Spotlight On...
Each month, The Giving Back Fund recognizes an individual or organization that is doing its part to make the world a better place.
What started as an effort to help one person overcome depression has turned into a movement that aims to reduce the number of suicides across the world. According to their website, “To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.”
A good bit of the success of the organization can be attributed to the big push it has received from the entertainment community. Specifically, musicians who believed in the cause began wearing To Write Love on Her Arms shirts on stage at shows. A MySpace page followed and people began buying the shirts to help support the cause.
“We really believe in music. We don’t use the language of marketing. We don’t call it a marketing vehicle. We believe in songs. Songs can be significant. Music reminds us that we are alive and it’s okay to ask questions. It’s okay to feel things,” TWLOHA’s founder Jamie Tworkowski said recently in an interview with Spin.
The organization has used both social media and innovative apparel design to help spread their hopeful message. It started with the story of Renee, the first person that was helped, being printed on the inside of the t-shirts. Newer designs feature words and phrases such as “Alive,” “Love is the Movement,” “Pick Up the Phone,” and “We will be Hopeful.”
“We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss. Millions of people live with problems of pain. Millions of homes are filled with questions – moments and seasons and cycles that come as thieves and aim to stay. We know that pain is very real. It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real,” reads an excerpt from TWLOHA’s vision statement.
For more information or to purchase apparel, please visit www.twloha.com. To view the Spin interview in its entirety, please visit http://tinyurl.com/o6p2zd.