Knotty Boy Charity Focuses
 

MAY 28, 2009 - Our First One!
Hello all! We're so excited to announce that our $5 for Charity birthday event was a huge success, far exceeding our expectations thanks to all you lovely people that came out and helped out! Our three superstar stylists did 40 fantastic haircuts in a mere 7.5 hours, with a lineup of five people deep at the door and turning away many toward the end of the day. With all donations counted, a combined total of $900 was raised through $5 haircuts, $5 products and cash donations to the cause. The Neighborhood Houses of Greater Vancouver will be accepting this donation and have already honored Knotty Boy with Sponsorship status at their upcoming 25th Good Neighbor Awards Celebration in November. wee!  This event was so successful we've decided to make it a yearly Knotty Boy Lock Shop birthday event, so if you missed out this year, be sure to stay tuned for our next one!
 

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Cancer Fundraiser for Knotty Boy Graphic Designer Nathan Matthews

November 28, 2009: Hello all, this is a special note to you from me, Adrianna the KB Boss Lady, to tell you about the battle our dear friend and beloved graphic designer Nathan (yes, the very one responsible for our adorable labels and current version of our little Knotty Boy) is going through right now.

In the summer of 2009 at age 28, Nathan discovered to his shock that what had kept him out of the skate park and at home for weeks was not pneumonia as he was told, but testicular cancer that had spread throughout his lungs and body. Many, many days of chemo, surgery, stem cell transplants and more chemo has destroyed his body and immune system, and there is still much more to go. Progress and prognosis has gone from positive to uncertain at this time. To make matters worse, his mother’s cancer, which had been in remission for the past year has come back, making it impossible for either one to travel to see each other. Nathan is an accomplished skateboarder, photographer and graphic designer for many of the world's largest skateboard companies, however, through all of this he has been unable to work.

Personally, this horrendous disease has been responsible for the loss of Knotty Boy co-founder Andrew, my grandmother and the near-loss of my father. You can see why we don’t want to have to say goodbye to another. This is why Knotty Boy is matching every extra $1 donated by you on the Check Out page to help Nathan keep his home and whatever else he needs most to beat this thing.

We'd love to anonymously mail him a big, fat check containing all our contributions as soon as we have enough to make a difference. You have helped us raise so much for deserving kids all over the planet so far, and even though this is not an officially registered charity I hope you will trust us in this to help us get another deserving kid, Nathan, through this unbearable time in his life.
 
Thank you with everything in me, Knotty ones! We'll keep you posted on his progress.
Adrianna  xo
 

UPDATE Jan. 28, 2010: A total of $400 has been contributed in two short months, $1 at a time!! Thank you SO much for your generosity, Knotty kids! This fundraiser will come to an end Feb. 28, 2010, and for this last month's push, I'm calling on each of you to give $2 instead of $1, which Knotty Boy is matching, to raise the very most we can before we pass these contributions along... and here's why. At this very moment, Nathan is immersed in an entire month of isolated hospitalization. During this time his stem cells have been removed and he is being administered all the chemo his poor body can tolerate, after which the stem cells will be replaced. Nathan has been sedated to keep him comfortable throughout this horrendous procedure, but he awoke last week to find his wonderful, ever-faithful girlfriend by his side, and because he can't talk, wrote out in Jiffy marker "We are getting married." We are ecstatic and now even more desperate for him to beat this than ever before, even though, sadly, the outlook for his recovery looks even less certain now. Thank you for your prayers, love, positive energy and crossed fingers for Nathan beating this thing, for good. We know it can be done!!

UPDATE Feb. 19, 2010: We are heartbroken to share with you that Nathan Matthews passed away early Valentines Day morning. This news was totally unexpected for all as it appeared his condition was improving for the first time in months. Your generous contributions combined with our matched amount came to a total of $528 today which will be presented to his fiance Nicole tomorrow at Nathan's memorial service to help her with related expenses.We all have been living under a cloud of deep sadness since receiving the news. It seems just too soon to say goodbye to one of the kindest and most talented humans we've ever known. However, Nathan was fortunate enough to have lived several full lifetimes in his short 20 years and we are all so lucky to have known him. If you'd like to get to know him yourself, please feel free to view some of his incredible artwork and photography here: www.nmatthews.com   If you contributed to this fundraiser, thank you once again for your gracious support for him and his family during this time. We love you, Knotty kids.

