As many of you know we donate 50% of our profits to charity. In the case of our rescued leather, our partner is Barefoot College. Learn everything about our partnership and our first donations here.
Last year our donation was able to cover three scholarships. Three amazing women from Guatemala became fully fledged solar engineers and are now back home building and managing solar infrastructure for their communities.
This year we were all set to offer 6 scholarships. Thanks to your support, and increased demand for our rescued leather goods, we have been able to double our donation.
And then Corona virus changed a lot of things. Barefoot College serves and uplifts some of the most vulnerable people in the world. And now it may need to support them in new ways. We have made absolutely no restrictions on our donation, the charity is absolutely free to use these funds to best protect those in training, the Solar Engineers, and their communities and the wider Barefoot team and mission.
This is not the time for 'Business As Usual', but it is indeed the time for unusual businesses, like ours, to demonstrate what resilience looks like. There is no resilience without community. There is no resilience without an embedded respect for the environment and its people. We don't want everything to return to normal after this, we want it to evolve into something much more resilient!
We hope to update you on everything that we are doing with Barefoot College throughout the year, what is most important right now is that despite the pandemic our partnership is stronger than ever.
Update From Barefoot College - 23/04/2020
"Elvis & Kresse's latest donations helped us offer a further three women from Barefoot College's second Coffee Livelihood Curriculum scholarships for training to become Barefoot Solar Mamas at Barefoot College’s training campus in Tilonia, India.
From left to right in below photo.
- Feliciana is from the village of Xecotz has been a contributing coffee farmer for two seasons
- Marta is from the village of P'al
- Juana De Leon is a shareholder of the B.Barefoot Guatemalan company, sales manager, and is going to India to learn how to become an Enriche Facilitator.
The three of them are the first to acquire official Guatemalan passports in their family's history and Elvis & Kresse's donation has created this opportunity for them. By training as Barefoot Solar Engineers these three women will be able to return to their villages and implement clean, renewable solar lighting systems for their communities allowing them to reduce carbon emissions and improve social and economic outcomes.
During their time with Barefoot College they will also be trained in the Enriche Curriculum which provides digital training, education about their health and their human rights and trains them in skills which can be used to create livelihood opportunities when they return home. All Solar Mamas are trained first as students but then as trainers themselves, enabling them to train more solar engineers when they return to their villages and creating long term change for the most marginalised people around the world." - Barefoot College, 23/04/2020
