Spring Fashion for a Cause #Education #InvestInGirls

Spring is in the air and Easter is around the corner, Olivela not only offers great spring fashion finds,  but a significant portion of every purchase goes to help educate girls worldwide (cause partners include Malala Fund, Too Young To Wed and CARE for Syrian refugees).

Olivela started when Founder and CEO Stacey Boyd joined Malala Yousafzai on a visit to refugee camps in Kenya and Rwanda. There she met amazing girls with extraordinary stories of overcoming poverty and war and escaping forced marriage to pursue their educations. She realized that the opportunities she and her two daughters are lucky enough to have—access to education and the ability to live life on their own terms—these girls literally had to risk their lives for. In that moment, it became crystal clear that while talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. It was from that realization that a new kind of retailer was born, one with giving back built into every, single transaction.

Olivela is a luxury fashion and beauty platform that offers unique styles from the world’s best designers with 20% of each sale directly benefiting the education of girls worldwide through best-in-class partners CARE, Malala Fund, and Too Young To Wed.

How Olivela Works

  • Consumers: shop their favorite designer fashion and beauty brands.
  • Olivela: Gives 20% of the proceeds of anything purchased directly to one of their partner children’s charities.
  • And at absolutely no additional cost to the shopper.

Impact:

Since launching, Olivela has provided over 41,000 days of school to at-risk girls through Malala Fund, CARE and Too Young To Wed.

Boutiques:

The online platform opened their first physical boutique in Nantucket this summer, the first of 15 boutiques to open across the country through 2019. The next will be opening in Aspen in December.

Giving Made Easy This Season #DoneStuffCreateJobs

#DoneStuffCreateJobs

Ever thought about how many household goods and clothing end up in landfills? Me neither until it was time to clean up and declutter our home this year. Face it, we hold on to a lot of things. Clothes the kids have outgrown, clothes that have gone out of fashion or that don’t quite fit right anymore. Home décor that for whatever reason, no longer fits our style. I bet you could probably load a truck with all the things you have that you don’t need, want, or use anymore.

So why let it go to a landfill in the first place? We know it’s bad for the environment but millions of pounds of items end up in the trash every year. As long as those items are in good repair and still work (or aren’t full of holes or stains in the case of clothing), why not donate it? If it’s going to be hauled off to the trash, we might as well put it to someone else’s good use and I’m not just talking about thrift shopping.

Goodwill’s “Donate Stuff, Create Jobs” campaign is all about taking what you don’t use and putting it to use for someone else. The proceeds from every item donated to Goodwill supports and helps fund job training programs for people with disabilities and disadvantages.

What do “job training programs” really include? It really encompasses so much more than you or I could imagine. Things that you and I may take advantage of: education, mentoring, training, job preparation such as counseling and resume prep, financial education, job placement services, and childcare. Shew! That’s a lot. Who knew your old husband’s old golf clubs or that old toaster oven and stack of out-grown children’s clothes could benefit in so many ways?#DoneStuffCreateJobs

Calculate how much your donation helps your local community by using Goodwill’s Donation Impact Calculator, a feature available within the Goodwill Locator App available for Android and iOS devices and at www.Goodwill.org.

When you donate to Goodwill, you help the environment and build your community in ways that will last long after you’ve lost the love for that pair of old acid washed jeans (you know the ones I’m talking about). Show off your donations and encourage and inspire others to do the same by posting your Goodwill haul photos to Instagram using the hashtag #DoneStuffCreateJobs.

Make a difference, choose to donate.

Kmart Filling Carts for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

We were invited to participate in a wonderful and fun charity initiative at Kmart, to benefit the patients at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

We went on our very own version of a “toy run” along with Marlo Thomas, a St. Jude patient, and Kmart’s K-Club bloggers, filling our #KmartCarts with as many toys as we could. The toys were then donated by Kmart to be given as gifts to current patients at St. Jude.

pic4Since we were all savvy toy-buying moms, our expert shopping spree resulted in more than $10,000 worth of toys that will be distributed at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis!  Along with Kmart’s K-Club bloggers, Marlo and a St. Jude patient will stock the #KmartCarts with the hottest toys of the season to donate to families who will spend their holidays at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
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