On January 7th we had an event for two of our friends who were releasing their albums.

Check out their music here:
Astro Safari
Caleb Winters

We recently updated out vision! If you want to read more about it, you can do so here.

On the left we see Josue (pronounced Hosway). He is 24 years old. He was brought into the Compassion system at the age of 5 and had the same sponsor until he graduated at the age of 18. Josue is studying mechatronics in school and shows great promise to do amazing things with his intelligence. He had talked about how he would love to learn a bunch of different languages, starting with Korean and Chinese. He also aspires to be a professor. Josue has such a heart for his family and for God, it is truly amazing to see what is happening in his life.

Beside Josue we have the wonderful Elsa. Elsa is 24 years old and she also entered Compassions system at the age of 5. Elsa is studying Business in school and is currently working on her thesis. Elsa had applied for and won $1,300 to start a business she proposed through one of Compassion’s initiatives. Her business is a chicken farm. She dreams of selling her business to start her own clothing business in her hometown. Elsa is super involved in many different projects, it is really inspiring to see her aspirations and dedication to her local project.

Last we have Pablo at the age of 20. I had the privilege of having dinner with Pablo and to really get to know his super passionate heart. Pablo entered the Compassion system at the age of 7. Pablo is in school studying hotel management with a specialization in tourism. He wants to build his hotel so that he can give the people in his village and church jobs. Pablo also is very talented when it comes to music. He sang for us at our table. Our own private show.

So far this trip has been a true blessing and a display of hope. Something that has really been on my heart is that so often in North America we see these developing countries as hopeless. I have noticed that this is far from true. These people are filled with so much joy. True Joy! When I see the faces of these children and the way the families work together there is a joy displayed that you just do not find back home. It has led me to believe that we in fact are the ones in some form of poverty. Visiting these homes and projects have done nothing but encourage me. To start living in a selfless and joyful manner as these people do daily. With that I challenge you to do the same.

Jared

Compassion has invited me to go to Ecuador on behalf of Pocket Change with them this October. The trip will be from October 22nd to October 29th. We will be staying in the country’s capital Quito while we are there. I will be going with a team of Compassion Advocates along with sponsors visiting their child.

So a question that you may be asking; what is Pocket Change? Pocket Change is a non-profit clothing company that I started last year. All of the profits from the sales of our clothes go to Compassion International. Specifically, it goes to the Unsponsored Children’s fund. This fund covers all of the children who have made it into the Compassion system but who have not yet found a sponsor. Pocket Change is meant to be a tool to share love, transform lives and foster generosity within our youth culture.

Compassion is a child sponsorship organization. They are currently working in 27 countries all around the world. Compassion gives children the materials they need to live comfortably and go to school. They also make sure that all the children in their system are involved with some sort of program in the local church. Compassions vision is to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. Compassion has truly done this and Pocket Change just absolutely loves their heart and vision.

When in Ecuador, we are going to be seeing the Compassion system first hand. We will be visiting the local churches that run the Compassion program. This is a tour that Compassion puts on for their advocates to show them what they are investing into tangibly. It will be great to spend time with the kids and to see what Pocket Changes efforts are doing in a practical way.

Please keep us in your prayers and if God has laid it upon your heart to contribute financially that would be extremely appreciated. Click here to donate. (Unfortunately, since this is an advocate tour, Compassion is unable to receipt any contributions.) For those who received a letter for my Philippines trip and are feeling skeptical, I would like to say that the trip is confirmed, tickets have been purchased and we are going for sure. I would ask that you keep me in your prayers– that God may prepare my heart and really use this trip to bless the ministries of Compassion and Pocket Change.

I will be bringing my camera an laptop and will be trying to keep you updated while I’m there.

Thank you so much,

Jared.

Feel free to email me at jared@pocketchangeapparel.com

I wondered what teenagers like me spend their money on and I realized it is music, entertainment and clothing. Well I can’t sing, definitely can’t act so it looks like I am left with clothing. The thought I had was why don’t I start a clothing company and whether someone wants to or not the profits will go to sponsor children around the world. Being only 16 I didn’t think much of it, but briefly mentioned it to my parents. They really seemed to think that it was a good idea. I continued to tell others and everyone told me that I should do it. The only issue is that I am not an artistic person at all, I am the math and science guy and all this artistic stuff goes right over my head. All that aside I started putting some designs together under a couple other names. Running into some opposition I decided that it wasn’t for me and applied for university to go into engineering (the complete opposite of the clothing industry).

So there it was, I was done with clothing and I was ready to start my engineering pursuit. Then week one happened, I started thinking about the vision I acquired just a year earlier, I thought of a new name. It was always my favourite out of all the ones we ever came up with, I could just never think of a logo. The name was “Pocket Change”. So I spent all my physics, calculus, algebra, programming classes trying to design a logo. Having no artistic ability made it very difficult. The last weekend of September came along and I went up north on a retreat with a bunch of friends. I told them all about the vision and we were brainstorming for a logo. I had told them that the vision was simply “turning money into love”. That was it! I saw in my mind a clear vision of a dollar sign turning into a heart. I immediately jumped on my computer and tried my best to do just that. Once it was all laid out the middle image stuck out, that was it, our logo.

