Wednesday 18 December 2013

Houtschild's Festive Spirit

Houtschild's Annemarie Fennema reminds us that a simple action with the smallest of donations can amount to something very large indeed when everyone's contribution is added together. This is a super story with which to celebrate both the spirit of the season and also our second contribution from our international colleagues in Holland :)

A small article in our local newspaper was the start of a very good plan.

The article described an initiative by one of the Dutch Lions clubs. Back in 2012 they began collecting coupons from Douwe Egberts coffee and exchanging them for coffee to distribute among the local food banks. This year they did so again and the number of coupons they received was overwhelming. Coupon clipping is a typical Dutch habit.

In our office we drink lots of Douwe Egberts tea and coffee but we do not really know what to do with the coupons. We had loads of them just lying around, and feeling an early Christmas spirit coming on, we decided to donate the coupons to this good cause. 

In just two weeks we came up with 23,844 points, which amounts to some 50 packs of coffee.

Douwe egberts 1

On December 10th, before we sent them our parcel, the Lions’ total score was almost 7 million points. How much coffee would that be? And what would that look like in terms of coupons?

On Saturday, after the first big count, the score was well over 11 million points!*
That sure feels good!

Douwe Egberts picture 2The count goes on for another fortnight...

What a fantastic idea Annemarie and thank you! I think this is something to keep in mind for 2014 with e.g. the various coupons given away by supermarkets from time to time here in the UK. 

* = which makes the total donated in excess of 23,000 packs by my reckoning - that's an awful lot of coffee - Ed

1 comment:

  1. Mark Cashmore, Chief Executive22 December 2013 at 07:47

    This shows that small actions when multiplied together make a big difference.

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