The short version? The travel bloggers’ fundraiser that, last year, built a school in Cambodia with your donations plans, this year, to build a village in India for Dalit (untouchable) people. I contacted the Kimpton Hotel group, and they’re offering a prize you’ll love: Two nights, plus a $125 voucher for a meal, at any of their amazing dog-friendly hotels. For each $10 you donate, you get a chance to win the Kimpton prize (check out the other prizes too — no one can gather prizes like a group of travel bloggers!) and you move a group of shunned people another step closer to a community of permanent homes. Click here to donate!

The slightly longer version

This time last year I asked you to bid on a doggy car safety package, telling you that your donations would build a school in rural Northern Cambodia. And you did. You, wonderful you, helped to raise nearly $30,000 and build the school that you see in these pictures. These students, and dozens more, didn’t have a school until you contributed to the Passports with Purpose fundraiser, and made it happen.

This year, the same group of travel bloggers is running the same fundraiser, but with two differences: The list of prizes is even longer and more fabulous, and the goal is to build an entire village in India.

Passports with Purpose will give the money it raises to LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India. We hope to raise at least $50,000, and with that money, LAFTI will build about 25 homes to create the Passports Village in Karunganni, located in the state of Tamil Nadu. For the first time, these villagers — from the lowest tier of the Hindu caste system — will live in structures that provide shelter and sanitation. It’s a team effort: LAFTI negotiates land subsidies and purchases, and the villagers produce the bricks, construct the homes, and contribute what they can financially.

It all happens $10 at a time. For each $10 donation you make, you get entered into a drawing for the prize of your choice. Your donation is tax-deductible, and all of it goes to LAFTI. If you make a $50 donation, you get five chances at the prize of your choice — or you can enter to win five different prizes (or two chances at one prize, and three at another, etc.). The fundraiser ends on December 13, at 11:59 pm PST.

You’re reading this because you love your dog, right? You are going to love staying at one of the Kimpton Group’s hotels with your pup. Dog Jaunt is a huge fan of the Kimpton hotels, as you know from my recent rapturous review of Portland’s Hotel Monaco. I’ve stayed in and visited several other hotels from the group, and each has been charming, friendly, and luxurious (and those trips were before we got Chloe — you don’t have to have a dog to love Kimpton). There are over 50 Kimpton hotels altogether, in 22 cities around the U.S., so you’ll have no problem coming up with vacation ideas. Ski trip to Aspen? Christmas in NYC — or San Diego? Take a look at the Kimpton map, donate to Passports with Purpose, and start dreaming!

Heartfelt thanks to the Kimpton Group for their generous donation to the Passports with Purpose fundraiser, and thanks too to the fundraiser’s sponsors: BootsnAll, LiveMocha, Round the World with Us,HomeAway, Traveller’s Point, Hostelling International, Quintess, Raveable,TravelPost, and Uptake.