One Bag, One Child, One Year
A solution for putting impoverished kids through school? It's in the bag.
Last year, Oliver Shuttlesworth returned home to Austin, Texas, from a trip to rural Central America asking himself a burning question: "If an education can cost as little as $20 a year, and yet 75 million children lack access to it, what can we do to help and why aren't we doing it?"
The "what," for Shuttlesworth, was to connect with a reputable micro-finance institution and provide tuition to kids who need it. The "how" came in the form of selling totes ($60), backpacks ($70) and t-shirts ($22) through a company he named "Esperos," derived from the Spanish word for "hope." And as for the "why" -- well, Esperos is flying in the face of that question by providing a solution.
Partnering with a non-profit called Fonkoze to help families out of poverty while funds from Esperos send their kids to school, the brand channels 50% of its proceeds directly into kids' tuitions in Haiti, giving them opportunities that were once closed off to them. And the math is as elementary as arithmetic can get: each bag puts a child through school for an entire year.
Shop the Esperos line by clicking here and you'll have today's good deed in the bag. We'd say it's an investment worth shouldering.
More About Fonkoze
Fonkoze is Haiti’s alternative bank for the organized poor. It's a family of three institutions working together, shoulder to shoulder, toward a single mission: building the economic foundations for democracy in Haiti by providing the rural poor with the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. It helps with literacy and business skills training, as well as education in the areas of health, children's rights, environmental protection and disaster risk reduction.
