Citizen Brand

Urban Sprouts

Urban Sprouts is a great program in San Francisco that should be emulated everywhere.  This is from their website:

"Urban Sprouts is a school garden program that serves low-income youth from San Francisco’s under-served neighborhoods. We teach youth to grow, harvest, prepare and eat vegetables from the school garden, in order to help youth become more engaged in school, eat better and exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other."

This is a great opportunity for any company involved in the food industry.  What could be better than children learning to appreciate and understand where our food comes from and learning to prepare food in a healthy and nutritious manner.

There is more information available on the Urban Sprouts blog.  Big thanks to Britt for bringing this to our attention.

Turning Lemons into Lemonade

There was a great reminder this past weekend that the best cause branding programs do not have to be complicated. 

By now you have likely heard about Alex's Lemonade Stand.  Alexandra "Alex" Scott is no longer with us on this earth, but she left us a lot to think about in the eight years of her life.  Before she turned one, she was diagnosed with an aggressive childhood cancer.  When she turned four in the year 2000, she decided she would set up a lemonade stand and help "her doctors" find a cure.

She died four years later, but her cause lives on and grows each and every year.  It's an incredible legacy and she has taught us all invaluable lessons about how to make a difference in the world....one cup of lemonade at a time.

In the past six years, children all over have kept Alex's dream alive by hosting thousands of lemonade stands raising money to help find a cure for children's cancer.  It's a perfect example of a citizen brand.  And it absolutely demonstrates that the best idea is a simple one.

Big Food Drive

This is what I call a food drive!

The National Association of Letter Carriers will collect non-perishable food items while making their rounds delivering our mail on Saturday.  Kudos to the NALC and to The Campbell Soup Company for being their partner in this effort to help stockpile community food banks across America.

This is a great example of two organizations teaming up to create a program that is a natural fit for both of their businesses.