Beyond holidays: Giving back to Latin America

What we give as a business

• Rewilding Chile

  For every traveller who books with us, we make a donation to Rewilding Chile, the non-profit carrying on the conservation legacy begun by Douglas and Kristine Tompkins in the 1990s. It goes with every booking, whether or not your own trip takes you to Chile – so just by travelling with us, you're helping protect one of the wildest places on Earth.

  Rewinding Chile’s work in Patagonia is on a scale that’s hard to imagine – eight national parks created and three more expanded, forming the Route of Parks of Patagonia, a corridor linking 17 national parks and protecting 11.8 million hectares of wilderness. It’s one of the largest carbon sinks in South America, storing almost three times more carbon per hectare than the Amazon. The latest park, Cape Froward, protects a remote peninsula near Punta Arenas that’s home to Magellanic penguins, dolphins and humpback whales.

• Galapagos Conservation Trust

  We make an annual donation to the Galápagos Conservation Trust, the UK charity protecting the islands' wildlife. And because we'd rather that support outlasts a single holiday, everyone who books a Galápagos trip with us gets a year's free membership of the Trust – a small thing that introduces a steady stream of travellers to its work, and often keeps them giving long after they've returned home.

  The Galapagos Conservation Trust has a far-reaching range of projects and works to remove invasive species and protect the islands’ endemic wildlife, from giant tortoises to Darwin’s finches. Its projects range from marine conservation to plastic-pollution research and education programmes in the islands’ own schools.

• Championing grassroots projects

  Money isn't the only way to help. We also lend our voice to a number of grassroots projects across the region, giving them marketing and promotion they'd struggle to reach on their own – sending travellers their way, and telling their stories to an audience that wants to hear them. That might mean the Yunguilla community in Ecuador, the women's cooperatives around Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, or a small family-run café in Antigua where we treat our group travellers to a coffee and a slice of cake. We have also been proud to support the Onçafari Project in different ways for over a decade.

  The Onçafari Project has changed how people live alongside jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal. By carefully habituating wild jaguars to vehicles, it lets researchers study them up close and gives travellers the rare chance to see one in the wild, which makes the cats far more valuable alive than dead, a powerful reason for the surrounding cattle ranches to protect them rather than treat them as a threat. Our own Head of Product, Stuart Whittington, has spent time there and written about it for our travel stories. When wildfires tore through the region, we helped drive fundraising for the project’s recovery work.

What your booking supports

The LATA Foundation

What our team raises and does to give back

• 2025-2027: The El Rio Foundation

  The project closest to our team right now is the El Rio Foundation, in the jungle village of Buritaca on Colombia's Caribbean coast, near Santa Marta and Tayrona National Park.

  It began with a local hostel wanting to give back, and now runs education, sport and environmental programmes for young people. Our fundraising has gone towards its academic tutoring – weekly sessions in English, Spanish and maths that help children who lost schooling during the pandemic catch up, build confidence and pass the exams that open doors. One of our own team even travelled out to see the work first-hand.

• 2026: LATA Foundation Challenge

  Members of our team joined a broader challenge to virtually travel the length of the River Amazon, which connects our clients with Latin American countries, communities and incredible natural environments.

  The aim was to cover 6,400 km along the Amazon, but collectively the participants covered an incredible 20,025 km – more than three times the distance!  People walked, ran, cycled, swam, went paddling and canoeing, and found all sorts of creative ways to get their kilometres in, whilst raising funds for Latin American causes.

• 2024-2026: DERTOUR Foundation

  Journey Latin America has donated a raffle prize to win a trip to Brazil, Peru and Costa Rica, raising money for the DerTour Foundation

  This supports education, conservation and animal welfare projects worldwide.

• Volunteering

  Giving back isn't only about money. Each year our team also gives its time.

  In 2025, more than half the office – 24 of us – spent two summer mornings at Gunnersbury Triangle with the London Wildlife Trust, clearing weeds, ivy and brambles to help one of the city’s pockets of urban wildlife thrive. In November 2026, we swapped gardening gloves for aprons at a central London soup kitchen, helping prepare, cook and serve meals to more than 200 people a day.

Projects we've supported over the years

• 2022-23 · Sol y Luna Foundation, Peru

  We raised money for the Sol y Luna Foundation, which runs a school and home for children in Peru’s Sacred Valley, where a little goes a remarkably long way. The money we raised kept the lights and heating on there for three months.

• 2024 · Pantanal Fires, Brazil

  We’ve sent emergency funds to the Pantanal following devastating forest fires that threatened to destroy fragile ecosystems.  We’re pleased to say the area is making a positive recovery.

• 2021 · Handwoven travel wallets, Ecuador

  For several years, every traveller was sent a handwoven travel wallet made by artisans in the shadow of the Cotopaxi volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes – a small scheme, begun in 2021, that gave skilled weavers a steady income without the long trek into Quito to sell their work. While the travel wallets have since run their course, we are very proud that this put money directly into local hands during a challenging period when international tourism was on hold.

• 2020 · Virtual race across Latin America

  Locked down but not standing still, our team ran, walked and cycled a virtual journey the length of Latin America, raising over £1,750 for the LATA Foundation and supporting porter food banks in Peru during a desperately hard year for the trekking communities.

• 2019 · Pintando El Cambio, Guatemala

  Our staff raised around US$3,000 to help repaint homes in this community on the shores of Lake Atitlán brightening the village, building local pride and enticing travellers to visit.

• 2016 · Earthquake disaster relief

  After the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador’s Pacific coast in April 2016, we funded portable solar power kits for families left without electricity, and encouraged our clients and community to give too.

• 2012-2017 · Lake Atitlán stove project, Guatemala

  We supported a programme run by the NGO Tu’ik Ruch Lew (Helping the Earth), which supplied fuel-efficient stoves to communities around Lake Atitlán. More than 700 stoves were installed in family homes, cutting the risk of fires, burns and respiratory illness from cooking over open pits in poorly ventilated rooms. Burning significantly less wood, they eased deforestation too, and saved families around two days a week once spent gathering firewood. Every stove was made locally, creating jobs in Guatemala.

• 2012 · Reforestation after the Torres del Paine fires, Chile

  After catastrophic fires tore through Torres del Paine National Park in 2011-2012, we joined Reforestemos Patagonia’s replanting of native trees, donating a tree for every booking we made to the region that season.

• 2010-2011 · Maya nut tree project, Guatemala

  We planted almost 5,000 Maya nut trees in the Petén region, restoring wildlife habitat while giving local communities a nutritious, plentiful food source valued for its medicinal uses and as livestock feed.

• 2007-2009 · Solar panels in Guna Yala, Panama

  Over two years we installed solar panels in 21 remote communities, mostly in health centres, schools and community buildings – letting people attend evening classes, gather after dark and reach the health centre outside working hours, while cutting local emissions and generator noise.

• Other projects

  Over the years we’ve also supported Dental Project Peru in the Apurímac region, New Life Mexico, the Que Rico! children’s charity in Bolivia, and clean drinking water and efficient cooking stoves for communities across the region.