Philanthropic traveller Marc Gold with medical supplies for a clinic in Pakistan in 2006

When one of his new friends took him home to Darjeeling to meet his wife, Gold's pain became personal. The family was too poor to go to a doctor about her life-threatening ear infection.

Gold took it upon himself to find a specialist who prescribed a course of antibiotics, which cost only one U.S. dollar. "That's when it first hit me how powerful a small amount of American money could be," he recalls. "Now it's not always a dollar a life, but often it is."

Marc Gold helps fund a heart operation in Kerala in 1992

"I expected about $300 or $400, and I got $2,200," he marvels. "Now it's 18 years later, and this year I raised $80,000. So, of course, in one way, I can do more."

Gold calls what he does philanthropic travel. "Because I want to travel, personally, and I want to do some good at the same time, I found a way that really works."

And, he adds, what he does is practical. "It's blankets, education, small businesses, loans, wheelchairs… food, clothing. And I discovered that I had the power with a small amount of money to impact a lot of people. Now it's thousands."

Burned child and bombing victim in Afghanistan in 2006

"I've gone into many slums, prisons, hospitals, villages, disaster zones, tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS, and I do a lot of reading, and I meet a lot of people." He always works through a local contact. "I put the money to work as wisely as I can, as appropriately as I can, and then I report back with documents and reports and figures and photographs."

The Center for Children's Happiness boarding school rescues scavenger children from Phnom Penh's trash dumps

In Cambodia, for instance, he works closely with the Center for Children's Happiness. The boarding school takes in children rescued from a trash dump on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where hundreds of youngsters still scavenge through rotting garbage for a meager subsistence.

About 130 children are now being cared for at the center, at an annual cost of $600 per child. Gold's 100 Friends Project sponsors 11 of them.

A spirited group of girls in Allaudin orphanage school in Afghanistan in 2004

But Marc Gold doesn't just give away money. He makes loans to help people set up businesses so they can earn a living, and when the loan is paid back, he recycles it to help others. Marc Gold also insists that recipients do what he calls, 'paying it forward.'

He gives an example of a rickshaw driver he met in Calcutta. "The rickshaw literally collapsed while I was on it because the axle broke. And the old man on the rickshaw, it was a bicycle rickshaw, started to weep. And I found out through a translator on the street right there, he was weeping because that was his business and his home, and he didn't have the money, which was all of $40, to fix it."

Children at the Durgabari Ashram New Light Shelter in Calcutta with their school bags

Marc Gold was set on the path he now travels when he was just a child, when his father, photographer Albert Gold, explained "the meaning of life."

He took the 8-year-old into the bathroom and had him look in the mirror. Gold recounts the conversation:

Plaque on the wall of Calcutta's NewLight Shelter for community development and AIDS/HIV prevention thanks Marc Gold and 100 Friends Project for their support

Gold's supporters, like physician Peter Joseph and his wife, Marcy Levine, would say he's done his job well. The couple got a taste of philanthropic travel while visiting Laos a few years back.

When they heard about the 100 Friends Project, they decided to help by sponsoring fund-raising parties. That's one way Marc Gold raises money for his work.

Marc Gold poses with a family outside their house in Afghanistan

Marc Gold's next destination is Africa, but until he heads off again, he'll be advising other altruistic travelers on how to start their own projects.