We had a name, we had a logo, and we had a good idea of a vision we just needed an outlet to support. The idea was sparked by a Compassion call so maybe we should start there. Through a bunch of blessings I had an email of someone who worked in Compassion Canada’s office, it was someone who worked the phones, but it was an in. I wrote her and explained what we were looking to do and she loved it, she forwarded to the people that she thought should read it. And then I waited… One day I got a meeting with a couple of their executives to present my idea. When I showed up they were definitely surprised to see a 17 year-old guy walk in, and were even more surprised once they heard our idea. Compassion was in and now I had to do it.

Since then we have been doing great! We officially launched our website and shirt sales on May 1st 2010. We have come such a long way since then and we have only been going for about a year and a half, 2 years this weekend from the creation of the logo. We have started manufacturing our own custom tees and hoodies right here in Toronto. We are also currently looking to revamp our vision to go back to the heart of our vision which is to “Share love, transform lives, foster generosity.” Part of this is a huge heart for the youth culture right here in North America. Make sure you keep in touch with what we are up too, because there is a lot of exciting stuff on the way for Pocket Change. We thank all of you so much for building this brand to what it is now. There is no way we could have done it without all of you. I hope you continue to support us as we start to expand our vision.

Jared.

All items marked cut & sew on the site are built and manufactured by us right here in Canada. These are our own custom fit 100% Canadian made products. These tees are meant to fit longer and slimmer and most importantly are not supposed to shrink. We have done one order with them to test out the fit and everyone that has been testing them has said that the fit is “Perfect!”. We do not have a perfect guarantee but we do promise an improvement in the fit. They are no longer the short boxy fit that shrinks upward. We want to make sure you enjoy our product and are quick to tell everyone how much you love it.

With this new cut & sew project you should be expecting some pullover hoodies within the next month. Also be expecting all the future t-shirts to be made with the cut & sew tee. Once all of our products are our Canadian made product we will be removing the badge, but be sure that it is still 100% Canadian goodness.

Jared

We’ve been working away at this site for the past few months and are so glad that it’s now live and available for you to use. We’d like to just draw your attention to a couple areas.

Our About section contains all the relevant details you need to know about what we do here at Pocket Change. Give it a quick read and learn about our vision.

Take a look at our People page and get to know some of our friends. We work closely with a number of musicians and artists who believe in what we do here and are excited to partner with us. We also have a pocket change skate team that we are thrilled to introduce you to.

Finally, please visit our Store. We have lots of great new designs for you to take a look at and this will be the primary place for you to purchase from us.

We’re looking forward to unveiling more great ideas to you in the coming months. Please stay tuned and as always, thank you so much for your continued involvement in Pocket Change.

I know that I was so impressed watching the guys hang with the kids and teaching them some new tricks. As we were around all week you could continue to see campers get stoked on the vision and brand of Pocket Change. By the time we got home I had emails from staff saying that there were a bunch of kids wearing and talking about Pocket Change.

On the Tuesday night I had a chance to speak at the World Shaping Cafe. This was a night to share and hopefully inspire the campers to go out and positively shape their world. It is always one of my favourite times to talk with teenagers at the Pocket Change booth after a talk. Hearing about what they are doing in their communities and about what they want to do. One of the thing I try to emphasize in these talks is that if it God can work through a punk kid like me than he can work through anyone. So pick a problem you are passionate about and tell people that you respect that you want to do something about. Brainstorm ideas of how you can achieve it with this people and work on it. You don’t need to start a whole organization, just try and share some love and change your world.

If you don’t know what Muskoka Woods is you are missing out, we absolutely love what they are all about. Check it.

Take a peek at Dylan with a nice frontside crooked grind in a Barrie parking garage.

We plan on going back soon to get some of those huge pictures at the spots we got kicked out of. Stay tuned.

Wanna skate for us? Send some footage to skate@pocketchangeapparel.com.

Sharing Love is something that we should all aspire to do. Whether this be by word of mouth or by action it’s a healthy practice that will only benefit our own lives and the lives of others. This brings us to “Transform Lives.” It is clear that Compassion is doing remarkable things in the lives of children around the world. Children are being looked after getting the education and resources they need to live a healthy life. One thing that blew my mind when talking with the people at Compassion, is that it isn’t Compassion staff that is in these countries organizing the program. It’s the local churches that use their staff to run the Compassion program. This to me seems that it would be very inspiring to see elders in these communities give care to the children with resources provided by Compassion. It must be a nice change to know that it isn’t the “white man” that comes in and saves villages, it’s the local church, it’s Jesus.

This transformation is important, but our main vision lies in the lives of the people here in North America, specifically our youth. Consumerism and over indulgence is a huge problem in our North American culture. To try and tackle consumerism is quite a large task, so we decided, let’s use consumerism against itself. The goal of Pocket Change is to be the good part of consumerism if that’s even possible. To allow these children to “brand themselves Generous.” When wearing our product we want everyone to be proud of what it stands for, proud enough to wear the label on the outside of their shirt. Making you proud to be generous and hopefully encourage others to do so.

We are trying to create an instinctive generosity within our youth culture. Generosity is something very foreign in our narcissistic world. Trying to give more and encouraging others to do the same is an attempt at broadening the view of who you can help and that a one time donation is great but it is a lifestyle that will change the world.

With this we encourage you to be the change. Don’t ask others to do so, to give money to organizations trying to do so (though that helps), do it yourself. You have the ability to change this world by changing your life first.