OneCoast Supports Efforts to Bring Clean Water to Kenya
The lives of thousands of African citizens, especially children, will improve with the creation of clean water wells, and OneCoast is offering employees, vendors and retailers a chance to be a part of this major humanitarian effort.
OneCoast, the largest and only national provider of sales and marketing services to vendors and retailers of home decor, gift and collegiate products, began a plan this year to focus its efforts on one charity per year. In 2008, OneCoast has selected charity: water.
The OneCoast Midwest sales team, made aware of the need for clean wells by vendor partner Danielson Designs, first embraced the opportunity to provide wells in poverty-stricken Kenya. Now, as a company-wide project, the goal is to unite OneCoast and the gift and home decor industries with charity: water to raise funds to support the building of wells. Napa Home & Garden has also become a major supporter.
“We believe that we at OneCoast and others who care can make a difference in Africa with projects such as these,” said Ted Teele, CEO, OneCoast. “We are extremely proud of our employees who are working so hard on this project, and we hope our vendors and retail friends will participate with us. It is almost impossible to view the powerful videos on the web site without wanting to help.”
The partnership with charity: water was launched by OneCoast at the January Chicago: Living and Giving Market.
Charity: water has created a website which details the mission and enables people to donate as part of the OneCoast effort charityis.org/onecoast). Three videos on the Web site dramatically illustrate the needs, the abject poverty and the horrific lack of sanitation in these African nations.
The website details two ways contributors can help. First, donations can be made directly to the cause. Second, retailers and vendors can purchase cases of water and resell them at $20 per bottle with all the money going to charity: water. There are two fundraising kits available which include customized posters that can be co branded to include a store or company name as well as collateral materials to help promote the project.
The OneCoast effort will center on poverty-stricken Kenya, where the population has tripled in the past 30 years. More than half the population lives on less than $2 a day. charity: water, working with Living Water International, expects to complete seven projects in Kenya this year.
About OneCoast
OneCoast is the largest national provider of sales and marketing services to vendors and retailers of home decor, gift and collegiate products. We help hundreds of vendors market and sell their products to thousands of retail organizations across the United States. Our customers include leading home decor, gift and collegiate vendors such as New Creative, C.R. Gibson, Global Views, Woodstock Chimes, Mud Pie, Crabtree & Evelyn, Feizy Rugs, and The Thymes. We market and sell their products on a regional and national basis to a wide variety of retailers ranging from tens of thousands of small, independent retail stores to large, multi-channel retailers like JC Penney, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Neiman Marcus, and web-only retailers like Amazon.com and SmartBargains.com. OneCoast is in the wholesale business and does not sell or market directly to consumers. For more information, visit onecoast.com.
