We’re thrilled to announce that we’re finalists in this year’s Be The Change Awards! The Be The Change Awards are an up and coming new initiative for the social impact sector, recognising ethical & sustainable brands with a powerful impact story to tell.
To enter, we had to submit a short video where we talk about our big vision for the world, and how what we’re doing at Retrospecced aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It’s only short, and hopefully pretty interesting too! Please have a watch of it, and let us know what you think!
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are really important. They’re so intrinsically liked that by improving on one, there’s actually huge opportunity to advance a number of the other goals. With that in mind, the goals most relevant to us and our big visions at Retrospecced are 3) Good health and wellbeing (for access to vision care for all), and 12) Responsible production and consumption.
Our vision for accessible vision for all could just as equally fall under 1) No poverty, 4) Quality education or 8) Decent work and economic growth as under 3) Good health and wellbeing. That’s because being able to see clearly in your day to day life allows you to read the board at school and get a decent education, significantly boosting your future job prospects and earning potential. Equally correcting the vision of people in remote areas can aid in boosting local productivity and help to rejuvenate local economies – for example a pair of glasses could enable the local tailor to see well enough to work well in to old age with his glasses, letting him provide for his family for longer.
Wubit, a primary school teacher who can now see to carry out her job properly and teach the next generation – all thanks to Vision Aid Overseas
We probably don’t shout about our relationship with Vision Aid Overseas quite enough, but we donate 20% of what we sell each frame for to the charity on behalf of our customers. This equates to £7 for each designer frame (sale price £35) and £5.80 for a retro pair (£29 sale price). We have also pledged to their ‘Big Give’ Christmas fundraising campaigns for the last two years. When you consider that just £5 allows VAO to provide an eyetest and pair of glasses for someone at one of the clinics they have established in Africa, this is pretty significant! VAO have provided over 450 eye tests and pairs of glasses for people who really need them! VAO really are a fantastic charity, and we are so proud to be associated with them. They provided over 55,000 such tests last year, so we’re just helping a small amount towards that at the moment, but we have grand plans!
We’re also working towards the Sustainable Development Goal 12) Responsible production and consumption. We strongly believe that by making small changes in our day-to-day lives, they can add up to truly significant impacts. Our ‘big vision’ for the world is for everyone to become ethical, thoughtful consumers. It seems fairly innocuous at first, but actually, imagine what the world would be like if everyone thought consciously about what they needed, made an effort to reduce their waste, and reuse or repurpose things as much as possible? This circular economy would have huge ramifications for the global environment and climate. Upcycling glasses is just a small part of this, but we see ourselves as a small part of the much bigger picture.
So in summary, thank you all for your support so far – we are so passionate about everything we do here at Retrospecced, and it’s been wonderful finding that so many of you share the same passions as well!
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