SWAGG is a free mobile app (download here) that lets you shop smarter using your mobile phone. Buy, send or swap SWAGG GIFTS and organize your old school plastic gift cards.
For every download of the app between now and Dec. 31, 2010, SWAGG will donate $1 to Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) , up to $125,000. Which? COOL and NICE. You can’t beat that, really.
Clever Girls Collective and SWAGG are sending a pair of movie fans to the Sundance Film Festival! Download the SWAGG app and then visit the Ultimate SWAGG Getaway Sweepstakes site to enter to win a trip for two to the Sundance Film Festival. Entry deadline is January 3, 2011, 11:59pm, PST.
So, I broke down last year or so and got myself a smart phone. An iPhone, actually. And this year I downloaded a free application called Swagg which allows consumers to get and give gift cards from the ease of their mobile device. I’m a busy woman. Four kids, a full time job, and saving the universe in a pair of tights and a cape. I mean it. I’m BUSY. This is just the type of app that I need.
With SWAGG I have access to over 3,000 retailers including American Apparel, American Eagle, The Wet Seal, Arden B, CBSSports.com, JC Penney, Live Nation Merchandise, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM and Steve Madden. Even though gifts come in all shapes and sizes and kinds, there are few betters gifts than surprising someone with something they never expected. Like the time the babysitter I employed for two of my kids helped us have a Christmas when no money was coming in and I couldn’t even afford a tree. She and her friends all took a shopping trip to St. Louis for the day and she convinced them all to purchase three extra presents: something for Mallory, something for Mason, and something for me. They dropped it off in a pickup truck and also brought a tree, A TREE Y’ALL, so that my little poverty-stricken family would enjoy a nice Christmas. She called to ask if I’d be home so she could drop off some Christmas cookies and this is what she brought over to me. That kindness affected me so deeply that I promised myself to seek out people in that same vulnerable, lonely existence.
Since that time I have chosen a student each year whose family has hit a rough patch. Those students are easy to spot after having been a teacher and administrator for the past 16 years. They’re incredibly quiet and insanely noisy. They’re well dressed and wear too-short pants all through the winter. They’re honor students and they’re academically behind in terms of years. They’ve lost family members and homes and they move every month before the landlords can evict them and sometimes they don’t show up for months. They’re Black and White and Latino and Asian. They have names like Ellie and Hannah and Jose and Jermaine. Basically, they really couldn’t be more different from one another and yet it’s easy to spot a hurting kid.
The best gift I ever gave was the commitment to myself to make sure that I find these kids and then I enlist my friends to help ease their holidays. All, I have found, celebrate Christmas and yet act out with bad behavior the closer the school year gets to Christmas vacation, thus telling me that they are going to have a hard time being at home without the daily routines of classes and breakfast and lunch that schools provide. Most of these friends of mine who help provide gift cards and sweaters and electronic games and nail polish and new toothbrushes (we’re nothing if not concerned about dental hygiene) do so all through the year and save things up to help contribute to gift baskets.
Do you know what makes me lucky? Really generous, awesome friends. But the commitment to give seems to grow every year. The promise I made to myself to keep on giving has multiplied. It’s amazing how many new friends get involved by inviting themselves. They don’t want to be named nor do they ever want the kids to know they’ve done anything. They don’t want thanks, but they like hearing the stories I tell them about the students. Whatever it is they get out of this is on them. Most of what I get is the joy of connecting two unknown parties and act as moderator.
The best gift I ever gave was this unexpected phenomenon that came from a place of helping others.
Clever Girls Collective (which asked me to help promote this post and worthy cause) and SWAGG are sending a lucky pair of movie fans to the Sundance Film Festival! The sweepstakes is offered exclusively through the Clever 1000, and it has a pretty kick butt prize, including:
- 2 night/3 day stay at Yarrow Hotel in Park City Utah (Jan 21 – Jan 23, 2011)
- Ground transportation to and from hotel to airport in Park City, Utah
- Dinner for two at Tao Lounge, including 2 nightclub passes
- All access to The House of SWAGG Gifting Suite
- 2 tickets to a movie premiere on Saturday, January 22nd — movie tbd
- $4,000 value
Learn more about the coolest new app that revolutionizes the whole shopping, gifting, and gift card-organizing experience and Download the SWAGG app to your iPhone or Droid. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective , which endorses Blog With Integrity.
Do you want to know more about the Getaway Contest? Click here.
Do you want to do something nice to support beating the snot out of cancer? Download the app.
Do you want to feel good about gifts you can give to others? Just do good things.