Sevenly: People Matter

“People matter.” That is the motto of Sevenly, the world’s leading cause-marketing company. Based out of Orange County, California, Sevenly conducts cause-marketing campaigns in which they partner with various charities in order to raise awareness about the work of these organizations as well as contribute funds that directly benefit project and program initiatives. Through their sales, Sevenly donates 7% of every purchase to these projects, in an effort to rally a healthy consumerist mentality and cultivate powerful and intentional social impact. Every seven days, Sevenly partners with a new charity, creates a new campaign, designs new graphics, and supports a new cause. Just four-years-old, Sevenly has been supporting charities, inspiring positivity, and affecting change through social impact since its founder Dale Partridge dreamt up an idea to change the world in 2011.In a quaint little coffee shop and bar in Old Town Orange, California, I sat down with Lindsay Robb, Sevenly’s Charity and Influencer Outreach Associate, to learn more about Sevenly’s influence throughout the world. Lindsay’s primary responsibility is to find “unique charities that are making a difference in an interesting or new way” and to convince them to collaborate with the company in order to bring more awareness to their cause.Ever since she was little, Lindsay has been influenced by a love of giving back, a wonder of roaming the outdoors, and a persistence to defend and assure environmental and women’s rights which has paved the way for her to offer her talents and passions to Sevenly. As a “business that has a heart for more than just business,” Sevenly forms a connection with its employees, volunteers, charities, and supporters through its founding principle that people matter. Lindsay described the depth of the impact that Sevenly has on it supporters through a story in which one woman’s life was drastically changed after the simple decision to buy a tee-shirt. This particular supporter learned about an organization called Mercy Ships which sends fully stocked and operative hospital ships to developing countries around the world in order to provide medical care and services to regions that lack clean water, electricity, medical personnel, medical facilities, and basic medical care. Because of Sevenly’s campaign for Mercy Ships, this woman was prompted to learn more about the organization, and through her own research, she was inspired to commit to a two-year mission to be a nurse on Mercy Ships. That is the kind of personal impact that Sevenly inspires in all of its supporters around the world. That is the kind of undeniable power that Sevenly has in bringing causes, issues, and epidemics that seem to be miles away all-the-more pertinent to advocates, supporters, and individuals all around the world.Sevenly’s effortless ability to connect its supporters with a cause in a tangible and lasting way inspire each individual to know of their worth and of the impact they can disseminate throughout the world. In sparking your own impact this Christmas or holiday season, in realizing and exerting the power and light that you carry in order to make a difference in the world, you may consider actively contributing to Sevenly’s mission. There are many ways to get involved with Sevenly’s causes. In fact, supporting one, or many, of Sevenly’s seven-day campaigns is one of the best ways to get involved, according to Lindsay. But, even learning more about the charities or organizations through Sevenly’s campaigns and then spreading awareness and promoting the causes of these charities among your own family and friends is an effective way to instigate world change. There are endless opportunities to partner with Sevenly; the incredible thing about Sevenly is that it appeals to such a vast array of backgrounds, passions, talents, interests, and dreams. In its mere four years of existence, Sevenly has partnered with each and every organization you could possibly think of. For instance, their campaigns have served powerful international organizations like the United Nations Foundation with which they have collaborated to support the foundation’s global goals. These goals, known as the Global Goals for sustainable development, or SDGs, are seventeen goals which aim to achieve three major global ambitions in the next fifteen years: end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change. These goals are attributed to widespread movements like women’s rights and gender equality, girl-child education, racial equality, and are being used in efforts to provide solutions to global injustices such as poverty, hunger, disease, and environmental and social epidemics. In their partnership with the UN Foundation, Sevenly spent a month campaigning and preparing for their seven-day feature on the foundation, during which time, it slowly and consistently built and established an awareness for the foundation’s work. Sevenly has also partnered with Autism Speaks numerous times in which it has supported many of its projects, such as raising funds to support their iPad program in which kids who experience difficulty with verbal communication can communicate with their parents.With an influence this wide and an impact this transformative, it is no wonder Sevenly is leading in the market of conscientious consumerism and social impact. In addition to spreading the message of their campaigns and joining in the movement of their causes, you can incorporate Sevenly’s products in your gift-giving this year. Aside from purchasing their shirts, which are their best-sellers, you can gift journals, stickers, and posters. But, one of their most inclusive gifts is their CAUSEBOX, which requires a quarterly subscription, and includes products from other socially conscious and impact-oriented organizations like Krochet Kids International and 31 Bits. For $50, you would get almost $150 worth of product that you can enjoy and that also provide a social good or service to people across the world.In using your own resources to support Sevenly through spreading or raising awareness of their campaigns and causes, or through actively purchasing a product, you are contributing to the lasting influence that Sevenly exerts around the world. Your purchase, then, spreads far beyond the realm of consumerism, but it doubles the impact you have. Lindsay elaborated that in giving someone a Sevenly gift, “you give to someone you love and you make them happy, but you also contribute directly to someone else’s happiness. And even though you may not know them, they’re still a person having a Christmas somewhere, and if your gift can positively impact their life, too, it’s just double the bang for your buck.”This is what makes the work and impact of Sevenly so beautiful, so unique, and so powerful. Through every purchase made, every campaign shared, every organization researched, you are contributing directly and conscientiously to world change. Sevenly, then, welcomes the passions and talents of every different type of person. Whether you are going to commit to an opportunity to work for one of the organizations that Sevenly has sponsored, or whether you are going to contribute to the funds raised by Sevenly through purchasing a product, know that you are contributing to world change. Through buying, through sharing, through drastically altering your life to work on a ship that brings free medicine to regions throughout the world that are desperately in need of it, you are spreading your light, you are affecting change, and you are growing and deepening your impact. Lindsay noted that “it’s really just a simple switch from instead of just buying this shirt that made someone else richer,” to directly and intentionally contributing to world change. She added that “there are so many social good companies like Sevenly” in which you can buy a product that helps “alleviate poverty and hunger, and it’s [these] little small changes [like buying a simple shirt, journal, sticker, or poster] that can really make a difference.”Finally, Lindsay’s hope for Sevenly is that it would not be needed anymore. She admits that “it would be amazing if all the causes in the world were perfectly solved and didn’t need [Sevenly’s] help to raise funding and awareness.” In the meantime, though, Sevenly will continue to spread its influence to even the most distant regions in the world and, with the help of its supporters, learners, researchers, influencers, and world-changers, it will bring joy, love, hope, and light to those otherwise unreachable places and it will bind the bond of humanity ever-stronger in its efforts to support causes that bring hope and restoration throughout the world.Below are some of my favorite picks from Sevenly’s products for presents and stocking-stuffers:Sevenly Gift Card -- Get a gift for anyone here!Dreamer Tee -- Shop it here!Journey Tee -- Get the look here!Adventurers Tank -- Get it here!Ocean Tee -- For us beach-lovers! Get it here!Henna Hand Long-sleeve -- Shop it here!Shop these beautiful prints -- For that creative in your life! Here are two of my favorites:Beauty PrintMountains Are Calling PrintMy personal favorite is the CAUSEBOX -- The gift that keeps giving! Learn more about how to bless someone with this gift here!

