1.       What donation are you making?
 
We are donating 1,000 bughats to support the people volunteering to help clean up the gulf and take care of endangered wildlife.  We have embroidered the hats with a commemorative logo for their work in helping to “save our gulf”.   We hope that the hats will help to protect the volunteers from the sun and the biting insects and make them just a bit more comfortable.

Additionally, we are planning to donate ten percent of all on-line sales revenue to help support the wildlife rescue effort

 
2.       Why are you making this donation?

Seeing the nightly pictures of the devastation and the frustration caused by the slow moving bureaucracies we thought we could do something quickly that might help a little.  Small companies and individuals can make a difference while the big corporations and the government ramp up their efforts.  It is the American way.  We need to help each other.  You hear and read a lot about how greedy businesses are nowadays – we want to show people that is not true.

Besides, we have a connection to this part of the country.  One of our partners lived in Alabama and Louisiana for seven years while he was in the service. He even met his wife while stationed at Ft Polk. He had a lot of great times visiting the gulf, eating the oysters, shrimp and Crawfish.  Another partner lives along the FL coast. While it has not yet been impacted by this calamity, it certainly could be soon.


3.       Why did you pick these organizations to support?

If we do not protect our wildlife it could be gone forever.  These groups have a great reputation and are staffed by very dedicated people.  The volunteers helping to save the wildlife and estuaries are going to be in some high bug population areas. We thought our hats would be most appreciated by these groups.  They do not need to wear toxic sprays or repellents to stay protected. If they will be working with stressed wildlife the last thing they need to be wearing is DEET to further contaminate the animals or wash into the estuaries.

 
4.       Which groups are receiving the donations?

The LA Fish and Wildlife organization (  http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov  )and Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program ( www.btnep.org ) which is part of the coalition to restore coastal Louisianna.  The Save Our Gulf organization turned us on to this group as being in need of our hats.

CPT Cliff Comeaux has been very helpful getting our hats to the right people at Fish and Wildlife and Mel Landry of BT NEP has been our point of contact with the Estuary program.  Additionally, Leesa Astredo from humanityroad.org has been incredibly helpful putting us in touch with the right people to make these donations.  It was very frustrating trying to navigate through the national organizations and the government.  I understand they are inundated with offers of help and have many pressing issues to work on right now. We also appreciate all of the support we have received from Federal Express who did not charge us to ship the hats to the Gulf.

5.  Is there anything else you would like to say?

We hope that we can help spur other small business owners and individuals to make similar donations.  Maybe by seeing that a small company like ours can make a little difference they will be inspired to get involved.