Six Aveda Canada employees saw firsthand last month how their fundraising efforts are helping to bring clean water to Madagascar.
To qualify for the trip, the employees raised a minimum of $7,500 each for WaterAid Canada, a charity that gives people access to drinkable water, basic sanitation and hygiene education and is Aveda’s Earth Month partner in Canada. Aveda Canada has raised more than $3.5 million for WaterAid since 2007 and is its largest financial supporter.
The trip marked the first time Aveda Canada has sent its fundraising employees on a study tour.
“It was definitely very eye-opening,” says Aveda Canada creative director Kristjan Hayden, who returned from the 11-day study tour to Madagascar on Nov. 27. “Until you go to a developing country and really see the urgent and sometimes desperate need for help, it doesn’t register quite as much as when you do see it firsthand.”
WaterAid recently began a three-year project in Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries. Aveda employees visited regions that have recently obtained new water and sanitation facilities and areas that still lack the basics.
Communities that now have access to clean water have seen life changing differences, such as huge reductions in illnesses like diarrhea, Hayden says.
But, he says it was “extremely heartbreaking” to witness children go without drinkable water. Seeing that served as a call to action to raise more in the future, Hayden says.
To raise the minimum $7,500, Hayden participated in several fundraising events, including an annual 5-kilometre walk for water. The distance signifies the average distance many African women have to walk to get water, which is not necessarily clean.
Aveda also donates 100% of the $12 purchase price from its Light the Way candles, which are sold during Earth Month in April, to the Global Greengrants Fund to support water projects in 78 countries. The candles use ingredients from Madagascar.
During the holiday season, Aveda is also donating $1 to Global Greengrants for every A Gift of Renewal for Your Journey gift set of travel-size moisturizing hand creams. The proceeds go to ongoing earthquake relief in Nepal.
The fundraising initiatives are heavily promoted on Aveda Canada’s website and elsewhere online.
The Knot Group is Aveda’s PR AOR in Canada.
