Every tip goes home.
100% of tips left with us are donated. 20% of that is ring-fenced for children’s programmes. We publish the numbers every quarter so you can check rather than trust.
What this is, and what it is not.
Corazón Colombia is a travel company, not a charity. Booking with us is not a donation and is not tax-deductible anywhere. What we are committing to is narrow and checkable: the tips you choose to add are passed on in full to the partners listed below, and we publish what moved and when. If we ever cannot say that honestly, we will say so rather than quietly change the wording.
The mechanism
Four steps, no ambiguity.
Most give-back claims in travel fall apart when you ask what percentage of what, taken when, and sent to whom. Here is ours in full.
- 01
You add a tip, or you do not
Tipping is optional and never pre-ticked. Our guides are paid a full wage before any tip exists, so choosing nothing changes nothing about your day or how you are treated. This is a separate voluntary contribution at booking — it is not the Colombian 10% propina voluntaria, which belongs to the server or guide who earned it and which we never touch.
- 02
The whole tip leaves the business
Tips are held separately from trading income and are not used to subsidise wages, cover card fees or pay overheads. The payment processing fee on the tip portion is absorbed by us, so the amount that leaves is the amount you gave.
- 03
One fifth is ring-fenced for children and young adults
20% of the total tip pool goes to children's programmes and to young-adult tourism training — education, nutrition, after-school sport, and hospitality-and-guiding courses run with established Colombian organisations. Some of the young people who complete that training go on to paid placements alongside our own guides. The remaining 80% goes to the community, reef and guide-development funds described below.
- 04
We publish what happened
Every quarterly we publish the total collected, the amount sent to each partner, and the transfer references. Your booking reference appears in the period total so you can find your own contribution in it.
Where it goes
The split, in full.
Four funds. The children's share is the largest single allocation and is ring-fenced — it cannot be moved to cover a shortfall elsewhere.
Children & young-adult programmes
Education, nutrition and after-school sport and arts for children, plus tourism training for young adults — guiding, hospitality, languages — delivered through established Colombian organisations in the neighbourhoods we visit. Graduates of the training can take paid placements alongside our guides and learn the trade from inside it. Funding goes to programmes, never to individual sponsorship.
The neighbourhoods we walk through
Community organisations in the places our itineraries actually go — Comuna 13 in Medellín, La Candelaria in Bogotá, La Loma in San Andrés. Tourism should leave something behind in the streets it walks down.
The reef and the páramo
Marine conservation in the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, and páramo protection in the highlands above Bogotá. Both are the reason people come, and both are under real pressure from the people coming.
Guide training and certification
Wilderness first aid, dive certifications, English and interpretation training for guides from the communities we work in. The fastest route out of low-wage tourism work is a qualification someone else paid for.
Percentages are of the total tip pool for the period, not of your booking value. Named partner organisations are listed in each published report; we do not name a partner before they have agreed in writing to be named.
Every image on this page is of a place, not a person. That is deliberate.
Rules we hold ourselves to, in public.
A tourism company that markets with children has to be much more careful than one that does not. These are commitments, not aspirations, and you should hold us to them.
- We never publish photographs or video in which a child is identifiable. Every image on this site involving children’s programmes shows places, objects or adults — never faces.
- We do not run visits to children’s homes, orphanages or residential care as a tourist activity, and we never will. The evidence that orphanage tourism harms children is settled, and the demand it creates is part of the problem.
- Guests are never introduced to a child as "the child you are helping". Children are not proof of purchase.
- We do not solicit or facilitate volunteering with children by guests. Short-term volunteering with vulnerable children causes measurable attachment harm.
- Partner organisations must have their own written child-protection policy and vetted staff before we transfer a peso.
How you check, rather than trust.
“We give back” is not a claim, it is a mood. These are the mechanisms that make ours falsifiable — which is the only kind worth publishing.
A published report every quarter
Total collected, amount per partner, transfer dates and references. Published on this page whether the number is large or embarrassing.
Your booking reference in the period total
You can locate the period your trip falls in and see the pool it went into. We cannot show you your individual peso arriving — nobody honestly can — and we will not pretend otherwise.
Partner co-signature
Each receiving organisation confirms the amount received. A donation claim signed only by the company making it is worth very little.
Independent review once we are large enough
Below a meaningful threshold, an audit costs more than it verifies. We have committed to independent review of the tip account once annual tips exceed the cost of doing it, and we will publish that threshold in the first report.
First report
We publish at the end of each quarter. Until the first period closes there is nothing to show, and we would rather say that than fill the space with a stock photograph and a round number.
Want the report when it lands? Ask us and we will send it — no marketing list.
Ask for the reportSmall print, said out loud
The things a marketing page would leave out.
This is not a charitable donation and is not tax-deductible.
You are paying a travel company, which then donates. That is a real transfer, but it is not a gift from you to a registered charity, and no jurisdiction will let you claim it. Anyone in travel telling you otherwise is wrong.
Percentages are of tips, not of your booking.
We do not claim a percentage of revenue. If you book a US$120 experience and add no tip, the donation from your booking is zero. We would rather state that plainly than imply otherwise with a vague badge.
Guides are paid properly whether you tip or not.
Tips here are not a wage top-up. If they were, donating them would be taking money from the person who earned it. Our guides are salaried or on a full day rate agreed before the trip, and they know the tip policy.
This is not the Colombian 10% propina, and we never divert that.
Colombian law (Ley 1935 de 2018) makes the 10% service charge genuinely voluntary, requires the business to ask you before adding it, and lets you decline or change it at any time — and that money belongs to the person who served you. The contribution described on this page is a separate, clearly labelled line at booking. We do not route any part of a propina, or of a pay-what-you-want walking tour contribution, into this programme. Those are the guide’s income.
We cannot trace an individual tip to an individual outcome.
Money is fungible. Any company showing you “your donation bought this exact thing” is telling a story, not reporting a fact. We report pools and periods, which is what is actually true.
The best thing you can do is come.
Tips help. Booking with a company that pays local guides properly, hires from the neighbourhoods it visits and spends its money in Colombia helps more.