Wednesday 7 January 2015

Masato homeless campaign Beanie UPDATE




The meaning behind the homeless beanie campaign we started on December 2nd 2014 with a campaign buy a beanie we donate one. 

We reached a time when we wanted to have some stocking fillers for Christmas early November and decided to do beanies and gloves with the Masato branding by early December we had received a forwarded story from Gaynor Jackson of Artisan Designs of Michelle who runs Donate Soxs who often on her own goes around the streets of London, Camden Town to the West End with donations of clothes especially homeless who have dogs and not allowed in homeless shelters. We raised 63 beanies and distributed across London we are now helping with gloves buy one we donate one. 

As the homeless beanie campaign hit, the Masato team came across further information an organisation in Belfast called 100 Help the Homeless who wanted 50 beanies before December 19th 2014 with your help we achieved, many of these donations were from USA and Canada. We received assistance from Ulster TV and Belfast Telegraph.  

By mid December Karen Bidios had contacted us from Porchlight based across Kent a homeless charity since 1974 lead by it's Chief Executive Mike Barrett at the end of the campaign January 31st we have raised £320 for the charity from the sale of the beanies we know £320 is only small drop in the ocean for the charity we aim to be bigger with the new campaign starting in October and running in January 2016 we will need volunteers and single homeless projects across UK to contact us please email studio@masato.co.uk attention of Mike.  



The issues this charity faces is lack of council and government funding on the homeless issue from one of the few independent homeless charities who work in all fields, it is paramount that charities like Porchlight survive. To donate directly www.porchlight.org.uk 


Norwich LEAP 

Although our campaign was due to end on January 5th we extended until January 31st as homelessness is all year round. 

We helped with Norwich LEAP http://norwichleap.co.uk every beanie bought or gloves we donate to the Norwich street homeless proving that homelessness is not just for the major cities a quaint city like Norwich the homeless population is growing fast. 

The campaign as ended with an amazing result of 71 beanies for the Norwich homeless charity & 30 pairs of gloves this will be turned into cash for the charity of £420 going towards the work they do in the city at a time when local government is unable to do so. 

Interesting fact on the Norwich campaign 80% sales were from Norwich & Norfolk most businesses in the city, we achieved a high social media presence with 15 individuals driving the campaign. 



Why did we decide to help ? 

We believe in many ideals one of which is to help causes by splitting profits for charitable causes and raising awareness we hope that the beanie campaign as raised awareness across social media there as been a bit of criticism of what we have done. 

Finally we have realised during this journey how easy it is to be street homeless in the UK and very little help to be back on track many reasons loss of job, marital and relationship breakdown, family death etc 

Media coverage 

National Student magazine 

http://www.thenationalstudent.com/Fashion/2015-01-08/Help_tackle_homelessness_with_Masato_London_and_Porchlight.html 

Canterbury Times 

http://www.canterburytimes.co.uk/Fashion-brand-supports-Porchlight-beanie-hat/story-25888496-detail/story.html

Further reading