This month’s Capital Ideas topic is social responsibility. I am delighted to share that my comments were featured in Thursday’s Calgary Herald. I thought it would be nice to expand on them a bit as well
Starting Out
I have been living in Calgary for awhile now. Most of my time has been spent at university. While studying, I was amazed at the number of opportunities there were for students to get involved in the community. Even more amazing is how much the students choose to give back.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in community oriented events throughout my university career. I also organized a few. Both were hugely rewarding. From the beginning, I wanted YYC Beeswax to give something relevant back to the community. With this in mind, I built lip balm pricing around how I wanted to give back.
Giving Back
We currently donate $0.25 from every lip balm sold to Apiaries and Bees for Communities (A.B.C.) in support of their educational programs. We choose to support them because they are a local initiative, which means the funds will remain in and benefit the community. The educational programs include school outreach, and I believe A.B.C. imparts valuable knowledge to the next generation making them a worthwhile cause to support.
Moving Forward
In the future, I am looking forward to developing more programs to support other worthwhile local initiatives. A few ideas are in the works, so keep an eye out for them!
Here’s the Capital Ideas page from Thursday’s Calgary Herald (click the picture for the full article):
How do you give back to your community? How do you think businesses can be better at giving back to the community? I’d love to hear your thoughts!