Give-- Joy to the World

I believe that empowerment is powerful. It has the capacity to rectify offense, transform tragedies, assure hope, and sustain joy. It has the ability to connect people from nations, countries, and continents apart. It is capable of weaning differences of race, ethnicity, gender, culture, and religion. Empowerment reminds us of our shared humanity and, in doing so, encourages us to see the needs others as equally, if not more, important than our own. It radically changes the way we love, the way we share, the way we sacrifice, the way we rebuild, the way we dream, the way we inspire, and the way we live.It is officially December 1^st, and the Christmas and holiday season is fresh upon us. For some of us, this is crunch time, but also the best time of the year: we begin to fill our schedules, plan parties, see to our shopping lists, wrap presents, decorate homes, reminisce and relive old traditions, and cherish time with our loved ones. But, through the business of the season, my hope is that we will be reminded of our impact and of the light that we each carry. As we prepare to shower our loved ones with gifts that show our appreciation and love for them, I want to provide opportunities for you to see your gift go further. Over the course of this month, I am going to feature the work of various organizations that are making an impact in communities throughout the world. I not only want you to be familiar with how these organizations are making a tangible impact in these communities, but I want you to become aware of how your talents, skills, dreams, passions, and everything that makes you unique can contribute to the work of these organizations.As I started preparing for this series, my hope was that I would be able to offer our readers with the means to buy gifts that would go further, that would make a real impact in the world. But, that hope surpassed anything I could have imagined it to become. As I was interviewing CEOs and co-founders of these organizations, I came to realize that our empowerment stretches far beyond even buying gifts that give back. Our empowerment and our talents, our passions and our dreams, have the capacity to add to the work of these organizations in a way that they might not have seen before. Our empowerment has the immense capacity to strengthen the transformation that these organizations are carrying out in communities around the world. Our empowerment has created a unique force within each one of us that adds a valuable and lasting presence to the work of these organizations so that they are able to surpass the dreams and goals that they have set for themselves.In my preparation, I also noticed a parallel between all the meaning we associate with this Christmas or holiday season and the meaning in the work of these organizations. Love, joy, and peace are sentiments that we associate with the goodness of the holiday season. We see lights strung in trees, we feel magic in the air, we hear laughter ringing throughout our dinner conversations, and we are filled with the richness of love, joy, and peace. Then, with the joy that is so present in our hearts, we find ourselves more compassionate and more generous in the way that we treat those around us. This mantra of love, joy, and peace that we see written on cards, engrained in decorations, or even exchanged in greetings becomes prevalent in our actions. “‘Tis the season!” we declare as we throw spare change in charity buckets, or offer spare dollars to someone in need, or simply lend a helping hand. But, the meaning of love, joy, and peace goes far beyond the timely constraints of the holiday season. The embodiment of love, joy, peace, compassion, kindness, generosity, and hope, then, are reflected in the way that we treat one another. The joy we see in Christmas cheer is found again when we support an organization that replants trees throughout the world. The hope that we experience during the holidays is found again when we involve ourselves with an organization that empowers people to rise above poverty. The peace that we see so eminent in this Christmas season is found again when we support the work of an organization that restores dignity to survivors of human trafficking. The compassion that we practice throughout our generosity during this season is found again when we contribute to the work of an organization that provides clean drinking water to the roughly 660 million people in the world who are lacking it.My hope for this series is that the power and influence that we see so eminent in these organizations would inspire and empower us to use our capabilities, our strength, our talents, our dreams, our hopes, and our ambitions to contribute to the transformation that is enacting positive change and restoring love, joy, and peace throughout the world. I hope that through seeing the work of these organizations, Sevenly, Tentree, Krochet Kids International, 31 Bits, iSanctuary, Generosity Water, and the Little Market, that we would be inspired to first recognize the unique value that we are each able to offer to the world and that we would use that uniqueness to inspire a movement of empowerment wherever we are.‘Tis the season … to change the world.