Our new t-shirt titled, Simple Machine has just been added to the online store. Proceeds from the sale of this shirt pay for the commissioning of recycled bikes, which will be given to people without any means of transportation in our home city of St. Augustine, Florida.

Learn the story and buy a t-shirt. Help spread the word about this tee to help us fund bicycles for people who need them!










Thank you for your support! More updates to come soon.

Love,
The ROSA LOVES Crew

Thank you to all who came out from near and far to our 2 year birthday celebration. We were able to raise over $2,500, that will go towards furthering the work we're doing! It was great meeting all of you, and we appreciate everyone who contributed and helped make the event such a success. Much of the art from the silent auction was sold, as well as the mural. Greg was working nonstop at our custom t-shirt printing booth, screening shirts without a break during the entire night! The SUNBEARS! performed and were amazing. If you have not heard of them yet, make sure to check them out. You'll be taken by their creative, unique and fun melodies.

Check back soon for photos from the event, as well as our new t-shirt which will be released shortly. A huge thank you again to everyone at Cafe Eleven, Ty Williams, Greg from Paperroot Clothing, SUNBEARS!, Classic Blends, the Flagler SIFE team, ALL of our amazing volunteers, the St. Augustine Amphitheater, Craig Hurst, Kelly Crawford, and everyone else that came out to support us. We really appreciate every single one of you!

Happy birthday to us! It's been two years since we first began this project. What an amazing two years it's been. We want to thank everyone who has supported this idea by purchasing a t-shirt. Thank you for your encouragement and for spreading the word. With your help, ROSA LOVES has been able to accomplish a lot during these past two years. We thought you might like to see some of the specifics, so we've compiled a list of some of those accomplishments below.

Also, if you live in or near the St. Augustine community, we invite you to come celebrate our two year birthday with us at Cafe Eleven on St. Augustine Beach tonight. We're throwing a big birthday bash, starting at 6 PM. Below are the details. Hope to see you there!

We will also be releasing a new t-shirt tonight at the event, and we plan on adding it to our online store by the end of the week. Check back soon!

With a lot of love and gratitude,
The ROSA Crew

ROSA LOVES: 2 Years of T-shirts for Good

Here's some of what ROSA LOVES and its supporters have accomplished in the past 2 years by selling t-shirts:

- Purchased a new walker for Glenda, a local St. Augustine disabled woman, in first 2 months of business.

- Raised $5,895.40 ($895.40 over the original financial goal) for the Coley family, who lost their home in a fire. The funds will be used in the reconstruction costs of their home.

- Raised over $2,800 to purchase Made, an Indonesian fisherman, a custom-made fishing boat.

- AOL names ROSA LOVES 7 of Top 12 Businesses That Could Be The Next Big Thing in March of 2008

- Provided ten local families with holiday meals during 2007 holiday season.

- Raised over $1,800 to provide funding for an irrigation system for vegetable crops at Hananasif Orphanage in Tanzania, Africa.

- Work published in: HOW Magazine, GOOD Magazine, RELEVANT Magazine, AOL.com

- Raised over $4,500 in scholarship funds for three Mexican college students

- Raised over $5,000 to provide new surfboards and wetsuits for South African township outreach program.

- Built school in rural Bangladesh, funded 30 students' tuition, and provided sustainable income programs for a local family, the Sharkars

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION DETAILS:

JOIN US TONIGHT, THE 14TH!!!ROSA LOVES is celebrating their 2 Year Birthday at Cafe Eleven on St. Augustine Beach.

The event starts at 6 PM and will feature Jacksonville's newest and most fun, SUNBEARS! Check out their music! Their songs will make you happy, which is what we will when we see you at the party.

The night will include:

• LIVE MURAL PAINTING by Ty Williams

• SILENT ART AUCTION

• T-SHIRT PRINTING - BRING YOUR OWN TEE TO GET PRINTED!

• DANCE PARTY by Classic Blends

• SUNBEARS!


