Funnily enough ‘So what’s with the goat?’ wasn’t a question that I ever thought I would ever be asked, never mind answer on a daily basis. Not only answer but enthuse about.
This all started back in June Tuesday 21st of June to be precise….
On Tuesday 21st June I wandered into the office like any other day. I was greeted by ‘No Pain’ Dave, seemingly like any other day. Until this sentence left his lips; “we’re going to start giving goats away!”.
It took a few moments just to process the words in this sentence and a few more to try and make sense of it. When I couldn’t I asked what on earth he was on about, this is where the giving journey started to come together.
On the Monday evening Dave had been to a seminar to see a man called Paul Dunn speak. Paul is from Australia and for many years has been at the forefront of progressive marketing and business ideas. He has travelled the world teaching people how to improve their businesses. Back in 2007 a small group of people set out to try and do something new. They wanted to create a giving system. A world where we could look at Newton’s third law of motion (every action has an equal or opposite reaction) and use it in a different way.
This is where Buy1GIVE1 came to be. The system in place allows business to link their products and services to different giving opportunities. Imagine how wonderful it would be if you went to buy a new 3D flat screen TV and because of that transaction someone in Indonesia was able to have an operation to give them sight. Your action is buying the TV, the reaction is another person seeing.
Dave had been amazed by the idea of habitual giving, so often in life we are guilted into giving to charity or do it as a one-off event. Back to Tuesday 21st June, after I sat and listened to ‘No Pain’ Dave’s tails of his meeting with Paul Dunn the previous evening I threw myself into researching the project and Paul. Having seen the impact that even a few pence could have on people’s lives we knew that this was something that we had to become a part of. Here Buy a Smile, Give a Smile was born.
At Southport Road Dental practice we like to think that dentistry has the power to change smiles but change lives. The low confidence and embarrassment so many people suffer from their wonky or gappy grins can have a huge effect on their day-to-day lives. The greatest feeling any of the team get here is to see our patients walking out of the door smiling.
A smile is a powerful asset to have. Studies have shown that smiling increases the production of endorphins and serotonin making you naturally happier. So not only does smiling make you feel good but it has a similar effect to all of the people around you who see it. More so if one of those people caused that smile.
We realised that through Buy1GIVE1 our clients could get the same wonderful feeling that we experienced seeing them smile. Every time a treatment of any sort is carried out we give a smile to someone else on the patient’s behalf. With the 600+ projects that B1G1 work with this smile can be generated in many different ways. It is something as simple as clean water for a child for a day in Malawi, bricks to build homeless families in India new houses or giving a family in Kenya a goat which gives them an income for a lifetime.
Since the Buy A Smile GIVE A Goat campaign has become a source of slight confusion and some great laughs ever since, and the happy, smiling goat our talisman. Whenever a client here straightens their teeth we give a goat. Whiten your teeth and bricks towards a new home.
So that’s what the goat is all about, a loveable little creature who is bringing smiles to people all over the world!
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