Emma’s third SXSW sponsorship

We’re at SXSW this week, meeting interesting people and helping backpacks mobilize to fight hunger. We’ve been  proud SXSW lanyard sponsors for three years now, each year launching an initiative asking SXSW attendees to join us in doing a little good for a cause we care about.

If there’s such a thing as lanyard memory lane, we are now going to walk down it. In 2009, folks at SXSW helped Emma fund 40 classroom projects through DonorsChoose.org. SXSWers weighed in on their favorite regions and subjects, and we chose the projects accordingly. In 2008, Emma asked lanyard wearers at SXSW to vote YES for trees, because they’re tall and leafy and why would you vote no? For every vote we got — up to 5,000 — we planted a tree with our tree-planting partner, Plant-It 2020. (Of course, we decided we like trees so much that we haven’t really stopped planting them since. We plant five for each new customer who joins Emma.)

This year, we’re focusing on one of Feeding America’s national programs, the Backpack Program, which provides food-filled backpacks to hungry kids, giving them a convenient and discrete way to take food home to their families. Started in 1995, it now serves nearly 200,000 students a year through 3,600 individual Backpack Programs across the country.

Even if you’re not joining us at SXSW, you can click to turn an ordinary backpack into a super-awesome, hunger-fighting backpack. After 1,000 clicks, Emma will donate 1,000 backpacks filled with food to Feeding America’s Backpack Program. If you’re ready to super-awesomify a backpack, visit myemma.com/backpack.

More from SXSW soon…