Hat-trick and how you too can make a difference.

November 14, 2008

I am very excited about our hat-trick here are the details on how you can get involved in making a difference.

For those of you that are sport-challenged like I am, a hat-trick is a hockey term that means scoring three goals in one game.Green and Green has committed to doing a hat-trick this year as part of our commitment to making a difference.

It’s free to do a hat-trick and it’s as simple as choosing items from a menu.A hat-trick has three parts:

1. Selecting an imaginative project that has a high impact in poor countries.Like a merry go round that generates electricity for a school as the village children play.Like a solar stove for Dakar that means women don’t have to risk their lives to gather fire wood.

2. Selecting a way to save the money for your project through environmental savings in your company.Like using recycled paper, double siding, extending page margins.Or making changes to how your firm uses power. Or any of 8 other money-saving environmental ideas.

3. Selecting a way to spread the word so that others will do a hat-trick.One school is doing a play about their hat-trick.One association is telling their contacts through Linkedin and Facebook.

I met with Kathy Sayers, Hat-trick’s Executive Director, and decided on Green and Green’s first hat-trick.We looked through 6 ideas and I decided on Sleeping Children around the World.SCAW provides a child in one of 32 countries with a bed kit: a mattress, sheets, a blanket, a pillow, mosquito netting, clothes, a towel and school supplies.

Then we kicked around environmental savings ideas for our hat-trick.We’ve decided to pay for “our bedroom in a box” by asking our clients to receive invoices electronically instead of by mail.

We’re telling others about our hat-trick in our newsletters and this blog to spread the word that there is something we can do that will make a difference.

The whole process took about 20 minutes.

Every quarter, we’ll do a new hat-trick and find a new way to make Green and Green even greener.

I first met Kathy at a business networking meeting and when I heard what she was doing, I knew we wanted to be part of it.The spark for hat-trick came when she read the story about the merry go round that generated electricity.“I could imagine what a community-building impact that would have.And when I read that 10 minutes of kids playing could provide hours of lighting for a school, I knew I had to figure out a way to let people know about these kinds of projects.”

Once she decided to combine doing good with saving the environment, Hat-trick was born.

She spent several months researching projects and charities that were innovative, high impact, low cost and solid.And then she researched ways to save environmentally.

She’s made this as simple as selecting from a menu.Select you project from column a.Select your environmental savings from column b.Select a way to spread the word from column c.

Hat-trick’s website will be completed in mid-December.In the meantime, contact Kathy at 604-736-1287.

Looking forward to our Hat-trick.