FITE Club

Ok Brad Pitt's sweaty, shredded torso has absolutely nothing to do with this post apart from maybe a feeble attempt of pun on the title.

That and  I thought I would give you some gratuitous, light and easy perv time before I get a little heavy and serious on you in this post.

Stick with me here the ending gets lighter.

As you may have already read if you are a blogtroll, ducking and weaving your way around the blogosphere that the team at Dermalogica hosted a fabulous bloggers evening at their head offices in Sydney and Melbourne on a cold Wednesday night the week before last.

Now as fun and fizzy and fabulous as meeting up with the friendly and rather cool Sydney beauty bloggers whilst grazing on bubbles and nibbles is, the evening definitely took a more sombre and humbling turn.

While we were there to meet the team and have our signature Dermalogica face mapping analysis (more on that to come), we were also there to learn more about Dermalogica's FITE initiative.

As you will have already gathered if you read my blog I am a massive Dermalogica fan. However I am a little ashamed and embarrassed to admit I had no awareness of the what the FITE campaign was actually really about until this event.

"FITE" was nothing but marketing white noise in the background to me, a word and a logo of something charitable I could see in my peripheral vision but I did not know what it meant or stood for. I whizzed past the detail in a my usual day-to day social-media, browser dash.

Habitual, modern living fast paced skimming and scanning of information

Gen Y to the max.

I had paid no attention until that moment, sitting in a conference room at Dermalogica HQ, self-obsessing about my spotty skin  post face analysis, glass of bubbles in hand, trying to warm my hands up from the cold outside.

My menial problems.

Fiddling and fidgeting one moment, then staring into the eyes of an African woman, who had been gang raped and mutilated by having her nose hacked off with razor blades on the widescreen the next.

Talk about a perspective bomb, I was humbled and a little ashamed for being so self-absorbed.

The video footage was emotional, raw and confronting I have to admit but it needed to be. This is another one of those subjects that we tend to push to the back of our buzzing over-stimulated, loaded brains, delete from our inboxes or graze past to the celebrity gossip section in a magazine.

If this is you too, I implore you to read on......

Finally I was on pause and they had me,  I was listening and hearing and realising what their mission is and what this FITE cause is.

The very opening line had me dumbfounded

FACT Women do 66% of the world's work
FACT Yet more than 70% of people who live below the poverty line are women
FACT Women own 1% of the world's land

So what did I learn about FITE

• FITE ie Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship
• In a nutshell FITE helps women entrepreneurs start or grow a business
• Empowerment is their mantra
• Similar to the give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach a man to fish feed him for a lifetime principle, this charity goes beyond just handing out its about giving back.
• How? Powered by Kiva.org, a not for profit microfinance body FITE are able to qualify woman to receive small loans that will help them start or grow a business
• This then in turn impacts the community by giving these women, often victims of social breakdown, political negligence or poverty and gender bias, independence and strength through newfound confidence.
• This driving force is ultimately fed back into the communites they live in ten fold by the interactions these woman now have with their customers, children, neighbours, husbands and peers as a result of this financial, social and morale empowerment.
• Through this small, microlending to women a positive ripple effect of improved health, education, and welfare for all household members is emanated.
• FITE plans to help 25,000 of these woman in the first 2 years of campaigning.

How are Dermalogica involved?

• Dermalogica are the founding, driving partner for FITE, and have invested in all the research and development to make FITE possible
• They will offer a small amount from each sale of their five FITE associated products.
• These select five products are generic to all skin types and are among their best-sellers
• This is not "a percentage of the sale of this product will go to charity" initiative, it gets so much more involved and granular than that. 
• It is this informative detail that I was unaware of but the part that I think is the most gratifying for me, us, the donators, the consumers.

How does it work?