 REST IN PEACE
Nathan Riley Matthews
December 1, 1980 - February 13, 2010

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The Official Knotty Boy Child-Sponsorship Fundraiser

We are now shipping out ALL orders in eco-friendly shipping materials, and for free!! Read on for more about this good news!

Back in November 2005, Knotty Boy decided to embark upon a sort of non-conventional fund-raising adventure, where we began combining one good thing we were already doing - child sponsorship in under-developed countries - with a NEW good thing - making eco-friendly packaging an option for customers! All good things. So, for $1 extra, you could choose to have your order packed in a cardboard box filled with biodegradable foam bits made out of corn starch that dissolved in water, just like the Wicked Witch of the West (rather than the standard bubble-mailer or Styrofoam packing bits). To our utter surprise, over 30% of you green-conscious customers decided it was definitely worth the $1 for the fun of seeing the packing material fizzle up and go down your sink. BUT what really sold you on the whole thing was the fact that when you chose this option, $. 50 of that $1 also went directly toward sponsoring a new child in need.

Before beginning this special fund-raiser, Knotty Boy already sponsored seven little ones from all over the world, and we still continue to support them year after year with the proceeds from each order you normally place with us. However, we really wanted to do more, faster, and you totally stepped in to help!

In just over one year, your donations, $.50 at a time, allowed us to sponsor a total of five more deserving kids around the world, at a rate of one child every three months (see their profiles below). Again, this was a total of 30% of our Knotty family making this small donation with every order placed on our website. Do you know how huge that is?? If we here at Knotty Boy have learned anything from all of this, it’s that it is so easy to make choices in this world that don’t cost us a lot, but that directly impact the lives of others so that they can grow up and hopefully have the same opportunities to change things in their worlds, too. Exciting!

Now, even MORE exciting is this little fact: Our genius Warehouse Manager, Michael, found a source of eco-friendly packing materials that is the same price as what we were paying for the nasty land-filler packaging! Et voila, we are now packing ALL orders we send out in eco-friendly packaging, at no extra cost to you. Our ‘environmental footprint’ just got even smaller now that we are no longer sending out ANYTHING packed in Styrofoam or plastic bubble-mailers, trading those for new paper-filled mailers and cardboard boxes with the corn-starch packing bits that fizzle up in water. Wahoo!

So NOW, when you choose the $1 extra option upon check-out, 100% of your $1 is going toward the sponsorship of a needy child in a developing country with a year’s worth of food, clothing and schooling they otherwise would not have had. (Heck, we’ll even throw in a little Knotty Boy mystery gift for FREE, just to say ‘thank you’ for your contribution.) If 30% of you still choose this option, that simply means we’re going to be adding twice as many kids to our little sponsored family than we were before, twice as fast. How can you not love that? It simply rocks the spot, kids.

Thank you so much for coming along with us on these efforts, and helping make it even easier for us to be an ethical company, dedicated to what we like to call ‘purpose beyond profits’. *beam!* We love you!!

In order to show you how close we are getting to each of our new child sponsorship goals, our esteemed graphic-designer Jerome has made us this adorable Knotty Heart-o-Meter.

Click on the Knotty Boy’s heart to see how far along we are in re-sponsoring little Estefany de Almeida of Brazil!

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July 07 update

As of March 15, 07, we began contributing the funds (your FULL $1 contribution, now that we are sending all orders out eco-friendly at no extra cost!) received to re-sponsor each of our 5 new little ones for their next two year's needs. The other seven children in our original Sponsored Child family that we've sponsored since 1998 continue to be supported by a percentage of customer order proceeds.

As of July 19, aready we have received enough to re-sponsor little Kandia Tripura of Bangladesh and our eighth child in total, until March 2009. Hooray!

Next, we will keep you updated when our goals are met for re-sponsoring
our adorable Estefany de Almeida of Brazil.

The sooner these kids next two years' sponsorship needs are refilled, the sooner we can move on to sponsoring new children in need, so thank you SO much for your continued contributions, Knotty kids!

December 06 – March 07

Wow! Thank you, all, for contributing in another three short months what was needed to sponsor our twelfth child in total, who’s heartbreaking story makes us even more happy to be able to help, if that were even possible. Meet Justino Choque Buendia from Bolivia here!

September 06 - December 06:
That’s right, as of December 25, 2006 – in fact, early Christmas morning, to our absolute delight - enough funds were collected to add yet ANOTHER child to our sponsorship effort. We are so pleased to introduce 15-year-old Daniel Sathiyawell from Sri Lanka to our growing family - now a grand total of eleven!

