FEED & Clarins’ Gift with Purpose

One of beauty’s most heartwarming campaigns arrives on counters this month. It’s an ongoing collaboration between Lauren Bush-Lauren’s FEED charity and French skincare brand Clarins. It’s a new twist on the beauty staple called “Gift With Purchase”. For decades cosmetic companies have offered a pouch filled with sample with a minimum product purchase. But Christian Courtin-Clarins, President of the Supervisory Board at Clarins, spotted a new way of approaching the program. Why not team up with a charity and offer meals for children in third world countries with the pouch? This could actually save lives. And it has.

Since 2011, FEED & Clarins have provided more than 10 million meals to needy school children. Each FEED cosmetics bag equals ten lunchtime meals for children. This gives them the energy and stamina to be able to learn at school. The campaign has now expanded to more than 30 countries and has been an overwhelming success.

“Seeing a child’s face light up is the best reason to continue our work and strive to do more.” – Christian Courtin-Clarins

Here’s how the program works. Visit a participating Clarins counter and purchase two Clarins products. You will automatically be given a FEED10 bag containing a handful of Clarins trial sized products (while supplies last). Clarins will then donate 10 meals to needy school children in underdeveloped countries via the World Food Programme (WFP). In Canada, you can visit the Clarins counter at Hudson’s Bay stores)

I had the pleasure of meeting FEED founder Lauren Bush-Lauren a year-and-a-half ago in New York City at a special Clarins gala dinner. She was very pregnant but she was determined to attend the event. For someone so privileged, she had no airs or attitude at all. She was humble and gracious and passionate about the cause. You could tell that this charity work was incredibly important to her.

After witnessing the effects of hunger firsthand when traveling as a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) honorary spokesperson, Lauren founded FEED with the goal of creating good products that could help feed the world. She dreamt up the idea of designing a tote made of white cotton jute that when purchased could provide food for one child for a year.

“A school meal can be a child’s only meal of the day so it is absolutely vital. And often it is the reason families send their children to school. We’ve found that this program greatly increases the number of children attending school, especially girls, and really works to break the cycle of poverty through education in addition to providing essential nutrition,” she says.

To date, FEED has been able to provide over 94 million meals globally through the WFP and Feeding America. FEED has also supported nutrition programs around the world carried out by Unicef.