Special-edition, Congolese-inspired TOMS Shoes
We're teaming up with Giving Partner Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI), an advocacy and grant-making organization founded by Ben Affleck, on two Congolese-inspired designs with an additional give. Read More >>
TOMS x charity: water - An Eyewer collaboration
TOMS and charity: water, an organization founded in 2006 (like TOMS!) that’s dedicated to to helping bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, join forces for the first-ever TOMS Eyewear collab! Read More >>
Giving TOMS Shoes in the DRC
Founded by Ben Affleck in 2010, ECI is an advocacy and grant-making organization that works with and for the people of DRC, the third most populous country in Africa, and one that struggled under a cycle of violence for nearly 20 years – particularly in the east. Read More >>
- Category:
Summer of Sight at the Skirball Cultural Center
By Annie + Christina
TOMS Community and Grassroots Interns, Summer 2012
On our second week at TOMS, we found ourselves in the belly of a giant wooden ark.
There’s a special place in Los Angeles where kids and families have the chance to take a journey inside an ark. Most of you know the story of Noah’s Ark: animals, flood, two-by-two. In fact, the story of Noah’s Ark is told universally in many cultures as a great metaphor of transformation and new beginnings. The Skirball Cultural Center invited TOMS to share our own interpretation of transformation and new beginnings through our Summer of Sight campaign.
As interns, our work began by collaborating with our fellow Summer intern classmates. Our goal was to create an inspirational and educational experience for the community . We worked hard to craft fun and interactive activities that would uniquely teach giving to kids and families visiting. We built signs, designed and produced vision binoculars and organized other creative materials for the various One for One activations. The tireless effort of the entire team of interns was crucial to the successful execution of our event.
The Skirball Museum set its sights to provide an inclusive environment where all children learn that their place in the world is important and that we can all begin making a difference today, in big and small ways. Noah’s Ark serves as a symbol that every child can help make the world a better place. The TOMS movement and Noah’s Ark share a common goal of providing an opportunity to give.
Many of the visitors were learning about TOMS foray into vision for the first time; this gave us an exciting opportunity to share specific examples through a three-pronged approach: Learn, Create, Give. Each activity served a specific educational purpose for the kids to understand the TOMS One for One model. Our favorites included: binoculars we created (out of toilet paper rolls!) to raise awareness about vision impairments and a design-your-own eyeglasses station which taught how to practice giving One for One.
Working with the Community and Grassroots team, our focus is to engage various TOMS audiences in the TOMS movement and to empower leaders and individuals around the country to do the same. By creating great resources and ideas like these, we hope to offer a platform that encourages this powerful conversation. If you’d like tips on how to make your own learning tools and activities, please shoot us a note! We’d love to hear how you’re being inspired to learn with those in your community.
Community@TOMS.com
