Orphanage Visit

Today was amazing, inspiring and sad all at the same time.
While visiting San Diego for a board meeting we decided to rent a bus, drive to Mexico and hand out supplies to an orphanage.
We had a connection thru a friend that an orphanage about one our from the border could accept our donations. The ladies who ran the orphanage met us at the Costco at the border and we asked them to show is what they were in need of.
We loaded up socks, pajamas, toiletries, food, and as a little extra surprise they didn't see us buy - a bouncy castle.

After loading up the bus and driving to the orphanage compound we were greeted by happy and smiling little kids all running around. We set up a daisy chain of people and unloaded the supplies into the main dining hall. There we were treated to a delicious Mexican lunch of tortillas, beans and an amazing hot sauce that I think we should bottle and sell!!!
For the next few hours after lunch we played soccer, basketball and enjoyed the company of the kids. The bouncy castle was a huge hit and we loved hearing the laughter and cheering of the children as they piled in.

It was heart breaking to have to leave and it feels we were only able to make a tiny dent in such an important issue and cause. I have asked to stay in touch with the head nun and see how Lykki can assist with supplies we collect thru OneBox.
We are truly blessed in Vancouver and any sort of charitable cause is a great thing to be a part of. Please donate your time if you don't already.
Gratefully yours,
Calvin

Cooking for Ronald McDonald (House)

Sandy and 7 of her business friends recently went to the Vancouver Ronald McDonald House to prepare a meal for 80 people. I didn't know this program existed but is sounds amazing.
You can call Ronald McDonald House and ask for a day you want to come cook for the families who are staying at the house that day. You create a menu, bring the groceries, prepare and serve the food and most importantly - clean up.
The real reward Sandy said was to sit and have dinner with the families and some of the sick children and learn their stories. She said many times there was not a dry eye at the table.
An amazing experience that I'm sure we will do again with Lykki staff.
Cheers
Calvin

OneBox - Drop In - Help Out

New for this year is a Lykki for good project we are calling OneBox.
The idea started when we noticed several of our customers asking to keep our Blue Delivery Totes so they could fill them with used toner cartridges.
We taken back ink and toner cartridges and send them to responsible recyclers for years and some of our larger customers return a high volume each month.
Seeing that customers had our Blue Totes, we got to thinking and brainstormed some ideas like --- "What else could we collect from customers?" And "How can we turn this into something good for the community and the environment?"
So, fast forward to today and the launch of OneBox.
Here is how it works:

• Customers request a OneBox and we deliver an empty blue tote.
• Included with the tote is marketing material, posters and handout cards to educate the customers employees about OneBox.
• Employees can place everything from toners and inks to batteries, lightbulbs, clothing and food. ( the whole list can be found here ( link).
• When the OneBox is full our Lykki Driver will swap it out for an empty tote and return the full one to the Lykkiplex.
• Next we sort the tote and separate items for recycling, donations and the food bank.

Our goal is to place 10,000 OneBoxes.
We think it's a pretty cool idea so we would love your feedback and involvement.
To learn more - check out www.lykki.com/onebox
Cheers
Calvin

Give Back Event - Downtown East Side

Our annual " Give Back Event" was last night This is the follow up story to our packaging night we held in November.
Each year the event grows larger and we decided to forgo the usual hand out date near Christmas and move the date to January. This was advice from our partners on the Downtown Eastside, who noted that most donations happen at Christmas, but January is one of the lowest times for support.
This year was our largest in terms of people and packages.
Thank you to everyone who helped and donated.
Cheers
Calvin

Community Give Back Event - Year 3

I knew while building the LykkiPlex last June that we would be hosting some fun events in the space so when we had the opportunity to partner with the Vancouver Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization I knew the night was going to be a ton of fun.
Lykki has been a part of this Give Back initiative since the inaugural event a few years ago and the premise is quite simple. Collect a ton of donations and create Give Back Bags to hand out to less fortunate people on the streets of Vancouver.
The bags this year included necessities like gloves, socks, toothbrush and toothpaste along with food and even fresh fruit.
Our goal was 1500 bags and we we so excited to see a small army of friends, staff and EO members attend for the packaging night. The logistics of packaging and procuring the product for the bags is really where the hard work come into play so he held the event pre Christmas. The date we decided to deliver the bags this year will be in January at the advice of downtown shelters who told us the biggest need is at this time - not Christmas.
Thank you to everyone who made the Give Back Packaging Night a huge success.
Cheers
Calvin

Movember Memories.

Another great culture bonding experience for a few of the Lykki bro's with mo's.
We created a Lykki team page on the Movember site and collected $500 in donations. Happily many of the donations cam from support of our Lykkiite Ladies!
Thanks for the support everyone.
Cheers
Calvin

No more soup please.

