FEED Projects co-founders Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson in Rwanda, 2008
Photo: FEED Projects LLC
Have you seen those gorgeous FEED bags, made out of organic cotton and burlap, around town? We think they’re incredibly chic. The company, launched three years ago by George W niece Lauren Bush and partner Ellen Gustafson, sells bags with a higher calling: based on the same one-for-one idea as TOMS Shoes, which gives away a pair of shoes for every pair purchased, FEED gives money to feed one child in school (through the UN World Food Program school feeding program) for a year for every bag sold.
Now, FEED is responding to the crisis in Haiti, with a brilliant initiative that will help combat the donor fatigue that so often sets in a few months after a humanitarian crisis. For every $60 FEED 1 (which feeds one kid in school for a year) and $100 FEED 2 bag (which feeds two kids in school for a year) sold on the company's website, donations will go to the FEED Haiti Campaign to ensure school feeding for Haitian children. The program will launch in June, just around when the world may start forgetting the tragedy in Haiti.
Bush might have been just a dilettante, happy to coast on her family
name and pretty face (she was a fashion model before turning to the
fight against poverty). But her life changed after the UN World Food Program
found her at Princeton, where she was studying anthropology, and asked
if she would consider being an ambassador for its programs. Lauren
traveled to Guatemala with the WFP in 2003 and saw how people were
living in rural villages. "We visited a bunch of schools, and I saw how
excited the kids were for lunch," she tells me. "Those lunches get them
to go to school—this is a way of reinforcing education."
From there, Bush went on to volunteer at the World Food Program, where she met Gustafson, a former Council on Foreign Relations terrorism wonk who was heading the WFP's public relations efforts. (Gustafson's a-hah moment came when she realized that all the places haunted by terrorist groups were also poor. "I thought, why not try to deal with the root causes, instead of just the after-effects," Gustafsen says.) The two of them originally cooked up the idea of designing and selling bags as a part of the WFP—but their bosses nixed the idea.
So they set out on their own. That was 500,000 bags—and 52 million meals—ago. "If your business model is based on selling bags for $45 wholesale, and you give away $20 of that, then you'll never get rich," says Gustafsen. But that was never the plan in the first place.
From there, Bush went on to volunteer at the World Food Program, where she met Gustafson, a former Council on Foreign Relations terrorism wonk who was heading the WFP's public relations efforts. (Gustafson's a-hah moment came when she realized that all the places haunted by terrorist groups were also poor. "I thought, why not try to deal with the root causes, instead of just the after-effects," Gustafsen says.) The two of them originally cooked up the idea of designing and selling bags as a part of the WFP—but their bosses nixed the idea.
So they set out on their own. That was 500,000 bags—and 52 million meals—ago. "If your business model is based on selling bags for $45 wholesale, and you give away $20 of that, then you'll never get rich," says Gustafsen. But that was never the plan in the first place.
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