Help Daraja win! Make $10 donation before 11:59pm EST on Nov 15

I spent a month living, learning and volunteering on the Daraja Academy of Kenya's campus this summer. This amazing school would love your support, too! And you don't even have to travel to Kenya:)

photo by: Pamela Sleightholm

During the month-long the Girl Effect Challenge, Daraja and 24 other girl-focused organizations and projects are working to generate donations from their supporters. The Challenge ends at 11:59pm EST tomorrow (Tues Nov 15).

At that time the six organizations with the highest number of unique donors will win the same prize: they will be featured on the Girl Effect GlobalGiving page and will receive a share of the Girl Effect Fund for one year following the Challenge (December 1, 2011 – November 30, 2012).

Daraja is currently in second place, with 600 unique donors at this very minute. But the competition is fierce - the organizations below Daraja could squeeze us out of the Top 6 within the next 24 hours.

Please consider making a minimum donation of $10 to Daraja, to help keep us in the Top 6! Donate here.

The ladies of Daraja would love your support ...


The fine print from the Challenge FAQ page:
Online donations are considered unique if they are made from separate email addresses. The same credit card may be used for multiple online donations.

GlobalGiving retains a 15% fulfillment fee on donations but works to keep the fees you pay as low as possible while providing you great services and resources. The 15% fee covers all transactional fees such as credit card charges, as well as helps cover the costs GlobalGiving incurs to promote organizations and projects, provide them with fundraising training and tools, and maintain and improve our online technology in order to keep connecting you with new donors. With our add-on option, we also offer the donor the opportunity to make an additional donation to cover GlobalGiving’s fulfillment fees so that projects receive 100% of the donations intended for them.

The students can't blog, so I'm doing it for them:) Irene is amazing!

Your Old Running Shoes are Recyclable!

Several years ago I learned that Nike recycles running shoes, and uses the recycled parts to construct inner city basketball courts. I dug up the info about how to donate shoes, and recycled my first pair of running shoes in 2005. It felt really good.



I just stumbled upon some current information about Nike's program, Reuse-A-Shoe.


Regarding "giving back" to the community - according to this 1995 article, Nike unveiled the Reuse-A-Shoe program in 1993.

In 1995 Nike covered 60 decaying school playgrounds in Oakland, California with protective Reuse-A-Shoe rubber matting. In 1994 the program used 4,000 shoes to build a bright blue all-purpose basketball court at Boys & Girls Club in Brooklyn, New York.

Nike works with the amazing organization Ashoka, and their Changemaker program. The Changemaker website currently spotlights Jacob Colker, the co-founder and CEO of the Extraordinaries. (I just blogged about the company last week!)


How to Participate:

Nike Reuse-A-Shoe drop-off locations exist @ 300+ locations around the world, including all U.S. Nike stores, as well as locations in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Check here for a list of locations near your zip code or state of residence.

You can bring up to 10 pair of athletic shoes at a time to any of the drop-off locations. If you have more than 10 pairs of shoes to donate, but less than 300, then you can apply to Nike's Community Activist program to host a shoe recycling drive!

If you can't find a location near you then you can pack your old shoes up in a box and mail them to Nike at your own expense:

Nike Recycling Center
c/o Reuse-A-Shoe
26755 SW 95th Ave.
Wilsonville, OR 97070

Note that in order to keep the recycling shoe machines in good working order:

* Nike can only recycle athletic shoes (running shoes, sneakers, etc.)
* Nike accepts all brands of shoes
* Nike cannot accept shoes containing metal
* Nike cannot accept cleats or dress shoes
* Nike cannot accept wet or damp shoes
* Nike cannot accept sandals and flip-flops


If you'd rather give your shoes away in one piece, then check this out:

One World Running accepts donations of nearly new and new running shoes, which they distribute around the world to aspiring runners here in the USA, and in countries where many people train barefoot for lack of resources. The organization also organizes races in developing countries.


photo: Cuba 2009. From Flickr user One World Running

The organization, originally called Shoes for Africa, was founded in 1986 by Michael Sandrock, an award-winning sports journalist, after he raced a marathon in Cameroon.

List of shoe donation drop off locations here.

If the shoes you donate do not suit the organization's needs then they will send them off to Nike for recycling. And we come full circle:)

Customize & Win Nike Shoes in Real Time

In 2006, Nike erected a large, interactive billboard in Times Square. Passers-by could use their cell phones, between noon and 1pm, and 3 and 5pm, to call a number and use their dial pad to customize the sneaker displayed on the billboard - pick the colors of the laces, the swoosh, the uppers and mid-sole, and select initials or personal tags. Participants then received a text message with the URL for their personalized sneaker - the purchase site.



In Wheeler and Keenan's video, individuals went nuts when they saw their own shoes posted live on the jumbotron in front of them.



Although Nike gave away 3000 pairs of shoes in this promotion, users seemed just as excited to their design on the billboard as they were by the free footwear.

source: Christine's blog. November 2006.

Nike "Zoom" Marketing Campaign

I was surfing ad agency Mindshare's website, when I came across this innovative campaign created to launch Nike's shoe, "Zoom", in China.

Mindshare's website reports that the brief was to "introduce a new generation of competitive athletes to the performance benefits of Zoom technology."

"Core target was sports active, competitive youth, aged 16-20 with a secondary broader audience of 18-24 year old sports focused youth, who wanted light weight, fast and responsive shoes, to be used in the context of training and competition.

The campaign relied on strong word of mouth to create a sense of discovery as consumers spotted the light boxes in high traffic public spaces, within regional and local press and online."

"For three weeks Nike set up an urban race that consumers could participate in to win a new pair of the Zoom high performance shoes. The Bluetooth-enabled race started at an illuminated outdoor site up to 400m from the store featuring a line up of 21 new Zoom shoes and ended at the Nike stores. The fastest runner was given a pair of new Zooms and got their name placed in the illuminated site."

For more information, check out this video --

Zoom/OOH

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy SH, Mindshare
Client: Nike China
Date of First Appearance: 11/08/2007
Executive Creative Director: Frank Hahn
Creative Director: Frank Hahn
Copywriter: Dean Wei, Zebra Hua
Art Director: Joseph Ernst
Account: Lydia Zhu, Kim Chu
Designer: Stella Wang
Producer: Vic Zhang, Stone Xue
Traffic: Jackie Liang
Studio: Angel, Wendy