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As a kiwi business dedicated to creating healthier communities, we believe in giving back.
Four months ago we got involved with social enterprise and non-profit organisation, B1G1 (Business for Good).
B1G1 initially stood for ‘Buy1Give1’, based on the premise that businesses could give back just by doing the things they do every day.
The organisation helps small to medium businesses like us achieve more social impact by embedding giving activities into everyday business operations and creating unique giving stories.
While many businesses will embed this giving model into what they sell, we give back based on the amount of participants we see in our clinic. There is no cost to our participants, however, the more participants we have in our trials, the more we give back.
B1G1 allows businesses to choose from over 500+ high impact projects happening all over the world. To date we have chosen two projects, one that gives life-saving clean water to families in Ethiopia and one closer to home giving nourishing meals to kiwi kids in need, through the local organisation, KidsCan.
Image sourced from KidsCan
In the few months we have been involved with the programme we have given 120 nourishing meals locally and 17,520 days of water in Ethiopia. We’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved in such a short time and love celebrating these milestones with a team lunch or coffee together.
Another way we love to give back at Optimal is by putting together Christmas gift baskets for charities, something our founders Penny and Barney Montgomery have been doing for the last 13 years. Last year we supported ‘Who Did You Help Today’, a charity established in 2015 by Stacey Shortall. In creating the charity, Stacey’s thought was that while working alone might result in survival, working together can generate positive change and take people beyond survival and into prosperity.
Last year the baskets, full of food, essential items and small gifts, were distributed to low decile families in south Auckland via a local school - making a hugely positive impact on families over a period when there is often a lot of financial pressure.
If you’re a participant in one of our trials you can feel good knowing you’ve not only contributed to health research but also to the programmes we give to.
Interested in learning more about the B1G1 programme? Find out more here