Doing the Black Friday weekend differently has once again turned into the most exciting weekend of the whole year so far at Lucy and Yak, and it's all because of YOU!
For the past two years we’ve wanted to do Black Friday differently, and 2020 was no exception – so instead of slashing our prices, we committed to donating 10% of every sale to two amazing causes, in India and the UK.
For the third year we partnered with the wonderful Fior Di Loto Foundation in Pushkar, India, who provide schooling to over 700 girls who may not otherwise have access to education. Based near Ismail’s factory in Rajasthan and run by the lovely Deepu and Mara, Fior Di Loto provide everything a girl needs for her education in Pushkar for a year, for the cost of £220 (including books, uniform, food, travel and even a lovely dress for Diwali celebrations). 
Last year, your efforts managed to send 90 girls to school and this year we wanted to send the same girls back to school for another year, and hopefully even more! In addition to this, due to the impact of COVID-19, the landscape of education looked very different this year. Fior Di Loto had come up against a severe drop in funding due to the lack of tourism in the area, and many of the community lost their jobs due to the ongoing crisis. The team adapted to provide ongoing support throughout the pandemic – looking into sourcing tablet computers so that girls could attend online classes, and provide families with food parcels, at a time when income and provisions were hard to come by. We wanted to help towards funding the food parcels, costing £8 each and being able to feed an entire family for a month.
2020 also highlighted the reality that young people are struggling closer to home as well. From school closures across the UK, and the unavailability of free school meals – we saw how precarious, but also how key education is for every child. So, we also joined forces with the marvellous Magic Breakfast, who provide nutritious breakfasts to almost 50,000 children across England & Scotland. The charity was founded in 2003 by Carmel McConnell MBE. While researching her first book ‘Change Activist’ in 2000, Carmel interviewed five headteachers in the London Borough of Hackney who told her that many of their pupils arrived at school too hungry or malnourished to learn. For just 0.34p Magic Breakfast can provide a nutritious breakfast or for £5.53, could give 1 child 1x month of breakfasts and support.
So how did we all do?
We have now added the totals up of our #YakSchoolRun Black Friday campaign... all your sales over the 5 days, the direct donations page and us matching the donation page total… and the results are in!
- A a mind-blowing total of 112 girlswill be getting the life changing opportunity this year to go to school through the Fior Di Loto Foundation
- 150 food parcels will be distributed through Fior Di Loto to the local community in Pushkar, Rajasthan and be able to feed 150 families for a month
- 10,624 breakfasts will be provided through Magic Breakfast to schools across England and Scotland
This is REALLY special. Thanks to you, we have surpassed our goals of sending 100 girls to school, providing 100 food parcels in India and 10,000 breakfasts being given to schoolchildren across the UK!
We're completely blown away by all your support. Thank you so, so much for supporting our #YakSchoolRun campaign. Thank you also for all the kind comments, to everyone who shared our initiative, and to every one of you who forfeited the usual big discounts of the weekend or donated directly in order to make a really positive change to so many lives.
To know that school children up and down the country (including in our home town Barnsley) will be served a @magicbreky for the whole school year thanks to your donations leaves a huge smile on our faces and gratitude in our hearts.
We're also absolutely thrilled to be able to send over the money to Deepu and Mara at Fior Di Loto India next week. We have no doubt that the impact on the girls, the school and the whole community will be huge, immediate, tangible AND long-lasting.
It's so encouraging to see that we are all sharing the same vision of a world where we all have access to education and the choices it brings, and try to make a positive difference.
More information on our Back Friday campaign and our two amazing charities here.
We'll keep you posted about how the girls at Fior Di Loto and Magic Breakfast are getting on, so keep your eye on our Instagram feed and blog for news!
And lastly...
THANK YOU!