A post from Tea Collection co-founder and CEO, Leigh Rawdon.
Since the founding of Tea, we have built our company for little citizens of the world. We respect the power of the word “citizen,” understanding that with it comes a commitment to engaging in the community whether local, national, or global. There are many ways to engage, and certainly one of the most important roles we have in our country is as voters.
I’m happy to share that Tea is officially part of the Time to Vote campaign, originally initiated by Patagonia and a group of similarly committed companies. We want to be sure that everyone at Tea has the time to exercise our right to vote every year. Everyone on the Tea team can take up to a half day off to vote. We want you to have the time to take your kids with you to the polls if you can, so that children can see from the earliest ages how important it is to be an engaged citizen.
At Tea, we understand the power of images. When we see a foreign place or language or food, it can become familiar and even a small part of us. Similarly, when a child sees a parent voting or speaking up for what matters, the experience becomes a part of them.
As a part of our commitment to the Time to Vote campaign, we are asking our Tea community to also take the time to vote and to share pictures of your families engaged in citizenship. We would love to see kids at polling places or with an “I voted” sticker or any other activity where they have an experience of citizenship. We’ll select our Little Citizen of the Month for November from these images, celebrating the importance of taking the time to vote – and taking the time to include our littlest citizens when we do.
I’m the first to understand that this isn’t easy. When it’s not a Presidential election year, it’s sometimes hard to prioritize getting to the polls or submitting your mail-in vote. It’s not easy to study up on the California ballot measures, and it’s not easy to get home in time from work to pick up the kids and get to the polls just so they can see democracy in action.
But I hope our commitment at Tea for the Time to Vote campaign inspires each of us to make it happen. I’ll admit that the Time to Vote commitment is the extra motivation I needed to figure out where I can take my kids with me for early voting since I’ll be visiting our factory in Thailand on Election Day. Otherwise, I might have just mailed in my ballot without much a mention to the kids. Instead, I’m going to jump through a few hoops to talk to them about the election and take them with me to drop off my ballot. They might prefer Fortnite or soccer, but I have a feeling that the experience will stick with them. They will grow up remembering going to the polls every year with their parents and understanding the importance of being a good citizen.
Tag your citizenship photos on Facebook and Instagram with #timetovote to support the nationwide campaign and #Teacollection #LCOMvote to share with our Tea community and to be eligible for our November Little Citizen of the Month contest (see more details below). Someone will win a gift certificate for Tea, but more importantly we can all inspire each other to be role models for our kids and to be engaged citizens in our country!
To learn more about the Time to Vote campaign, click here.
To register to vote or to learn more about your polling place, click here.
To enter our Little Citizen of the Month program to win $100 gift certificate to Tea, follow @tea_collection on Instagram, post a photo of your kiddo wearing Tea and engaged in civic activity – volunteering, joining you to vote, etc. Use #teacollection and #LCOMvote. Winner will be selected and notified on 11/9/2018.