• When you purchase a FITE product there is a code on the label that allows you to log on to the FITE campaign. 
• This code allows you to activate the amount that Dermalogica will pay to FITE for you from the sale of your product
• In my case I had two codes, one for each product
• I logged on, entered the code, picked my continent, country and area of specialty my donation would go to
• You can scroll through the different donation area choices, see pictures, read their stories.
• I decided against this and to stick with my instinctive first search choice, there was a reason beyond me why that group was chosen by my haphazard search parameters
• You click another button, your donation is made and in the next few hours you receieve an email telling you specifically down to an individual level, who got your donation and what it was used  for
• You can see who else has donated to this group which is fascinating and gives you a sense of camaraderie 

The five FITE products from left to right

1. Skin Hydrating Booster
2. Total Eye Care
3. Daily Microfoliant
4. Precleanse
5. Intensive Eye Repair

I've you've read my reviews linked above you will know that I go into panic mode without my Daily Microfoliant. I had a week or two a while ago I was without it and I fell in love all ovcer again when I reused it and realsied how much my skin had missed it and my skin hadn't felt or looked the same without. It brightens, fades pigmentation, soothes, exfoliates, decongests, gives a glow and now it donates money to charity for you. Amaze!

The other product I need when tired, hungover, flying, on holidays, in winter, after a cold or any other time I feel generally prune like is the Skin Hydrating Booster, a few drops and you are back in the land of the plump skinned again and some woman on the other side of the world is $1 closer to being strong and independent.

The Intensive Eye Repair was already on my wishlist as I've read review after review about how good this is.

As part of my face analysis the Precleanse was prescribed to me to use as step 1 in a double cleanse and my "oil", fears were put to rest. Its going on the wishlist.....

How you can help?

• Just by being aware, you may not donate now but maybe when chosing a product for yourself or someone else in the future something may resonate with you about the FITE campaogn and influence your buying decision
• Buy one of any of the five Dermalogica FITE products and redeem the FITE donation
• Make a donation for a microloan yourself, options start from as little as $25 AUD
• Spread the word, if you have a blog, use facebook, twitter etc you have a voice

How my donations have helped

I chose to redeem my codes against the food category and donate to a group in the Uganda region.

My two codes from a bottle of Daily Microfoliant and Skin Hydrating Booster were redeemed for money donated to the Zamiri group, from which they bought 8 baskets of fish for a 69 year old lady called Masika to sell at a market. 

Masika has been in business for about 30 years. She has just finished 17 rounds of loans with the banque communautaire Hekima. This new loan will help her stock up on four baskets of fish and the rest of the money will be used for small family projects.

She lives comfortably in peace with her children and grandchildren. However, she has a goal to buy a small parcel of land that she can leave to her next of kin.

She thanks Hekima for its work with poor women who are excluded from the traditional banking industry. 

Masika & the Zamiri group, Uganda

After seeing the video footage at Dermalogica HQ I was compelled to donate the small amount of $25 in conjunction with redeeming my product codes. I also chose the food category in Uganda for this donation which has been allocated to the Twekembe Kabungo Namutamba Group's for $3,025. 

49 people all over the world, including myself have helped KIVA raise 48% of this  loan so far. When raised this loan will go to a 49 year old lady with six children called Resty for the purchase of  food items.

Resty has been working really hard most of her adult life building a food selling business through crops generated on her pig farm. This loan will enable her to stock food items she doesn't usually sell including sorghum, millet, cassava and bananas to resell and in turn offer her greater diversity and the chance to expand her business

Resty says her longevity has not come easy. She has had to work hard to obtain a robust enough niche on the food market in Mityana. Weekly this business's profits add up to shillings 25,000. 

Resty & the Twekembe Kabungo Namutanbu Group, Uganda

I will continue to blog with updates on how Resty and her group go with my loan. I have also committed to making an extra donation every time I buy a FITE product and redeem the product code. 

I will also get to reinvest my $25 loan into FITE when Resty has succeeded and paid me back. This is forecasted to be fully  paid back by Resty in February 2012.

How amazingly satisfying that will feel for Resty and also myself. 

Empowerment on both ends of the spectrum, the reason I think this campaign is so well considered and worthwhile.

Had you heard of the FITE campaign before? Did you know what it involved?

Have you bought any of  Dermalogica's five FITE products yet? Did you redeem your code? To where?

Would this FITE campaign influence you to purchase a FITE product in the future?

Will you be \joining the FITE Club?

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