Our Latest Donation to Barefoot College International

This is such a great time of year - we finalise our accounts for the previous year and work out our tax liability (which we love to pay - how else would we have teachers, a health service, or any national infrastructure???). But even more dear to our hearts is calculating our donations. 

This year we donated £2500.00 to Barefoot College International, but it was catalytic, as it was timed with their BIG GIVE campaign, ensuring that our donation would double in value. 

Why Barefoot College International?

When we first established our leather rescue project we knew that we would need to find the right charity partner. In the case of the fire-hose, it was easy, The Fire Fighters Charity is an obvious and wonderful match. But with the leather there was no obvious partner. We began a long search with a few key criteria:

1. Address climate change.
   • Cows / leather are linked to climate change. How? Cows and other ruminants produce methane, a gas that contributes to climate change, as a by-product of their digestion process. 
   • Cows that are not pasture fed require vast quantities of crops - the land use for the production of these crops, the growing, and the transport all this feed - and all of this work (everything from running tractors, to shipping fertilisers and pesticides) contributes to the climate issue.  
2. Achieve multiple positive objectives.
   • Why do one good thing when you can do many? This has always been a key Elvis & Kresse principle. Rescuing fire-hose is one good thing, but lining it with failed parachutes is another, and making our own packaging from waste is another, and running on renewable energy is another, and offering work experience and creating apprenticeships are yet more....  
3. Work with a cause you believe in
   • We love giving, it's great, but it is even better when you are giving to an efficiently run organisation, run by a dedicated team. 

When we met Barefoot, we knew that we had our partner.

1. Barefoot addresses climate change by training women as solar engineers. They can establish and maintain solar infrastructure which replaces kerosene lamps or burning wood.
2. Barefoot doesn't stop there. They have an incredible education program that teaches entrepreneurship, women's health, and regenerative agriculture. It is this additional training that makes Barefoot a real powerhouse, and why their work touches on virtually all of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. 
3. The Barefoot team is amazing. All our funds are spent on scholarships and on the scholars. 

And then there are the intangibles. A few of the first scholars that we supported successfully transformed their communities in Guatemala, in terms of solar power, and then they built an organic coffee collective. They grow and sell some of the most wonderful beans! We have imported these to the UK, found a local roaster (Macknade), and proudly serve their coffee in our workshop!

How cool is that. 

In total we have donated £102,000.00 to Barefoot College International. And we hope the project continues to go from strength to strength.

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