We don't often do updates from across the pond, but our London counterparts have outdone themselves with a 6 day pop up shop for our ethical scheme, and we wanted to share their amazing work with you all!
A little over a week ago, in the big smoke (just a few miles east of our headquarters in London, UK), the teapigs café and pop-up shop opened its doors for 6 days only, all in a bid to raise money for our friends at the Point Foundation.
The goal? Raise £5,000 (the equivalent of $6,400!) for The Point Foundation's amazing work in Rwanda.
How hard could it be?
For anyone not in the know, for the past 10 years we’ve worked closely with a wonderful charity called The Point Foundation, who support vulnerable members of the tea growing community in Rwanda, by championing education. Over the years we’ve donated a whopping £200,000 by matching on pack donations and sales of our signature english breakfast tea and with that money we fully fund the teapigs house and sponsor students from grade school to college, providing school uniforms and text books for a local school in Gisenyi, Rwanda.
Our last fundraising project at teapigs HQ in London was the Tough Mudder which saw team teapigs get extremely muddy… but they managed to raise £4,000 ($5,000) for a project to build TWO new 5000L rainwater collection tanks for the teapigs house and Community Living Program. Upon installation, the tanks filled up within a week and have since proven to be very useful!
Our London teapigs decided they wanted to use the proceeds of the pop-up shop to help a similarly important project so they talked with point foundation co-founders and all round amazing humans, Karen and Charles, to see what they could help out with. Coincidently, they learned that Karen had just started looking for donors for a new project to build a Vocational Training Center in Mwogo, Bugesera – one of the poorest regions in Rwanda. The center (to be built by January 2019) will provide training for vulnerable young people in valuable skills like mechanics, tailoring, hairdressing and plumbing—skills that will help raise themselves out of poverty and find employment.
Now, granted we're not builders, when we heard that £5,000 ($6,000) would fully cover the cost of setting up this center, we were pretty blown away with how little it actually was and it was a complete no brainer to aim for raising £5,000 at the pop-up.
6 days, 106 cups of tea, 957 packs of tea and 120 doughnuts later…
Team teapigs surpassed their goal of £5,000 with just a few minutes to spare!
While many of us teapigs in the US didn’t manage to make it to the shop, the good news is you can still help us contribute towards the Point Foundation’s amazing work!
Simply buy yourself a pack of our english breakfast tea, as the donation will be made automatically for you. Alternatively, you can donate directly online next time you shop with us here!
Now, how about a pop up shop here in Brooklyn!?
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