In this Skewcast interview, host Ritika Chhikara talks with Dave, a PromoCares board member, about the Water for Good/Planet Water campaign that ran from April to July 2023. The campaign aimed to raise $50,000 to fund two aqua‑tower water systems in underserved Mexican communities, but ultimately raised $175,000 through donations from distributors, suppliers, and a T‑shirt sale. Supplier partners pledged percentages of drinkware sales, and SNS Activewear contributed directly because of its Toltec plant in Mexico. The funds enabled the construction of six to seven towers, with three clustered near the Toltec facility. Dave and other board members traveled to San José del Rincón, a Mazahua indigenous village, to assemble the towers on site, describing the community’s culture, the challenging logistics, and the hands‑on building process. The towers provide clean drinking water and promote hygiene education, replacing unsafe well water and bucket‑filled toilets. Dave highlights the lasting impact on the community and the importance of seeing philanthropy in action. The conversation closes with ways listeners can continue to support such initiatives, including using ESP and Sage search filters to find responsible suppliers, purchasing campaign T‑shirts, and visiting promocares.org and planetwater.org for more information and future campaigns.
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So, Dave, welcome back to the Skewcast. When did you start the Water for Good campaign?
Good morning, Bobby. We. So the promo Cares board, the last couple of years, we've done some sort of campaign. You know, two years ago it was mental Health. Last year it was raising money for the Ukraine. And this year it was decided to do something to partner with Water for Good or to with Planet Water. And the campaign was live roughly from April, May through the end of June, July. Of course, the money's still coming in, but that was the original official initial time frame.
Yeah. What were your initial hopes? What did you think? You know, we hope to raise X amount.
It's we. So it's about 20 to $25,000 to do an install of one of these aqua towers that plant a waterfall.
So that's the cost, the base cost, yep.
And our goal was to raise $50,000 and to fund two of these things in underserved areas in Mexico. And by the time the campaign closed at the end of June, we were at about $100,000. And then about a month and a half later, we were at $150,000. And two days ago, CJ called and said, yeah, we sold a bunch more drinkware. We're going to throw in another $25,000.
That's amazing.
So today the campaign sits at $175,000.
Wow. That's amazing. CJ had hit promo, by the way. Just to clarify who that is, what did this campaign look like? These were donations from distributors, suppliers, service providers. You had a T shirt sale with the Water is a Human right on the front.
We did. Wearing it right now.
Awesome.
Yeah. So the original idea was to kind of tie it in to our supplier partners out there, particularly the ones that are involved in the drinkware category, and just say, why don't you pick a couple of drinkware pieces and commit, you know, a couple of percent of sales of those drinkware pieces during the campaign to this campaign. And so that's what most of the suppliers did. They picked one or two drinkware pieces. They committed, say 2% of sales. Hit was a little bit different. They said, yeah, we're just going to do all drinkware sales. So they committed to every drinkware piece sold 2% during that campaign.
Oh, that's fantastic.
And then how SNS got involved was because they have one of their facilities in Mexico, their Toltec plant. They were interested in building some water towers in that area where their employees at the Toltec plant live. Right. So they got involved even though they don't sell drinkware. They got involved because of their, their location of their facility in Mexico.
And did I read right that that's going to be in the plans for 2024?
It is, yeah. So we raised so much money that we have enough funding now to build six or seven of these towers instead of the two we had planned on.
Wow.
So the donation from SNS and Toltecs, they really wanted to put towers in the area affected by their employees.
Yeah.
So there's going to be a cluster of three towers that are built near the Toltec plant in Mexico.
Well, more than just raising funds, Promo Care board members and other folks actually traveled to Mexico, including yourself, to actually build the tower.
So Dave, what was that like?
What was that like when you first landed and got there? You landed Mexico, Mexico City and traveled where?
Yeah, it was great. And it was kind of a last minute thing. Like the sites came up and there's nine of us on the promo Cares board and you know, one by one everybody's like, well, you know, my kids are coming home next week, you know, so in the very end, as the empty nester of the bunch and no kids or dogs at home at the moment, I was like, sure, I'll get on a plane tomorrow and fly to Mexico and help build this thing. So Scott Pearson, with 6am sourcing, he. And he got his kids involved. So two of his kids, Chase and Paris joined us and the four of us flew into Mexico City, met some of his business partners who live there to help with this. And then the initial site was in a small town called Rincon de Lijadero, I believe you pronounce it.
That was good, Dave.
Yeah, San Jose de Ricon, which is basically the western, very western edge of the state of Mexico. So it's about a three, three and a half hour drive on some pretty sketchy roads there for a while. Right to this small school in this, in this local community. Out there is where the first one went in.
Wow. Well, when you got there, what was the community like? Can you paint us a picture?
Yeah, it's super fascinating because it's a local indigenous community. So it's the Mazahua people and they've been around since before the Aztecs and ultimately were subjugated by the Aztecs and later the Spanish conquest of Mexico. But they've retained a lot of the original traditions. And the dress, the women were dressed in these beautiful pleated satin looking outfits and all the boys, the little kids in the school had these very intricate hand Stitched shirts they were wearing. So those are some of the traditions from that culture that have continued out in that part of the. Of the country. And it was just, you know, we rolled into this school not knowing what to expect and all of the moms of the kids had. They had come out to make breakfast for us and they had all these pastries and they made us this hot. It's called atolle. It's like a breakfast drink that they make with maize and some sweeteners and cinnamon and vanilla. Vanilla and such. It's kind of like a thick. Almost like a thick hot chocolate that they drink to kind of keep them warm because we were up at close to 10,000ft above sea level, so.
