I am so excited to tell you about our featured giveaway this week! It is such a great product and I am so proud to be a supporter of it! I know the owner of this super cute little boutique, The Snow Bear, and was so excited when I found out she opened her shop! McKenzie was actually the words of mine and hubby’s engagement story {here} and wedding interviews {here}. This girl has a beautiful way with words and is just as eloquent in person. I asked her to write about this project that she holds dear to her heart; so here is Miss McKenzie, here to introduce you to the profound FEED project products.
FEED was started in 2006 with what Lauren Bush Lauren calls a single– and startlingly profound– moment of compassion. Lauren, an acclaimed model and student of photography and design, began her path to FEED in an artistic– and roundabout– fashion, studying under the tutelage of designers at BEBE and Central Saint Martens College of Art and Design. Along the way, her classic, all-American beauty captured the imagination of iconic U.S. brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Abercrombie & Fitch, and Lauren soon found herself starring in the very type of campaigns she had hoped to create. Yet eventually, and much to the benefit of millions, Lauren realized that her heart lied somewhere elsewhere than fashion, that her strongest passions were indeed of a more civic nature. It was in that spirit that she entered the Anthropology program at Princeton and began to cultivate the global vision that has touched, strengthened, healed, and included so many. An early visit to Guatemala affirmed her career choice, and then some. Indeed, FEED was truly born the moment Lauren took a tiny seven year old boy into her arms wondered, as we all would, if only there was something more that could be done for him:
The magic and the heartbreak of that moment had changed her: there was no turning back. Lauren would be named Honorary Student Spokesperson for the United Nations World Food Programme and travel to countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa where the WFP is operating. As she traveled and became familiar with the UN’s services, she began to feel a kindred connection to the WFP’s School Feeding Program, which feeds and educates hungry children. The plight of the peoples she met during her travels rattled her and roused her heart. She knew she simply had to leave her thumbprint on the program, and it was then that she designed FEED’s first and most iconic bag.
The FEED 1 bag, a reversible burlap and organic cotton bag reminiscent of the bags of food distributed by the WFP, was designed to help raise funds and awareness around these school feeding operations. Lauren stamped the bag with the tagline ‘FEED the children of the world’ and a ‘1’ to indicate that one child would receive school meals for one year. The concept was wonderfully effective, the bags, beautiful, and the need for relief, woefully rising. In 2007, FEED Projects LLC was founded by Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson to produce and sell these bags. Lauren had at last found the beautiful release for all of her passions and talents, the thing that all young adult’s yearn for: the answer to the question of what to do with her life, and of how to combine her many and disparate talents into one life’s work. Each bag is a tribute to both streamlined design and civic impulse; the exacting design of each bag, combined with the decidedly non-fashion meaning behind it, means that such a project could only be dreamed up by a student of both Anthropology and design. In a way, the project is really the a fluid and seamless combination of one girl’s far-reaching talents.
FEED is her love letter, her life, her dreams, all packaged into one reversible burlap and cotton bag.
The FEED 1 bag, a reversible burlap and organic cotton bag reminiscent of the bags of food distributed by the WFP, was designed to help raise funds and awareness around these school feeding operations. Lauren stamped the bag with the tagline ‘FEED the children of the world’ and a ‘1’ to indicate that one child would receive school meals for one year. The concept was wonderfully effective, the bags, beautiful, and the need for relief, woefully rising. In 2007, FEED Projects LLC was founded by Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson to produce and sell these bags. Lauren had at last found the beautiful release for all of her passions and talents, the thing that all young adult’s yearn for: the answer to the question of what to do with her life, and of how to combine her many and disparate talents into one life’s work. Each bag is a tribute to both streamlined design and civic impulse; the exacting design of each bag, combined with the decidedly non-fashion meaning behind it, means that such a project could only be dreamed up by a student of both Anthropology and design. In a way, the project is really the a fluid and seamless combination of one girl’s far-reaching talents.
FEED is her love letter, her life, her dreams, all packaged into one reversible burlap and cotton bag.
To date, FEED has been able to raise enough money through the sale of products to provide over 60 million school meals to children around the world through WFP. FEED has also partnered with the US Fund for UNICEF, raising much-needed funds for their Vitamin A and micronutrient supplements program and providing over 46,000 children with essential nutrients.
In addition to the company, FEED started a non-profit organization called the FEED Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting programs and organizations that are effectively working to fight hunger and eliminate malnutrition throughout the world.
The design side of the line has flourished as well: one simple burlap bag has grown into a gorgeous collection, where bags pouches, and accessories can be bought in a staggering selection of prints, colors, styles, and vibrant native patterns. These are devoted to dozens of countries; ARV vaccines, school lunches, vitamin supplements, micronutrients, and local language books are distributed according to the area’s specific needs. The line is ideal for girls who love fashion but find their consciences getting in the way; who would like to find a way to reconcile their expenses with their recessionista budgets, “green” lifestyles, and finer values,
I have chosen the FEED love bag, the perfect gift for a loved one, or the perfect reminder to exercise self-love and love for others. This bag certainly hits all the right notes; after all, is there a surer way to a girl’s heart than through handbags… and a good cause?! FEED does a much finer job describing their product than I do, so I’ve included the website description below:
Spread the FEED LOVE with this beautiful bag made in partnership with (RED).
