What a way to finish up our first "official" year as Live Love SUP. Last August, after almost 3 years in the making (thinking), we set up as a company and got the ball rolling on promoting Live Love SUP, not just the brand (and lifestyle), but the giving behind the company too. This is and always will be a big part of our vision.
Sometimes, even we can't believe it's only been a year! We set a goal of raising $5,000 through the sale of wristbands and % of apparel in addition to online donations for charity:water. Everyone on earth deserves clean drinking water and we wanted to do our part in helping paddlers give back and raise money for clean water projects. On September 1st we submitted our donation for August rounding up our first year and were stoked to have exceeded or goal!
Over the course of the year we had paddlers from 24 countries help to contribute to this goal and have raised $5,186 or have provided clean water for 358 people through charity:water! We already know that a majority of this money has been assigned to water projects in Ethiopia. We get updates from charity:water and at the end of 18 months of our first project we will start to see the exactly locations of where our money has helped.
Thank you to each and everyone of you who helped us in this first year. We have met so many great people and have made so many new paddling friends all over. And together, we have contributed to something great! We were able to add 4 countries this year to our list of places we've paddled in (and an additional 3 we already had been to) making that a total of 18 countries that we have SUP'd in. We are looking forward to visiting more and continuing to unite paddlers and share Live Love SUP around thee world.
So, what's next? WE CONTINUE This is important. Our intention originally was to raise $5,000 through the year on one charity:water project, but their rules allow campaigns to only be open for 3 months at a time at which time the money is assigned to a certain project whether or not you reached your goal. We're on campaign 4. Some things have change now and we are excited! They have been able to extend our current campaign (#4) until the end of the year and this will give us more time to reach $5,000 during one campaign. If we can do this then Live Love SUP will be able to sponsor a single project that has Live Love SUP's name on it and solely be funded by paddlers (our original plan). So, we still have a ways to go, but we're going to keep pushing forward.
In our current project we have raised $2,566 (this is part of our overall $5,186), but with the recent changes this means we can keep donating until December to reach our $5,000 project goal for Campaign #4. Join us or help continue getting the word out as we keep paddling and keep raising money for charity:water!
One of our favorite wristband pictures of Gina (Christina Bauer's Dog)
We have so many great group shots of wristband supporters!
And none of this would've been possible without the hundreds of paddlers who have bought wristbands and supported our efforts around the world throughout the year.
