ECOsmarte blog

WE HAVE OUR FIRST FOOD BANK!
Houston Food Bank at The Herzstein Center - http://www.houstonfoodbank.org/contact.aspx.
The Houston Food Bank distributed 65 million pounds of food last year and fed 865,000 people.

We will be announcing the other 4 Food Banks over the next few days so stay tuned.

Staff person Jeffrey Shannon spoke with Scott Johnson, an ECOsmarte Director, earlier this week about the company’s involvement with local Food Banks.

Q: What is ECOsmarte’s corporate philosophy on giving?
A: Obviously, our company was founded with a very eco-friendly ethos, but we have also always believed that we need to do whatever we can to help those in need. In our early years the demands of starting a business placed fairly strict limits on our monetary contributions. As we have grown, we have attempted to make more concrete and consistent contributions. We have attempted to remain faithful to this approach even though the recent recession has impacted us and many other small and medium-sized businesses.

Q: What are some examples of putting your philosophy into practice?
A: ECOsmarte has a history of community involvement, with Books for Africa and Healing Haiti being two recent examples of our financial support. With Books for Africa, we supported a program to send volunteer teachers and professors to Africa to organize recycled textbooks. For Healing Haiti, ECOsmarte purchased a water truck in 2008 to be used for both daily and emergency water deliveries.

Q: Why Food Banks:
A: We are conscious that we live and work in a global community and targeted our initial efforts at specific acute needs in developing countries. We thought it was time to help people in our own country hit hard by our recent economic downturn. We believe that the Food Banks provide a very real opportunity to get a targeted, maximum bang-per-buck for our contributions this year.

Q: How will ECOsmarte’s involvement work?
A: We will identify 5 Food Banks from across the country as beneficiaries of monthly contributions over a 6 month period.

Q: How will specific Food Banks be chosen?
A: We will look to our loyal customer base for recommendations. We realize that they are best able to judge the needs and capabilities of their own community organizations.

Q: How will you evaluate your efforts?
A: To be honest, we know that given the large number of people in need that any contributions will help. Again, we look at the feedback from customers with first-hand knowledge as well as from the Food Banks and their clients.

ECOsmarte is looking for American Food Banks to support and we need our customers help in finding them. We are looking for Food Banks that serve 1,000 or more people a month and are located within the United States. We are limited to 5 Food Banks and if you simply email us the name of the Food Bank you would like us to support, we will donate $250 per month to the Food Bank for 6 months. We will post the Food Banks on the ECOsmarte Blog at www.ecosmarteblog.com for you to help as well. Dateline NBC has motivated us here, joining our other charities, Books For Africa (a great textbook recycle concept) and Buya.org -- we had water deliveries BEFORE the Earthquake in Haiti.