The purchase of this natural burlap (FEED)RED LOVE 30 Bag will provide approximately 30 days of ARV treatment through the Global Fund and 30 nutritious school meals, thus providing one month of life-saving assistance.
Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment not only helps people live with HIV/AIDS but also helps prevent the transmission of the disease from moms to their babies. (RED)-supported Global Fund grants deliver this much-needed treatment to some of the countries hit hardest by the disease. When ARV treatment is taken with food, the level of effectiveness of the drug increases, as food helps absorb the medication that is given.
– Natural burlap with the signature PRODUCT(RED) logo
– Faux suede bottom
– Large back pocket
– 14.5″W x 15″ H x 4.5″D
– Sturdy 11″ drop handles, made of green webbing
The bag retails for $100. It’s important to note that ARV not only greatly helps HIV sufferers manage the pain of the disease, but helps stop the transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies. When you purchase this bag, you can know that you are truly investing in someone’s future, giving them a heaven-sent gift. To see a woman’s face when her HIV results test ‘NEGATIF’ would be something like having an angelic visitation. The relief that comes from escaping not online lifelong pain but severe, unyielding, lifelong stigma is simply indescribable. The taboo surrounding HIV is stronger in Africa than anything we can surmise; perhaps the most fitting (and heartbreaking) comparison is to that of Biblical leprosy. ARV can prevent the unthinkable from happening, giving life and personal liberty to infants who would have been otherwise endangered. I’ve included a handy visual aid in the form of a picture that details how the number of babies born each year with HIV has dropped to 900 from 1200 in 2002.
The FEED love bag presents an ultimate opportunity to spread love and life to another. You can also support the Tenth Anniversary of the Global Fund through the purchase of this beautiful bag.
The Snow Bear is so proud to carry this line and contribute to this beautiful project. Our commitment is to so much more than carrying lovely products and curating a beautiful selection: we want to extend grace. FEED presents a wonderful opportunity to do just that, and fits beautifully into our selection of lines with a charitable emphasis. None of us wants to wear, or find luxury in, another person’s misery. How much greater is it to make an investment that truly provides and allows love to flourish? We are all sheltered under a canopy of Amazing Grace, and this is just one of recognizing and paying homage to that. We hope that when customers walk into our store, they can sense a Spirit of invitation and lovingkindness that carries over into every selection, every thread, and everything about The Snow Bear.
As you can tell by the powerful words, The Snow Bear is passionate about this product. My mom and I have THIS bag, and I am so proud to carry it around. It is the FEED 100 Bag that provides 100 supplements of Vitamin A to children. I love that this bag zips up into a tiny little rectangle and I can carry it in my purse until I need it for groceries, etc.
There are tons of other great products offered at The Snow Bear from the FEED Project. I found this one close to my heart, as buying one bag will feed school meals to one child for an ENTIRE year.
And, as always for my fashionista friends (and me as well) Tory Burch has teamed up with FEED to produce this gem.
FEED is also affiliated with TOMS where buying a pair of shoes will ensure 12 school meals and a new pair of shoes for a child in need.
What an incredible company and reason to shop at The Snow Bear. I know that I’ve become passionate about FEED in the short amount of time that I’ve known about it. And who doesn’t LOVE Lauren Bush!?!?
Now that you’ve learned all about FEED, it’s time to enter to win a FEED (red) LOVE 40 Bag!
Follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter below.
And yes, friends, you MUST be a follower of LLL through GFC (that little follow button over there on the right) and like LLL AND The Snow Bear on Facebook.
Don’t forget to comment on this post for the MOST IMPORTANT entry of all!
Don’t want to wait to support this fabulous cause? Head over to The Snow Bear now to see the shirts, accessories, bags, etc that they have to offer with the FEED project and more!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
And, guess what, runners? This girl (yes whiny, wimpy little me) is doing this 10K! Check it out HERE and support Run 10 FEED 10!
Even if you don’t live any of the 10 cities where there will be the run (which clearly this little small town Texas girl doesn’t), you can still register and run the 10K on your own course and time between now and October 16th, which is World Food Day. Learn more about it here.
Download the APP now, and GET STARTED!!!!
(I’ll be updating you on my progress)
Have a great Labor Day, lovelies!
Awesome cause!
Love the one with Tory Burch!!
Awesome giveaway!!! I hope I win, I'm starting to lose hope since I'm like 0-50 it seems! 🙂
Great post, I love these bags! Particularly obsessed with the Tory Birch one!
XO,
Elizabeth
http://www.tonicofwildness.com
Super Cute bags I would love to win one!