Eighth Generation - Serene Zhaamengwa

Serene Zhaamengwa - Interview Transcript

So Eighth Generation despite being a really small company, wanted to do something to give back during the COVID-19 pandemic. And what we thought we could do really, easily was to leverage our connections with manufacturers all over the globe. To try and find and locate some manufacturers of personal protective equipment and then work with them to try and get it imported here to Seattle, where we could make a large donation to a community health clinic. So that's what we were excited to do.

So our small team all works together in our different ways to make this happen. Once we found a source for PPE, our whole team worked together to figure out the logistics of importing it very quickly to Seattle, which was no easy feat. And then we all worked together to accept a large shipment of over 10,000 pieces of face masks, face shields, surgical masks as well. And what we did was we donated them to the Seattle Indian Health Board, which is just about two miles away from where we are. And it's a community health clinic that not only serves the native community, but serves the greater Seattle community as well. So anyone can go there and receive services and we're happy to help those health care providers be protected.

If people have any access to PPE of course, just like we did, we encourage people to donate what they have and what they can, but aside from that we really also hope that we can get the community support as well for our small business, so that we can continue giving back in the ways that we did just now with the PPE donation, but also in other ways. it's a huge mission of Eighth Generation to give back. And I know a lot of other small businesses do as well, but they need that community support especially during this time.

Something that's really cool about this donation and what we've done is that all of this donation was made possible by artists. So our company was started by a native artists and it collectively works with native artists from around the country. With our business model, we've been able to support projects, large donation projects like this one. And so that's something that kind of puts us apart, is that we're not just a small business and started by an entrepreneur, is that we're a small business started by artists, that have worked really hard to be able to give back to the community as we do in so many ways. So we do appreciate the support from the community in return to keep on doing this good work, that not only supports artists, but also the community when we really need it.