I’m all for companies that go above and beyond…that try to change the world outside of snowboarding. Every little bit helps and I definitely commend when people look out for each other on the slope or off the slope. It’s easy to walk through life thinking only about yourself and never offering a hand to anyone else…but there are people less fortunate around the world that need a hand of help. It’s good to see that snowboarders can find ways to reach out and help others even when you don’t leave the snow.
I just got sent this info about what Zion Snowboards is doing to help a social justice cause. Please take a second and read up on this. If you are too lazy to read this thing…buy something here that says POP next to it and you can say you helped support a worthy cause.
SNOWBOARDERS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CHILD SEX SLAVERY
Wouldn’t it be rad if you could help make someone else’s life better by doing something you love? While you’re out shreddin, making turns and having a good time with your friends, someone’s life is making a turn for the better. We have come up with something pretty epic and it’s called the ZION POP Program (People of the Planet). The POP Program is people driven and is all about Social Justice. We have made it our mission to help out our fellow humans who have been dealt a bad hand. This is the part of ZION Snowboards that we call “serious fun.” There are some hardcore issues happening in our world and we thought it would be rad to involve core snowboarders in making a difference. With the POP program we will be donating 10% of the sale of our participating products to charities that help make people’s lives better. Cool thing is – you can do this while you’re doing your switch backside 10’s or Tindy’s!
ZION is stoked to announce that our first partnership for the POP Program will be the Ratanak Foundation! ZION will be donating 10% of the sale of POP Products sold in our Flagship Online Shop to the Ratanak Foundation’s New Song Project. The New Song Project is dedicated to fighting child sex trafficking in Cambodia. We had a chance to meet up with Brian – the Founder of the Ratanak Foundation and we literally had our jaws on the floor after hearing about what was going on in the brothels of Cambodia with children as young as 5 years old. These children are being violated 10-20 times a day for a cost of 2 dollars per customer. Young virgins however, can go for up to five hundred dollars because customers that have AIDS believe they will be cured if they have sex with a virgin. You can imagine the devastation that this brings.
The New Song Project is all about rescuing these children and rehabilitating them so that they can learn what if means to be a normal human being. The children that are rescued are brought to a top secret, high security location where they are in rehab for about 2 years. They are taught to be children again – most of them do not know what being a child is – they never got the chance. This stuff is not a cake walk – this is secret mission James Bond and Chuck Norris kind of stuff because the children need to be extracted from the brothels and pimps and then secretly brought to a safe location. As you can imagine the pimps do not want to lose their “product” so this is a very dangerous job for the rescuers whose lives are at risk every time they do a rescue operation.
The goal of the ZION Snowboards POP Program is to put as big a dent as possible into the beast of child sex slavery. Partnering up with the Ratanak Foundation is going to change children’s lives one at a time and give them a chance to be normal humans after everything has been brutally stripped from them.
ZION is a company founded and run by snowboarders. Our office is the mountain and the only suits we wear to work are snowsuits. We hope that building boards with maximum fun factor, offering products that set you apart at your local scene, and involving you in making other people’s lives better will get you stoked on ZION.
Please visit www.zionsnowboards.com and click on the shop online link to view our latest POP Products. More Products will be added on a regular basis.
