Sign up to receive RetailROI’s monthly e-newsletter that provides information on current projects, ways to get involved, upcoming trips and some great ‘feel good’ stories!
Just Back from South Africa - Latest Impact Update
Over a two-week trip in late July and early August, Dan Grady and Sue Mueller led a productive mission to Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, alongside Retail ROI members Beth Buzek, Gary McQuillan, and his daughter Jessica.
South Africa is the only place where we have a continuous opportunity from age 3 through college, making an impact on thousands of children so far. We have built schools, trained new leaders and help develop a college scholarship program. This trip focused on educational support and community development initiatives. Highlights of the trip included:
· Luo House Activities: Organized a shopping adventure and dinner for the children, encouraging them to try new foods such as ostrich, calamari, and sushi, enhancing their culinary experiences.
· Motor Skills and Learning Project: Painted the back wall of Ithemba school black, with plans for GLA students to add shapes, colors, and numbers to assist children during recess.
· Ithemba Fun Day: Conducted two full-day ADDO bus trips for Ithemba staff and children from the Luo House, ensuring continuity in school activities with support from student teachers and local leaders.
· Host House Construction: Dan Grady is building a host house at Global Village, set to be completed in October, to facilitate future visits from ROI members. Dan Grady and Sue Mueller plan to return to Jeffreys Bay twice a year. Interested individuals can contact Dan Grady for future participation at ccoredan@gmail.com
Much more was accomplished over the two-week period, including sharing our career trajectory and strategizing for opportunities for the kids as well as planning and budgeting for future projects. For more detailed information on what was accomplished click here to see more pictures and be directed to the RetailROI South Africa country page.
Special Needs Concierge for Families - new free tool
Hey everyone, our friend Dave Krikac who brought us Devicesforautism.com has launched a new free AI chatbot to help families find special needs services in their communities. Please share. Here is more detail. Learn more here.
31 States Using the Cost of Social Worker Turnover Calculator
So far in about 3 weeks it has reached 30 states and US territories and over 90 different total people have used the tool thus far. It is slowly spreading around and hopefully providing value and helping.
Thank you for your support. See below for more details and access and if you have connections in state or foster care agencies, please share it.
https://socialcalc.retailroi.org/
Thanks as always.
RetailROI helps the poor and vulnerable in Central Honduras with ongoing projects
Hello RetailROI supporters! We’d like to give you an update on the work RetailROI is doing in Central Honduras with one of our two partners there. Click here to go to our country page.
Financial Transparency
Hi everyone, we hope you are having a terrific week and if you either finishing a holiday week (Canada) or going into one (US), we hope you have a great one.
The last month or so has been heavy on financials, sending out grants and reviewing state registrations and filing our annual tax return. To learn more click here.
Grants Distributed
The board of RetailROI recently met and approved over $414,000 in grants to 23 different organizations around the world. Thank you, thank you for your support. Click here to learn more.
Better Together
We have always talked about how the most powerful aspect of RetailROI is not the funds we raise but the cooperation that occurs between charities and other charities and companies. Today we get to share two accomplishments.
1) Thrive In Joy's C11 Character Training was recently shared at the Felix Organization (Darryl McDaniel's Charity from RunDMC) which offers camps for foster youth. This is not the first one, but now several RetaiiROI partners are deploying C11 in their organizations as well as it is now in LA City Schools and in Dominican Republic.
2) The second announcement is for those of you that attended SuperSaturday. Thanks to the rapid turnaround and dedication of Avanade and Microsoft, who both donated a ton of time and software licenses the Social Worker Turnover Calculator is complete. Together this has the potential to help thousands of children's lives and potentially save billions of dollars in costs to taxpayers and our society by reducing turnover of case workers. Click here to learn more.
DONATE APPRECIATED STOCK
We are excited to share that RetailROI can now accept appreciated stock as donations. Perhaps you received stock options as part of a compensation plan and have a daunting tax bill coming due if you sell? You can now donate a portion to RetailROI and lower that tax burden and get a deduction for the full value!
When you donate appreciated stock to RetailROI you really create a win-win-win:
You get an immediate tax deduction for the FULL CURRENT VALUE of the stock - if the stock is worth $10,000 today, it is like you writing a check to RetailROI for $10,000.
You avoid the capital gains taxes that you would have to pay and otherwise lower your gains
RetailROI gets to use these funds to help orphans and vulnerable children by selling the stock with no commissions so 100% goes to help the children.
A special thanks to the generosity of Dr. Bill Yaglou for forcing us to figure out how to do this! Now it is available to everyone.
If this is something that might appeal to you, please click here to learn more. 100% would go to help the children.
Devices for Autism
Many of you met our friend Dave Krikac at SuperSaturday. Dave has spent the last 25+ years working tirelessly to create employment opportunities for differently-abled young adults. For years they have helped recycle used tech equipment to provide jobs. These young people have amazing tech skills.
They have recently rebranded to Devices for Autism and no better time to share this with you than National Autism Day.
