Socks for Sox | evil-purple-sox

SOCKS FOR THE SOX

OVERVIEW

Socks for the Sox is an international charity outreach project lead by our team, The Evil Purple Sox. This project is focused on collecting new pairs of socks that can be given to a non-profit organization to be distributed to those in need of socks. This project is not only a way to make a positive impact in a community, but it also gives teams an opportunity to embody the core calues associated with FIRST.

Watch the video or view the document to learn more.

YEAR ONE: 2014-15

This project began on a much smaller scale. During the 2014-15 season, we decided that our team (and our team alone) would work to collect socks for the homeless in our area by placing collection boxes in Lebanon High School, CGI, Northrop Grumman, and several other local businesses.Through those collection boxes, we were able to obtain 308 pairs of socks to donate to the Russell County Star Project, a non-profit set up to give clothing and food items to the homeless.

YEAR TWO: 2015-16

This year, we wanted to make a much bigger impact than we had before. We decided to try and spread this project throughout as big of an area as we possibly could, so we could positively affect multiple communities and gather many pairs of socks. We never expected this project to get as big as it did.

GROWING THE PROJECT

In order to get as many teams involved as we could, we knew we had to get the word out there. To do this, we created a video explaining the project complete with pictures and contact information for the teams who were interested in joining the project. We used Twitter and Facebook to make several posts about this video to ensure many people would be able to view it. We also used twitter to contact specific teams we were already friends with to ask them if they were interested. We posted several tweets encouraging all teams to participate. We also tweeted at specific states asking if any teams from that area wanted to join.

When Actobotics and ServoCity heard of our project, they asked if they could get on board. They were soon tweeting out information about our project and offering to sponsor a grand prize that would go to the team that collected the most pairs of socks.

By the time everyone signed up, we had 22 teams from 19 different states involved.

OUR OWN SOCK COLLLECTING

This was a very successful year for us in regards to sock collection. We increased the number of sock collection containers we set out and also put them in different places. We put sock collection boxes in several classrooms in Lebanon High School, Lebanon Primary School, and Lebanon Elementary School. We asked teachers at all of these schools to give an incentive to make students want to bring socks, whether it be extra credit, candy, or whatever else they see fit.