Wow.
Yeah, they came out and made us breakfast and. And then we started building the tower from there.
And I'd actually read that that community is one of the poorest municipalities in the state of Mexico, as I mentioned in the intro. So you started building the towers. What was that like, experience of actually building the tower?
It's, you know, as a kid that grew up playing with Legos and erector sets, it's, you know, I love it. I love to get my hands dirty. And it's like, sure, I'm going to get some wrenches and we're going to put this thing together. And they. The parts for these towers, I'm trying to remember exactly where they're. They're actually manufactured in Vietnam, I believe. And they ship them here. And the entire tower itself, minus the. The reservoir, the water reservoir that goes on top of basically is packed down into two crates that fit on a pallet. And so they ship these all around the world. I think they're building about 300 of these a year around the world at the moment. Planet Water is. And so, you know, it's very, very well organized. There's about five folks from Planet Water there that were explaining what to do, how to put it together. And as a team, we all kind of came together and took certain parts of this tower on and ultimately took all of us to raise this thing up into the air and put it on a pallet and bolt it into the ground.
What's phenomenal about that is the hands on, like someone from the promo cares community, several people going to actually hands on and do this. What were you sort of expecting going in? And then what was the reality of it?
Like, you know, I think with any philanthropic initiative, the ability to see what it is that you're supporting is super important. You know, in another life, I sit on The. The Big Slick board in Kansas City, which is a fundraiser for Children's Mercy. And one of the things that's very unique about that is we take our celebrity guests to the hospital to play games with the kids that are going through chemotherapy and such, and it just. It makes it so much more impactful. So for us to be able to walk into this community and help build this tower, and at the end of the day, see these kids drinking clean water and having fun and toasting each other, and it's. It's just a really neat way to see what you're. What impact you're making.
Yeah. Speaking of what. What impacted you the most? Like, what left the most indelible impression on you as you. As you now have come back and settled and back to your routine? But. But it still remains with you.
Yeah, I just. I think seeing them all come out to see, because they. Historically, the. The water that they have there is coming straight out of a well, out of the ground. It's not cleaned in any way. And seeing the kids, when we got there, they do have. They do have toilets there, but they're manually filling these toilets with buckets of water to flush them. You know, they're drinking water out of the ground. And so for them to be a big aspect of this was. Was education. Right. So teaching them about the proper ways to wash your hands and when you should wash your hands. And so the tower itself is twofold. It's one to encourage them to wash their hands, you know, before and after eating and after activities and things like that, but also for drinking water. So just to, you know, to see the whole community come out and be excited about it, and knowing that that tower is going to be there for at least five years, but probably 10 or more, providing clean water was really cool.
What a phenomenal impact this industry can make when they do things like this and put their creative imagination to work. And from, as you mentioned, from the press release about the generous support, generous support of SNS Activewear and Tooltext, there's this new cluster and a 3 endeavor to construct aqua towers in that area. It's. It's amazing to. To know that the. Some of the merchandise we're selling has just a direct impact, and it's. You can actually close the loop on that.
It is, yeah, it's. It's really been fun to see. When we started the promo cares board six, seven years ago, it was just simply to kind of shout out the names of folks that were doing these kinds of things. And now you're seeing, you know, both ASI and PPI have gotten on board. Their search engines now have filters for this kind of things. And, and, and all of these, you know, not just HIT and sns, but we had Alpha Broder, Raining Rose, Gordon, Sinclair Hirsch, Snugs, Fairware, Promo Hunt, NC Custom. Tony over at promohunt did all the T shirts and sold those through his website. So a lot of companies rallied around this and got involved.
There's a couple of ways we can support. To wrap this up. Dave. There's a couple of ways we can support the next initiative. This initiative that's happening still now. One of the ways you talked about is the search looking for merchandise that is. Can you explain that a little bit?
Sure, yeah. So in both the ESP search product and the Sage search product, now there are filters where you can filter by companies that, you know, they, they offer environmentally conscious products, you know, sustainable products, responsible sourcing companies that have DEI initiatives, all those kinds of things. Now you can look for suppliers that are actually involved in those kinds of initiatives. And then of course, you can always go to promocares.org we have a directory on that kind of highlights all the suppliers in the industry that are doing these kinds of things.
Yeah.
And this particular campaign, you can still go to promo cares.org and there's a tab for all our, we call them our four good events. So you'll see all of our last three four good events. There's still a link there where you can go order one of these, these T shirts. It says water is a human right on the front. That money will go toward this campaign. And you know, we haven't figured out what next year's campaign is. We didn't expect this one to last all year and grow so much money and involve the building of so many towers. So give us a little bit to figure out what next year's campaign is going to be.
Well, we'll link all this in the show notes. Again, that's promo cares.org there's also planetwater.org, planet water.org is their organization. But we'll add all this in the show notes. I just want to say, on behalf of the community, thanks to the many suppliers and Promo Cares board and everyone that supported this initiative. What an amazing, encouraging initiative and we look forward to more.
