Wednesday, September 22, 2010

wow, here's a wicked cool idea AND you get to help out too

 from boing boing:

Swap For Good: clothing swaps for charity
David Pescovitz





BB pal Orli Cotel, who by day works with Sierra Club on their radio show and other outreach, and Brianna Cayo Cotte launched a new non-profit called Swap For Good! Congrats! She says: 
Swap for Good is a new non-profit project to encourage people to host clothing swaps as a way to help raise money for domestic violence shelters. People are swapping all kinds of things - clothes, gadgets, tools, books - you name it.
It's a win-win situation - you get rid of your old stuff, get a new wardrobe or new books for free, and chip in some of the money you've saved on shopping to help a local domestic violence shelter. During the recession, funding for shelters has plummeted while requests for help have gone up. The National Network to End Domestic Violence did a study that showed that in just one day, over 9,000 requests for help went unmet, largely due to lack of funds.
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month, so it's a great time to sign up to host a swap and raise some extra money for this important cause. (sign up here )
Swaps can be small private house-parties with friends in your living room, or a big event in a public venue. For folks who have never hosted a swap before, we've created a handy how-to guide that walks you through all the steps to put together a really successful swap. (how-to-guide is here)
Swap for Good parties are a great way to promote creative re-use, build community, and help a worthy cause. It is an all-volunteer project, with no paid staff, and no office - so there are no overhead costs and all the money raised by hosts goes directly to the cause. Swaps are already signed up for this fall in 13 states - you can check out the map of public events here: http://events.swapforgood.org/ (there are lots of other events that are private and don't show up on the map). 


Swap For Good

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