This especially concerns the refugee situation and places with poor medical care and lack of clean water. Therefore we are transferring EUR 55 000 to UNHCR, Doctors without borders and WaterAid. These are fantastic organizations (among others) are tirelessly making an effort using special skills. Thank you for all your contributions to keep people safe.

Shoes no longer wanted or possible to use, must be taken care of in the best possible way. For this we first use our Shoe Bring Back initiative. Shoes left in stock calls for complement solutions and we work with our transport partner DB Schenker to get our shoes where they are needed

By careful planning we do all we can to avoid excess stock, as products with no end- destination is an unnecessary strain on our environment. However, some shoes are unavoidably left over after season. For excess stock our Shoe Bring Back project is completed with humanitarian aid. The choice is Human Bridge, a Swedish organization working for the wellbeing of people and the environment. Human Bridge focuses on collecting and carefully restoring medical equipment, used clothes, textiles and other necessities which are sent out to areas in Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe. This autumn we send about 5000 pairs to Human Bridge from our warehouse in Varberg, Sweden, in a cooperation with our transport partner DB Schenker.

“It can be a bit tricky to find the best option of how to best pass on fully usable shoes for a better cause. Human Bridge shares our values and work impressively hard to allocate necessities and funds to where it is most needed around the world”, says Ulrika Simonsson, Sustainability Manager at Vagabond.

DB Schenker and Vagabond cooperate daily to optimize freights of more than 2 million pairs of shoes to Europe and North America. At DB Schenker it is natural to be able to be an important link in this specific project.

“We are proud to enable necessities to meet their destination where it can make a difference. We use spare capacity to make sure we can organize this with no further strain on the environment”, says Hanna Melander, Quality & Environmental Manager at DB Schenker.

Thanks to all of you who chose to purchase your Vagabond favorites this Black Friday weekend! That has resulted in a contribution for Humanium Metal of EUR 23.543. This will be used in their continuous efforts to create better and peaceful lives for people living in high violence areas.

Starting in the beginning of September, this will be an event where the World Championship medalist Jonas Colting, among others, will cycle through some of Europe’s poorest countries for two weeks.

The 2 500 kilometer race will finish in Varberg, home of Vagabond Shoemakers. It was an easy decision to participate. “We have supported Loza before, they do an important job to raise awareness and contribute to improvements for exposed people in areas not too far away from us” says Anna Fahle Björcke at Vagabond. Alongside shoes, Varberg is famous for bikes and neighboring company Cycleurope is one of the other sponsors. “It is extra special to be able to do this together with other reputable companies also originating from Varberg.”

Visit https://lozafoundation.org/ for more information.