June 06 - September 06:
And you’ve gone and done it AGAIN, you Knotty kids!! Thanks to your extra $1 contributions upon checkout from our website, meet our most recently sponsored cutie, little 4 ½ year old Indhumathy Murugan from India. As of September 19, Indhu makes our tenth sponsored child in our little Knotty family. You guys have directly impacted Indhumanthy’s life by helping to provide her with a year’s worth of food, clothing and schooling she otherwise would not have had. Thank you so much for your continued donations!

February 06 – June 06:
You did it again! Meet 2 year old Larissa Ariane Seares de Abreu from Brazil, sponsored child #2 as a direct result of your donations through this fundraiser, and ninth child in total that Knotty Boy sponsors. The goal was met for Larissa on June 7th, so now as of August 22 we again have over half of what is needed to sponsor a third child for a year. Weird, we’re starting to notice a 3.5 - 4 month trend here… very interesting… Knotty Boy Sponsorship Project/bizarre social experiment? Good golly, what more could you ask for from a website! Huzzah!

Update November 05 - February 06:
We did it! Since we began this initiative in November 05, you Knotty kids have contributed - $.50 at a time - enough to sponsor a new child for one year through this eco-packing fund raiser! Meet Kandia Tripura, our eighth child in total that we currently sponsor yearly. Kandia will be 8 years old on May 20th, 2006. He, his one brother and two sisters live in Bangladesh. His father works in the fields and his mother cares for the large family at home, which is a bamboo hut with sadly very little land surrounding them to cultivate. Kandia is in Kindergarten this year thanks to your donations! He likes to study, enjoys reading stories, and his favorite subject is math. He’s our newest sponsored child and we’re very happy for the opportunity to help him and his family in this way.

Since the goal for Kandia was actually met on February 15th, as of April 15 we have now collected again over half of what is needed for child #2 through this effort. Your generosity is making a difference to both the environment by choosing better packing materials for your orders, and is also directly impacting the quality of a child’s life out there.

We will continue to add the profiles of each new child here, so keep checking back to see exactly how your 100 pennies are going toward not one, but two very important efforts that are being made toward relieving suffering on this planet. Thank you to everyone that has donated so far!

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Toronto Naturals 4th Annual Hair and Beauty Show
May 27, 2007

When contacted by Toronto Naturals for sponsorship of this year's event, we agreed that the most impactful way we could contribute would be by donating 100 of our reusable, natural-cotton Knotty Boy Kit Bags to use for the event's gift bags - rather than using the standard plastic. We love that this show is dedicated to the promotion of chemical-free styles and products for heavily-textured and Afro hair types!

Knotty Boy Warehouse Eco-Action

Down at the Knotty Boy Warehouse (or Zee Varhaus as we like to call it), next-to-all cardboard and paper is recycled, and what we can’t use, we give away as packing material and moving boxes to others. The Warehouse actually only generates less than one green garbage bag of non-recyclable garbage every two weeks!! Wherever we can, packing materials from shipments sent to us are also used for sending KB products back out to you kids. So if your order arrives in a box that looks like it’s been used for something else – surprise, it probably was! (Or... it WAS really run over by a truck, or both if you’re extra lucky.)

And if we may boast a little more on behalf of Knotty Boy, we have also been awarded a Certificate of Diversion congratulating us on all the recycling that we do here at the DreadQuarters. In 2005 we managed to divert 12 cubit yards (or 6 pickups-full), and in 2006 it was almost double - 22 cu. yards and 11 pickups-full! Heck, how about a picture of it for your viewing pleasure…

All this to say, we’re attempting to use our noggins to make changes along the golden path of conscious consumerism. Check out our Knotty Boy Vision and Values page if you haven’t before, to see more on what this is all about for us. We’re excited to be finding better ways of doing things, and wanted to let you know all the good planet-happy Knotty news. YAY us!!!

Dreads for Wishes

On March 26, 2006 Knotty Boy Lock Shop and Salon helped Knotty Kalen Stevens-Heap ‘sell’ and cut her locks to raise funds for The Children’s Wish Foundation, in memory of a friend who passed away from cancer at age 15. Read all about it, and watch the movie here!

Knotty Boy now on MySpace and Facebook!

Get to know the rest of your Knotty family on MySpace here!

Get to know the rest of your Knotty family on Facebook here!