Whether you have 1 or 2 devices or truckloads, they can take them, clean them, provide a certificate of drive destruction and you provide jobs for young adults. Click here or the picture above to learn more. Also, please share on your socials https://www.devicesforautism.com/
"Extraordinary" - I'm not sure what to say. Simply an amazing trip.
A group of 9 of us just got back from the RetailROI Trip to Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa. This is the only area of the world where we have a continuity of opportunity from age 3 through to college and career. It also happens to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.
RetailROI's first project was helping to build a 10-room schoolhouse for a pre-school named Ithemba. It now houses 160 3-6yr old children for pre-school through kindergarten and then they have a tutoring program for 60 elementary school children in the afternoon.
Opportunity for the students comes from getting to go to a private school rather than public schools which are overrun. RetailROI currently covers 17 children in elementary school (costs as low as $240 per year...more on this coming as there are 60 kids in need.)
Read More
Mentors Needed – How to become one
Over 17 million young Americans – nearly half the population of young people between 10 and 18 years of age – live in situations that put them at risk of not living up to their potential. Most of these young people need or want mentoring, but less than 20% are in high quality mentoring relationships.
Could you be that one safe, consistent adult in a child’s life, the one who helps them see their strengths? Maybe you could champion the cause of mentoring at-risk youth for your company.
52 New Graduates Thanks To You
Last week, 52 young adults graduated from the Vocational School program in Liberia supported by RetailROI. Liberia has an unemployment rate that is as high as 75% due to lack of industry or lack of training.
About 5 years ago we partnered with LifeSong to start a vocational training school. Intel and HP had paid for the original K-8 school. That cost $30,000. The construction students in the vocation program along with skilled engineers built an identical building for middle and high school for $10,000!
That is just one of the programs. Last week, these students graduated from the program with diplomas in General Construction, Computer Science, Tailoring, Fashion Design and Cosmology...providing a hand up, not a handout. Way to go!!!
TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE
This just in from our partner Children's Law Center of Washington where RetailROI has helped over the years provide funding to help double and triple the work of getting kids who are identified available for adoption expedited through the court system. Because of your support of RetailROI, we have been able to partner with CLCW and these kids have a forever home.
"Just a quick email to share with you our favorite picture from adoptions #560 and 561 in Island County on Monday! Island County is currently the only local county in Washington state still holding adoptions in person, so many of our families -- like this one – prefer to make the drive so that they can have their special day in court to commemorate the special occasion.
The two boys in this picture are twins and – because of YOUR HELP – found permanence with the same family. Even better? The girl in dad’s arms is their biological sister… so through the support of Defenders like you, we were able to help all three of these kids remain TOGETHER in the same family forever.
THANK YOU. We truly couldn’t do this without each of you." - The Children’s Law Center of Washington
Podcast - Sharing RetialROI’s Greg Buzek on “Zebra’s Your Edge” blog.
Doing Well by Doing Good: How You Can Leverage Your Professional Experience for Philanthropic Purposes (According to Someone Who Has)
In this exclusive interview, Greg Buzek, founder and president of retail analyst firm IHL Group, reveals how his prolific career has fueled his philanthropic mission with RetailROI, a nonprofit he co-founded to help orphans around the world.
Despite the vast differences in their purposes and operating models, charities and corporations can learn a lot from each other – how to structure an organization, reach key audiences or secure funds to support initiatives. Perhaps one of the most prominent commonalities among for-profit and non-profit entities is the influence networking can have on the success of one’s mission. read more
There is a lot of negative information in the news about Haiti, but let’s share some great news.
On Saturday, July 31, 2021, 26 graduates crossed the stage to become the first-ever graduating class of Lifesong School.
These graduates have worked hard and have overcome incredible obstacles in an especially volatile year to reach this point, and we are proud of their willingness and determination to succeed!
Thanks to everyone that has donated both monetarily and with support over the years for RetailROI! But a super thank you to Aptos and RetailROI Australia for the continuous and tremendous support in Haiti!
Together we can make a HUGE difference. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Wondering how you can help orphans and vulnerable kids in your own area during COVID or any other time? Take 4 minutes to learn about an easy program called Socialight having an amazing impact in Charlotte with our partner CFK.
Click on image to the left to launch the video.
It doesn’t take much to have a HUGE impact in your local community… and you can do it from your home.
Our first three students who received the Tertiary Education Scholarships graduated during 2020. You might remember that RetailROI gave the seed money for this initiative – Thanks Again!!
I am happy to announce that all three ladies are professionally employed. Nancy (BA Communication) is employed at a regional radio station, Tsungi is practicing as a Civil Engineer and Daphne is an accountant at an international accounting firm in Humansdorp. All three ladies are now contributing back into the fund to enable more learners to follow in their footsteps.
More than 350 people from the retail industry recently joined together for a virtual fundraiser event by the Retail Orphan Initiative.
Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI) is a grassroots charitable organization made up of people in the retail industry who use their skillsets, networks, and funding to help the more than 400 million orphaned and vulnerable children. Since inception, RetailROI has helped fund over 200 projects in 27 countries, mobilizing more than $4 million to help over 229,000 children.
