Ever since the founding of Ooze, we’ve been passionate about helping members of our community in any way we can. As our company has expanded and we created the Ooze Foundation, we’ve been able to give back to even more organizations doing the hard work. Along with providing financial support to those in our community, we raised funds for women and men’s health awareness. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to help without our customers’ support and love of Ooze products. You should be just as proud of these accomplishments as we are!
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and just like last year, we worked with the Shades of Pink Foundation, a Metro Detroit-based organization that financially assists breast cancer patients. Ooze collected the profits from every pink product sold in October to donate directly to the non-profit, which not only helps patients pay for treatment, but also bills, childcare, transportation and more.
Ooze customers were really feeling the love in 2020, and made this our biggest donation to date by far! We donated $14,725.82 to the organization—almost $10,000 more than we donated last year.
“We wanted to thank you for your generosity to the Shades of Pink Foundation,” said Shades of Pink Executive Director Karla Sherry. “During these tough times the need is great, and your donation will go a long way to help 15 women and their families get through this.”
No Shave November
This year, we added a campaign to raise money for men’s health as well. For the entire month of November, we collected proceeds from teal products sold for No Shave November, a non-profit that provides awareness, education and financial assistance to those affected by prostate and testicular cancer. We’re proud to report we raised $9,500 for the organization—with your help and love of Ooze products!
Thanksgiving Food Drive
Our Thanksgiving “Oozegiving” Food Drive was also a success this year—the number of meals we were able to provide increased from 200 to 250!
With the help of donations from local dispensaries and one partner company, we assembled meals for 250 Detroit families who would have had to go without a special Thanksgiving meal. Each family received a turkey, bag packed full of side dishes like macaroni and cheese, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans, and a pie for dessert.
Christmas Toy Drive
Christmas is supposed to be a happy time—but the reality is that many struggle even more around that time. The goal of our annual “Oozemas” Toy Drive is to bring a little holiday cheer to underprivileged kids in Detroit. This year, we really wanted to outdo ourselves, so for a month, we worked hard to prepare. Our team went on multiple shopping trips, filling carts with toys for boys and girls aged 0-18. We wrapped the toys as well as assembled gift packages for a local Detroit group home. Donations from six local dispensaries and the team from Go To Smoke Shop helped us gift 800 toys to deserving kids!
As you can see, even COVID-19 couldn’t stop us this year. We turned both the food and toy drives into drive-thru events to follow these temporary protocols. Along with of course wearing masks and gloves, we placed food and toys directly into each family’s trunk to minimize contact as much as possible. Ooze will continue doing everything we can to help our community in the following years, no matter the circumstances.
“Now that we have an established organization to conduct these events and charitable efforts,” said Ayar, “we have so much more bandwidth to do things like this all throughout the year and not just during the holidays. We know that there are people really hurting out there, and we’re going to make a real effort to ease that pain in any way we can.”
