and that’ll be cool’, but then I realised there was a whole other world out there.’
She recounts that first Intrepid trip over a decade earlier. Like the current South East Asia Loop trip, she tells me her adventure began in Bangkok, Thailand. Before joining the group, she arrived a few days early to get accustomed to the time zones.
‘I remember I got there late in the evening’, she tells me. ‘And I’d arranged an airport transfer to my hotel, so I barely saw anything that night,’ she continues.
‘I was exhausted, but I remember getting up in the morning and looking out my window on the seventh or eighth floor and thinking, ‘I can’t go out there. I cannot, I just can’t do this,’’ she pauses before continuing. ‘But that whole trip was just amazing. It was mind-boggling.’
More mind-boggling moments and meaning
Fast-forward to today, and it sounds like Barbara’s on the road more than she’s at home. When we connect via video call, she immediately tells me she loves talking about all things travel. The childlike glint in her eye and what looks like years of framed travel mementos hanging on the wall behind her tell me she’s not lying.
With excitement, she says she’s just gotten back from a trip in Central Asia, how she’s joining Intrepid’s Eastern Europe Explorer adventure in a few weeks, has plans to visit Laos and Cambodia at the end of the year and has already locked in a trip to Africa in 2025.
Barbara says her donations are ‘definitely inspired by travelling.’ And, with more than 50 impact partners around the world, The Intrepid Foundation makes it easy to give to the causes that matter most to her. Many Intrepid trips include special experiences where travellers like Barbara get to meet and connect with local Intrepid Foundation partners who are creating an impact in the destinations they visit.
Barbara tells me that many of her donations, just like her very first, are inspired by the partners she connects with during those trips. Other contributions, she says, have been made because the causes simply ‘move her heart.’
‘I’m 74. I get to be an independent woman who’s had a pretty amazing life – all this crazy travel and family and all that stuff – but many women just don’t have that. But whatever I can do to make life a little easier for women and kids matters a lot to me,’ she says.
If you’re giving 25 bucks a month, for most of us in America, that’s one meal out – if we’re lucky – but then over a year, you’ve given $300.
The Intrepid Foundation provides travellers the option to give recurring monthly donations to their partners. Something Barbara tells me takes the admin out of giving and allows her to make a more significant difference, sometimes without even realising it.
‘If you’re giving 25 bucks a month, for most of us in America, that’s one meal out – if we’re lucky – but then over a year, you’ve given $300. And it probably makes a real difference in these other countries,’ she says.
She continues to explain why giving to different organisations around the world gives her a particular sense of fulfilment. ‘One of the things, frankly, that I really like is that if I give $25 a month to an organisation in the US, it makes little difference. It just doesn’t have the scale compared to our income,’ she says. ‘$25 in Nepal, for instance, makes a real impact,’ she adds.
‘I mean, I’m not wealthy. I’m not starving – but I’m far from wealthy, but I can give what I can give, and in other countries, it makes a real difference,’ she says.
Intrepid matches all post-trip donations made by travellers as well as all ongoing monthly donations, doubling the difference that Barbara’s generous support makes.
From blue carbon to bikes
I rattle off the list of Intrepid Foundation partners she’s currently set up with recurring monthly donations. ‘Blue Carbon Lab, East African Wildlife Society, Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, and MandaLao Elephant Conservation, is that right?’ I ask.
She nods before interjecting, ‘I’d like to start donating to World Bicycle Relief, too – in honour of my grandkids who like bikes.’
I smile at how simply she puts it and how refreshing her enthusiasm for giving is.
It’s not unusual for travellers to find a deeper sense of connection with the world when they get out there and see it for themselves, but I can tell from our short conversation there’s something truly special about Barbara.
By filling her spare time with exploration, having an eagerness to learn more about different cultures and doing good for others along the way, Barbara has cracked the equation to living a fulfilled life.
Looking to tap into the joy of giving for yourself? Find an Intrepid Foundation partner that moves your heart and make a one-time donation or set up monthly giving.
