why does barrio.la support LA public schools?

A schoolyard in Mar Vista

We’ll do what we can here to fall short of going full-on cheesy & sounding like politicians, but schools are LITERALLY the backbone of our community. They mean everything to local neighborhoods, & every city is only as good as it’s schools. They drive home prices, thus property taxes, thus funding public initiatives that in turn make the schools & cities a better atmosphere for learning. Our kids spend a 1/3rd of their young lives there, & it’s the source of inspiration for entire generations. Frankly speaking – a community is only as good as it’s schools, & barrio.la knows that to truly make an impact locally – we have to have some sort of presence at LA public schools.

That is why we developed & rolled out in late 2016 our LA Schools Giveback Program.

Our customized flyer we provide to schools

The program was simple to set up. We made contact with booster club, PTA, & administration representatives for some local elementary schools, & gave them a simple proposition:

• We’ll give you a promo code to give to people who visit our shop

• The promo code can be used with ANY OTHER coupons or deals we offer

• 10% of every sale using that promo code will be donated back to your school

• We’ll give a gift basket of L.A.-made goods ($50 value) that you can use for a raffle or fundraiser.

We knew we had to “go big” & do whatever we can to support LA public schools.

The ironic thing about our commitment to L.A. public schools is that neither of us ever attended public school – oh wait, that’s not entirely true – Rick got kicked out of Sacred Heart in Kindergarten & “had” to go to our local public school for 6 months – until college when we both happily journeyed on to University of Washington & Washington State.

For us, the foundation of private school educations gave us the ability to see all of the potential in our local & neighborhood schools, knowing that the difference in our schools lies in family, community & business support.

Los Angeles schools need funding, grants, & volunteers to fill in the gaps where the bare bones of current budgets fall short.

Schools desperately need funding to help maintain programs & services many of us got when we were younger.

This is where the smart people of Amazon stepped in with Amazon Smiles & enticed people to purchase everything they were already buying on Amazon.com specifically on Amazon Smiles, in the spirit of donating back to their designated school.

In theory this sounds good, but having dissected the percentage of give back (3%) at my daughter’s school, we knew that we could create a more effective & locally focused program. Also – stopping short of saying it outright, check the prices of items in Amazon Smiles vs. the rest of Amazon… they often seem to be priced a little different. Just sayin’…

Amazon definitely falls short in their give-back program, but unfortunately – too many schools think it’s the best option.

The goal of our school give back campaign is very simple:

1) Help raise funding for your school by giving 10% of your school’s sales directly back to your school on a quarterly basis.

2) Support local businesses & product makers – good people in your neighborhood making rad stuff.

3) Drive local – by supporting (L.A.) local we are working together to make our communities better. Corporations simply don’t.

Interested in going over the details of the program with us?

what is barrio.la?

we remind Angelenos of what “living locally” has to offer.

barrio.la finds local companies making high quality, eco-friendly goods right here in Southern California.

Los Angeles has so much going on & is alive with eclectic neighborhoods, places to see & things to do – so while we’re at it – we keep you in the know about cool things going on in your own ‘hood & the cool people making it all happen.

feel like wandering with us?

cool… ’cause that’s what we do here.

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