100% Passing Grade
We celebrate the 9th grade class of the LifeSong Haiti school that Aptos and so many from RetailROI have been involved with getting built. They shared on November 12, 2020 that 100% of the 9th graders passed the national exam even in the midst of COVID.
No one left behind!!! Thank you so much for your support of these kids and RetailROI!
Celebrating with our Friends and Partners
We thought this would brighten your day and bring a smile to your face with the help of friends at Both Hands. (Little secret - we want to be just like JT when we group up). For the last 10 years RetailROI has partnered with our friends at Both Hands. Both Hands creates fundraisers for the families trying to adopt children to cover the fees and costs. The fundraisers are doing extreme honey-do list makeovers for widows in the community. So rather than be sponsored to golf or run, the family adopting and their friends get sponsored to work a day cleaning, fixing and improving a widow’s home. RetailROI plays a small role in helping cover some for the admin costs for Both Hands so they are able to do this for families at little to no cost and increase their effectiveness….and they have gig news to share…from the Grands Ole Opry…that will bring a smile to your face at the end of this week. Celebrate and enjoy our friends JT, Bethany, and a special guest from country music glory.
RetailROI has a strong relationship with a series of schools in South Africa ranging from age 3 to college age. In fact, through your contributions and support of SuperSaturday, we have more than 25 children progressing from the projects (townships) to a strong leadership high school experience and a few through college. In fact, in 2019 we had our first graduate from poor pre-school not only graduate from high school, but also college and starting as an accountant post college.
The goal is to have a continuum of opportunity - and change family trees. Some of these students are the first in their family to ever graduate high school…you are giving them that opportunity.
I think it was about 8 years ago that Mark Haney went on his first trip with RetailROI. The goal was to install a Chromebook computer labs among other objectives in Dominican Republic. Not long after that trip Mark decided there was a better way to do these labs and soon he created a non-profit called CtrlAltDelPoverty with Greg Wilborn. They have created an amazing mobile computing lab that is essentially “internet in a box” that can be placed anywhere in the world and provide 1st world educational tools even where there is no power. Along the way, they met Gabrielle Thompson and the team from Free for Life International. Free for Life had always wanted to create a Human Trafficking Prevention Curriculum and were working towards that. Enter in MacLaren Group who met FFL and CtrlAltDelPoverty at our SuperSaturday event who helped with talent and funding and soon not only was there a prevention curriculum, but it was now included as part of every one of the mobile computing labs that are now installed in schools and orphan homes in over 20 counties around the world. Pretty cool, right? read more
Zack and I (Urban Impact) would like to extend our sincerest thanks for the incredible impact the Giving Back Fund (RetailROI) grant made in our lives and the lives of children in our city over the past year. We just wanted to take a moment and let you know what your generosity allowed us to achieve:
We worked with one of the Pittsburgh Public schools to produce a full-scale elementary musical. This year, our production was Peter Pan Jr. We believe children are capable of taking on large amounts of responsibility when they are diligently coached, encouraged, and excited about a project. read more
The Children’s Law Center of Washington is a RetailROI partner that expedites new adoptions for children who have been stuck in the foster care system but have new families identified for them. They do this by cutting the red tape in the court system so when an adoptive family is identified and matched, the full adoption can take place much faster rather than having the child stuck in the foster system. RetailROI plays a significant role. read more
We want to extend our gratitude to our friends at the Retail Orphan Initiative (Retail ROI) for their support and backing in the last few years. We've been able to accomplish major projects and renovations, as well as continue to build our capacity thanks to their undying support. Check out our latest blog post on the impact that Retail ROI has had on Casita Copan. read more
(Thanks to Joe Skorupa for writing this) You may have heard Haiti has been grappling with protests and economic hardship, yet despite the challenges, 165 students at the Bercy School continue to attend classes and improve their lives with the gift of life-changing hope. read more
When women and girls are rescued from human trafficking what happens next? They need immediate emergency medical care and provision of basic needs, therapy for overcoming trauma, and assistance for ongoing medical evaluations. read more
Kids build their own school addition in Liberia You've all heard the old adage, "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Well those words could not be more apropos with the latest update from one our projects in Liberia. read more
Would you believe it was funded by an auction of a “Box of Nothing”?…yep, a new health clinic in Bercy, Haiti was funded by a RetailROI Australia auction that included $87,000 USD donated for a box of air at the Retail Global Trade Show in Gold Coast, Australia.
Celebrate with us! RetailROI turns 10 It was at Oracle OpenWorld on September 15, 2008 (the day that Lehman Brothers shut their doors) that the idea of RetailROI was hatched with 6 friends who worked for different companies. We wondered how instead of just competing with each other, what if together the industry could do some good.
85% of Chinese Orphans Now In Families
Due to the unintended consequences of the one-child policy, millions of Chinese children not born physically or mentally perfect were tragically relegated to large institutional orphanages for years. Sadly, we are talking millions and millions of children who were abandoned over the years. read more