The organization that I’ve selected this month is TOMS shoes. With every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS gives a pair of shoes to a child in need.

In 2006 entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie started TOMS after traveling to Argentina and finding out his new children friends didn’t have shoes to protect their feet. TOMS shoes comes into play by matching every pair of shoes bought with a new pair for a child in need, this was his way of helping.

Why Shoes?

Many children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or going to school, these children are at risk:

• A leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted diseases, which can penetrate the skin through bare feet. Wearing shoes can help prevent these diseases, and the long-term physical and cognitive harm they cause.
• Wearing shoes also prevents feet from getting cuts and sores. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected.
• Many times children can’t attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don’t have shoes, they don’t go to school. If they don’t receive an education, they don’t have the opportunity to realize their potential.

This is a great example of social entrepreneurship where they are able to create a business that has a social or environmental goal in mind. Blake Mycoskie has started the “One for One” movement with TOMS shoes helping children in need.

The One for One movement is about people making everyday choices that improve the lives of children.

As of September 2010 TOMS has given 1,000,000 pairs of shoes to needy children around the world.

Buy some TOMS and help a child in need or visit http://www.toms.com/ to find out other ways you can help children in need.

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We recently redesigned our Daily Special newsletter email and I have to say it came out pretty dang good. We noticed that our Daily Special newsletter was pretty popular even though you get an email every single day and we wanted to utilize it. There is a thin line on how many emails you can send a person but this set of subscribers don’t seem to mind. The fact that it goes out everyday we wanted to take advantage of this newsletter as much as possible.

After some brainstorming and working with old school design methods (see why in my Designing for Emails post) we were on our way to a redesigned newsletter.

New Detailed Image Daily Special Features

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Now this email not only features our Daily Special product, it now includes content and other current promotions. You can now get everything you know about what’s happening at Detailed Image in a daily dose with the new email design.

See images below of the new design compared to the old design.

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