Today I attended a special invite from the Tri Cities SHARE Society. Martin Wyant, CEO of SHARE reached out to the community business leaders to have a brainstorming session on ways to improve the Food Bank. I was honored to be included In a group of other local leaders. 
The most memorable part of the meeting for me was the hands on tour of the Food Bank facility. First what is saw was food, lots of food. Or at lease it seemed that was until it was explained that over 20,475 hampers a year are handed out. Although there seemed to be an abundance of product, it was the selection that is the Food Banks challenge. They explained many people when they donate food during a food drive or drop a few cans in the local grocery store food bank bin chose to donate soup. Although the food bank explained they were so grateful for any sort of donation, they didn't need more soup, they had so much they actually rent additional warehouse space just to store the excess. The next time you donate to the food bank choose protein based products like peanut butter, tuna and even Lima beans. These are the items they really need to round out a healthy hamper. 
Please feel free to stop into your local food bank and drop off your donations directly to the volunteers. How about a little random act of kindness and bring some coffee and doughnuts for the volunteers and staff and roll up your sleeves for an hour or two. I'm sure they would welcome you with open arms. This year they will need over 26,000 volunteer hours so every bit helps.
I was excited to learn they also host team and culture building volunteer time for companies who want to share the experience with their staff. Van City makes it a mandatory part of their onboarding process for new staff. I can say that Lykki will definitely add this idea to our team building. 
Cheers
Calvin

On your mark, get set, Movember!

The next best thing to dressing up at Halloween is growing facial hair for a cause! Well at least for the guys at Lykki :-)
This year is a special Movember in tribute to one of our dear suppliers Tom Buchanon who recently lost his battle with cancer.  We will miss you Tom!!
So here we go on a mission to raise some money on our Movember Page and to grow the kind of stashes not seen since 1978.  Fun times for a serious cause. 
Cheers
Calvin

Mind Your Wake

It's that time of year again for my favorite movie "It's a Wonderful Life". The reason I love this movie so much is because of what I call your WAKE.

Like the movie, everything we do or don't do in our life has an impact on other people far more than we can ever realize. The movie is all about George Bailey being shown the size of his wake and what a positive impact he made on others, or in some cases because he wasn't there he made no impact at all. I think our wakes are much bigger than we can ever imagine. Like a boat cutting thru still water there is a large wake spreading out that will ripple long after we have moved on.

Minding our Wake is something we talk about in our company and are conscious of. When you have a group of people mindful of their wake and making positive ripples, some pretty great things can happen.

Cheers

Calvin

Giving Back

Tonight was our annual "Give Back" Event. It's an opportunity for our company to support the less fortunate on the downtown east side.

This year we were able to leverage some of our suppliers who donated product that helped fill over 2500 care packages for us to hand out.

Before our group of 100+ strong headed out on the streets there was a fantastic speech given to by Sister Nancy from Covenant House and her message of being involved at any level helps build the bridge of understanding and tear down the stigma that surrounds the less fortunate.

It was an impact full evening that was far reaching for many of the participants. I would like to share a email string I read the next morning from Shawn our VP of eCommerce below.

Cheers

Calvin 

Hi friends,

I sent an email a couple weeks back about the far reaching effects of our reputation and the impact our actions have in ways we are often unaware of. Calvin, as our leader, gives us a venue and a platform to "Live, Love, Laugh and Learn" both in the work-place and in our personal lives. Last night with the EO event on the downtown Eastside, we directly impacted lives - not just of those poor souls on the streets, but our own...and this truly is the gift we have been given. I've spoken with many of you today, and I know that you were profoundly impacted. I believe that all 4 of our core values were strongly in evidence last night. I congratulate you all and I applaud Calvin for providing us with this opportunity.

Broadening the scope and the impact of the event though, I wanted to add this email that I received today from Ron Lee. Ron's daughter Madison plays on the soccer team I coach. Ron is a high school educator in the Coquitlam school board. He came with both Madison and his 9 year old daughter Taylor.

Here is what he wrote to me:
Thank you for the tremendous opportunity that you gave to my children and the rest of the girls. This is not a soccer lesson, but a life lesson. The impact that you have and the the experiences that you give the girls (yesterday and soccer), helps shape them for today, tomorrow, and forever. I heard the word "sad" at least three times last night and what it showed is that the girls where effected in some way. We as adults, are a beacon to opportunities for our children to experience. I wish discussion takes place with the girls and their parents as these moments become the "teachable moments" that we look at during school. It's not just the experience, but where we go from here. I know that Madison respects you and I am sure that your words have meaning.

I have spent the first 10 minutes of every one of my PE classes today discussing what I saw and how students can make an impact (to remember being kind to one another or helping with food hampers at school).

