We’re really happy that we just won the Parents’ Choice Recommended Award!

Parents’ Choice gave us the award based on the feedback they received from the independent parties, including parents, educators, and caregivers, who tested our product.

Here’s a short description taken from the Parents’ Choice site on what they look for in products they award –

The Parents’ Choice Awards committees look for products that entertain and teach with flair, stimulate imagination and inspire creativity. Judges are interested in how a product helps a child grow: socially, intellectually, emotionally, ethically, physically. Products must be free of bias. Above all, products must not extol violence.

We’re so appreciative of the positive feedback we continue to get. Please help us continue to tell your friends and family about Little Passports! Thanks!

We’re excited to be included in the Jewels and Pinstripes Back to School Celebrity Kids Gift Bags for 2009! Jewels and Pinstripes is one of the nation’s premier gift bag companies dedicated to raising money for charitable causes.

This year, Jewels and Pinstripes will host a special charity auction of a Back To School Gift Bag on eBay to benefit the Care To Learn Foundation, a children’s charity founded by Brad Pitt’s brother, Doug Pitt, which provides emergency needs for K through 6th grade children. The auction worth over $1,300, will launch on September 9th with 100% of proceeds benefiting the Care To Learn Foundation.

We’re thrilled that we can support the Care to Learn Foundation as we continue to get the word out about Little Passports and the benefits of fostering global citizenship at an early age.

Check out everything that’s included in the gift bags! Also, here’s the official press release announcing the bags and charity.

We’ll share feedback from participating in this event with you as it comes in!

Little Passports Team

Checkout the iParenting list of winners for the Toys and Games category and view the Little Passports profile.

We find ourselves in good company with well-established brands such as Fisher-Price, Wild Planet, LEGO, and Radio Flyer!

iParenting awards are based on reviews by a panel of independent reviewers.  Here are some of the comments the reviewers had to say about Little Passports:

“My daughter was completely uninterested in anything geography-related until Little Passports came into our home. She’d had globe toys, and we’d tried to show her things on maps… even the Magic Treehouse series of books didn’t pique her interest. From the first letter from “Sam” and the unfolding of the beautiful wall map included in the Little Passports’ first package, she was hooked. She loved running over to the map to find all the locations talked about in the letters. We talked about North-South-East-West and she figured out where all these places were in relation to where we live. It was magical to see the spark of interest ignite the fire of learning. She even started remembering things we had discussed about other places and wanted me to show her where they were on the map and explain some of those old stories again for her now-engaged mind.   We especially enjoyed the letters from Sam. They were written in such a personal style, my child truly felt like they were written for her. I appreciated the easy-to-read, uncluttered look of all the materials, (including the website,) and the sprinkling of pictures throughout the letters.

I love the idea of a packet coming in the mail once a month from “Sam and Sofia.” It’s exciting to get something in the mail, but even more so when it’s from someone you know who wants to share their travel adventures with you. A magazine with page after page of glossy pictures cannot do that. The cost of genuine travel is prohibitive. The way Little Passports has captured the excitement of travel is inspiring.”
- iParenting Media Awards’ Reviewer
 
“The positive characteristics of this product include the cute story and the appealing objects from each country. We also liked that it is educational and multicultural. The concept of sending these letters, postcards, stickers, toys and games in the mail monthly is great … and following that up with a boarding pass that allows you to go online and play more games and track the progress of the characters’ travels is even better. The passport is a great idea too, especially the pages to record parents’ responses of countries they would like to visit and the pages to put the stamp of each country. We really liked this toy.”
- iParenting Media Awards’ Reviewer

“Wow…Little Passports was a big hit with the children in my daycare. Of course, they all wanted to be the one to carry the suitcase and go on the adventure!  I loved that we could go and learn about another country without leaving our home.  I also liked that we had information that wasn’t just about being a tourist of the country.  It is a great product.”
- iParenting Media Awards’ Reviewer

Thanks for your continued support!

Little Passports Team 

It’s been awhile since we last wrote — we’ve been busy getting the word out about Little Passports. 

