Lowbrow Customers Donate More Than $750 to Charity In July

Lowbrow is about the best job I can imagine. I really, thoroughly enjoy what I do every day and I think everyone else here does as well. One thing that I thought was missing was our chance to use our customer base and reach to help people in the world who have much bigger problems than a motorcycle project to complete. We started earlier this year by donating the full sale price of our Winged Wheel Patch and the proceeds from the Moto Mouse T-Shirt to charity. We decided to take it a step further and the last month or so; when checking out on our site you may have noticed the 'Charity' section asking you to round your order total up to the nearest dollar figure, donating your spare change to a choice of two charities, Room to Read or Donor's Choose. You stepped up and we raised about $750 in the first month with this new program!

We are currently supporting two educational charities, and will switch it up occasionally to help support different causes. The idea behind education is it empowers young people to do something with their life and rise above their means, to take care of themselves and their families. Donor's Choose supports U.S. public schools, teachers can put up requests for donations for a variety of things their class room might need to help give the students a more enjoyable and educational experience. For the month of July funds were donated to high-poverty locations to help buy elementary school students exercise equipment in Grand Rapids, Michigan, help with a purchase of an iPad for literacy and math skills for students in Siler City, NC, and to buy more books for children in Kyle, South Dakota. What is so cool is the photos above aren't of random kids, these are the actual children in the classrooms that Lowbrow's customers helped support.

Room to Read builds schools, reading rooms (libraries) and helps girl's get schooling in developing countries. In countries such as Cambodia, Nepal, South Africa and Zambia (just to name a few) public school isn't a choice, and in many areas there are no resources to teach children. Our goal this year is to raise $12,000 which will fund the construction of three reading rooms, stocked with local language books and a trained local librarian. So far we are at $4,707.01 raised and donated, so we are more than a third of the way there.

I am not writing this to pat ourselves on the back but to bring awareness. Help us meet the goal and help so many other people, next time you order from Lowbrow choose one of these charities to donate your spare change to.

Can You Read This?

This blog headline isn't a test, it is meant to make a point. We take for granted things like being taught to read as kids and having the books to learn from, and not everyone is that lucky. We are trying to do our part to help by selling a few items and donating all the profits to a charity called Room To Read. Our goal is to raise $12,000 by the end of June 2011. This will build three reading rooms or libraries in developing countries and help impoverished children get an education and help break the cycle of poverty.
The Moto Mouse art was done by our friend Alan Stedman. You may recognize his work from the paper biker dolls in DiCE Magazine and from the cover of DiCE magazine #36. He did up this illustration for this shirt to help out with the Room to Read charity we support. The profit from every Moto Mouse shirt sold will be donated to Room To Read. You can buy a cool shirt and help support this charity HERE! We have been doing the same thing with out Winged Wheel Patch for over an month now, so if the shirt isn't your thing or is too much these guys are pretty cool and are only $5 bucks, that's a pack of smokes or a Starbucks coffee.
One last thing, do us a favor and re-post this or share it on your facebook page and help us try and do some good! Cheers Kyle

Some Sappy Stuff About Kids

Here is the deal, without trying to get all touchy-feely or totally lame. I love what I do at Lowbrow, I really enjoy everything about it; I get to be creative, help customers, foster a culture I love, and it really is a passion. The one thing that I feel I am missing is really making a difference in the world, so I figure that with the amount of people who come to our website and the amount of customers we have, a small amount of people could make a big difference. The way I see it is education helps break the cycle of poverty, it is a tool to better people's lives and make them self-sufficient, a cure rather than a band-aid.

I set up two charitable donation pages, one supporting education in US public schools, the second in developing countries. To support US schools you can donate via our Donors Choose page to a classroom of your choosing, even receiving thank you letters back from the class! To help Lowbrow fund 3 reading rooms in developing countries visit our Room to Read page. Any donation helps, be in $5 or $50.

The next post will be about some crazy choppers, back to business as usual, I swear!

Tyler