Once again, THANKS from the Lee family.

Remember, that we have 364 other days during the year to support, encourage, respect and treat people without judgement. I'm sure that you feel as I do, that I took more than I gave last night - that's the beauty of selflessness, and doing good for others.

Blessings!

Shawn

Love Bombs Away!

Have you ever heard of a Love Bomb?

I first hear of this concept on a blog I was reading some time back. I wish I could remember the name, but all the same the concept of this Love Bomb stuck with me until I decided to use it this week.

How a Love Bomb works is you focus the attention (and love) of many people towards one person, in a concerted effort. Let me explain how it works by using my recent Love Bomb example.

For the past two years, I have been the Chair of the BC Children's Retail/Wholesale Council, and Aaron Sanderson has been our fundraising liaison with the Hospital. He has been instrumental in helping our council raise record-breaking donations of close to 5 million both years running. Unfortunately, Aaron announced he was recruited and would be moving to Toronto at the end of the month. I wanted to do something special for him to show our thanks, and this is where the Love Bomb idea kicks in.

I emailed our 18-member council, and asked that each person focus their gratitude toward Aaron on August 13th in whatever fashion they saw fit. The idea is to have as many people as possible Love Bomb him on one day. So people from the group did just that, and sent him kind emails, thank you cards, presents, balloons, gifts and visited his office. Imagine this happening to you, 18 people all showing their love for you on one day. What a memorable day it would be!

Everyone had a blast dropping the Love Bomb and I plan to do this again when the next opportunity arises. Can you find an opportunity to try a Love Bomb?

Cheers,

Calvin

Miracle Weekend

It's that time again for the BC Children's Miracle Weekend. This was my last year as the Chair of the Retail Wholesale Committee and the pressure was on to top our incredible record breaking $5,152,815 fund raising amount from last year. In addition I was the MC again for the Retail Wholesale party. I flip-flopped on which one I was more nervous about - beating our fundraising record, or public speaking in front of a few hundred people. 

I'm happy to say we set another fund raising record of over $5.2 million, and as for the public speaking, a strange thing happened. First, when I picked up the microphone to get everyone's attention the volume was set to an ear splitting level that made everyone jump when I spoke. Not a good start. But as I started reading off the script, I got to a part where I was to give thanks to the Miracle Weekend Chair John Ridley. The words written on the page by someone else just didn't square with what was in my heart, so I told the audience "I'm going off script" and tossed down the papers I was reading. Instead I said what was in my heart and thanked John with true gratitude. It felt great, and later the people from the audience said it was a memorable moment - including John. I don't do much public speaking but learned a great lesson; Talk about what you know from your heart and you can't go wrong.

Thanks to all the donors who helped make my Miracle Maker Phone Panel the best year yet.

BC Children's Hospital Hoodies at Costco

Check out the snappy hoodies at your local Costco. All proceeds go to BC Children's Hospital. I just picked up 25 for our staff (and one for Sandy and the kids)

Cheers

Calvin

Oh no BBQ!!

Michelle with our banner

Big Red broken down

momsgrilledcheesetruck.com saves the day

Thanks Mom!

Once again Costless customers and staff came together at the Art Museum downtown for the annual Jeans Day BBQ. 

Always on my mind is the weather for a big event like this. In past years we've been rained out and had glorious sun.

Never in my mind was the possibility that our huge BBQ called "Big Red" would break down! No BBQ = No BBQ.

Just as we thought all hope was lost - Vancouver's finest food trucks and surrounding hotels came to the rescue and were able to cook over 1000 hot dogs till Big Red was fixed.

A big Thank You for all your support !

Calvin

Entrepreneurs Organization Raises $100,000 for the kids.

On the phone!

Today I was honored to be a part of the Variety Club Children's Charity Telethon.

This is a slight change from my usual work with BC Children's Hospital, but in the end all the money we raise goes to help children, and isn't that whats its really all about?

Peter Legge

I was invited to be a part of the on-air phone panel along with 30 other members of the Vancouver EO chapter. We met early at the Coquitlam Cactus Club before it opened for a great breakfast, thanks to owner and EO member Andrew Latchford. During breakfast, we had a very inspiring talk from Peter Legge, who challenged our group to raise as much money in one hour on the phones and it would be matched by Vancouver Business icon Joe Segal.

I'm proud to say our group raised $50,000 during our brief time on the phones. We all tapped into our business networks and were amazed at the amount of giving we received. With the match from Joe Segal, that total was raised to $100,000 and all the money went directly to hearing aids for children. I was told over 40 children will receive state of the art hearing aids and the more importantly - the gift of hearing!!!

Thanks to everyone for supporting the children on an inspiring day.

Cheers

Calvin