We’ve been getting great feedback from parent and travel bloggers.  Check out all of our latest reviews!  We were featured in the DailyCandy Kids Edition a couple of weeks ago!

In trying to be entrepreneurial, we also decided to test going to a street festival so we ventured out to the San Anselmo Art and Wine Festival a couple of weekends ago.   Unfortunately for us, our inaugural street festival presence coincided with a heat wave that bought 100 degree weather.   As a result, visitor traffic to the festival was very light.  We were happy though to talk with some parents and grandparents who loved our concept and purchased subscriptions for their own children/grandchildren and as birthday gifts for children of their friends. 

Here’s a photo of our booth at the festival (excuse the poor lighting from a Blackberry phone camera!):

We’re constantly working on spreading the word so please continue to tell your friends and family about us.  We’re also in the midst of reaching out to consumer publications for coverage in their 2009 Holiday Gift Guides.  If you know of anyone at a publication that would be interested in learning more about Little Passports, please email us at: info@littlepassports.com

Thanks!  Talk to you soon!

Little Passports Team

We’re excited by the positive customer feedback coming in!  Check out these two recent reviews on –

• Ciao Bambino — a great site about families traveling together (also got posted on Cookie Magazine’s Going Places Blog)
• Alpha Mom — site started by a New Yorker mom with a 5-year-old

Thanks!

Little Passports Team

Our partner SOS Children’s Villages - USA has just posted some wonderful Mother’s Day videos that you can share as video greetings with your mothers.  

We’re proud to be working with SOS Children’s Villages in their efforts to provide families for orphaned and abandoned children.  Read more about how we’re working with SOS Children’s Villages and Ubuntu Education Fund .

Thanks!

Little Passports Team

It’s been a couple of weeks now that we’ve launched.  Thank you to everyone who has helped us spread the word. We’re excited by the positive feedback we’ve been getting from parents.

We’re also on Twitter now so you can follow us there!

Thanks!

Little Passports Team

We’re two moms living in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’re very excited to launch Little Passports!

It’s been a fun and challenging journey getting here. It seems like a very long time since we started with two concepts in hand. The first was that we both felt a deep and personal drive to help raise a generation of children who are more empathetic to people and cultures around the world. This has been a theme for us throughout our lives. We both have degrees in International Studies, have lived and worked in other countries and speak multiple languages. The second concept was a little less noble, but just as important to us. We remembered the joy we experienced as kids when we received personal mail. We wanted to find a way to deliver that same excitement, surprise and delight to children via good old snail mail.

Once we had our ideas in hand, we researched toy, entertainment and educational products available on the market. We were very surprised and disappointed at the lack of innovative and fun products that introduce children to the global world.

We then got to work on developing an early version of Little Passports that we tested with parents around the country. We were very encouraged by the reasons parents wanted their children to receive a Little Passports subscription and by how much they and their kids loved our product. Kids often told their parents that they felt like they had actually traveled to one of the countries in our trial. We received one particularly heartwarming story from a mother a few months after the trial ended. She wrote to tell us that as a result of our Japan mailing and the sushi eraser that came with it, she and her 6 year-old son were having conversations about Japan and Japanese food. Her son decided that he wanted to try sushi for the first time and they tried it that week. This is an example of the type of conversation, experience, and inspiration that we’re hoping to engender.

We realize we’re launching our company in the midst of a recession but we’re moving full steam ahead because we truly believe in our product and the impact we can have. We know that there’s a need for Little Passports and that kids will have a lot of fun along the way. We’re really looking forward to having children experience the countries our characters, Sam and Sofia, visit.

We appreciate all the people who have helped us along the way. Thank you so much. It was amazing to meet people who were inspired by our company and who introduced to their friends and their friends and their friends…We hope you’ll do the same and help spread the word about Little Passports by telling your friends and family.

We’ll try to update our blog regularly to let you know how things are going. We’re also interested in hearing your feedback and thoughts. Please send us email at: feedback@littlepassports.com.