• NEW T-SHIRT RELEASE

• FUN TIMES

$10 or $5 if wearing a ROSA LOVES tee
(FREE DRAFT BEER WITH $10 cover)

ALL PROCEEDS FROM EVENT GO TO ROSA LOVES!

PLEASE JOIN US!!! We don't want you to miss this event!! ROSA LOVES is celebrating their 2 Year Birthday at Cafe Eleven on St. Augustine Beach.

The event starts at 6 PM TONIGHT and will feature Jacksonville's newest and most fun, SUNBEARS. Check out their music! Their songs will make you happy, which is what we will when we see you at the party.

The night will include:
• LIVE MURAL PAINTING
• SILENT ART AUCTION
• T-SHIRT PRINTING - BRING YOUR OWN TEE TO GET PRINTED!
• DANCE PARTY by Classic Blends
• SUNBEARS!
• NEW T-SHIRT RELEASE
• FUN TIMES

$10 or $5 if wearing a ROSA LOVES tee
ALL PROCEEDS FROM EVENT GO TO ROSA LOVES!

JOIN US ON TUESDAY, THE 14TH!!! ROSA LOVES is celebrating their 2 Year Birthday at Cafe Eleven on St. Augustine Beach.

The event starts at 6 PM and will feature Jacksonville's newest and most fun, SUNBEARS. Check out their music! Their songs will make you happy, which is what we will when we see you at the party.

The night will include:
• LIVE MURAL PAINTING
• SILENT ART AUCTION
• T-SHIRT PRINTING - BRING YOUR OWN TEE TO GET PRINTED!
• DANCE PARTY by Classic Blends
• SUNBEARS!
• NEW T-SHIRT RELEASE
• FUN TIMES

$10 or $5 if wearing a ROSA LOVES tee
ALL PROCEEDS FROM EVENT GO TO ROSA LOVES!

After many weeks of working and waiting, the new shirts are finally in and for sale in our online store! Check them out and buy one for you and a friend!

We’re very excited to introduce our new story, Water The Fields, which is about an orphanage in Tanzania that started an sustainable horticulture program. ROSA LOVES will be selling this T-shirt to provide funds to purchase and install an irrigation system for their crops. Read this great story and buy this rad shirt. It’s designed by our friend, Danny Jones.





Our next new shirt is released for an existing story, Armonia, and designed by our good friend Michael Young. This T-shirt will help us put three students through college, including a young man named Lupe, whom this design was inspired. This design is printed on the ever-so-popular American Apparel Tri-Blend tee (same as recently retired Sharkar Family tee).





The third new T-shirt is another "ROSA LOVES Tee". The purpose of these tees is to raise money that will go directly back into the company to support operations costs. This killer new design titled, "From The Heart" is designed by our friend, Aaron Martin.





Take your time checking out the new stuff and drop us a line! Let us know what you think! Thank you so much to everyone that’s been patient with us. We think they were worth the wait! Be on the lookout for one more new tee that will be released within the next month as well.

Thank you for your support!

Love,
The ROSA LOVES Crew

We have just learned that ROSA LOVES has been named 7 of 12 on AOL's Top 12 Businesses That Could Be The Next Big Thing.

This comes to us as a huge surprise (to say the least) and we're honored to be recognized in this way. It's been incredibly encouraging for all of us involved with ROSA LOVES to see others get behind this concept. We hope that other people decide to start their own similar projects. ROSA LOVES is not about a brand, "The Next Big Thing", or even about T-shirts. It's about an awareness of those in our lives that are in need— and using resources that we have to help them. Whether you are a graphic designer, writer, landscaper, or someone that simply has a lot of time on their hands— find a way to help someone in need with the gifts, talents and resources you have been given. Find a creative way to help someone in a simple way with those resources. "We can do no great things, only small things with great love", Mother Teresa once explained. Big things can happen through small means. We at ROSA LOVES have a lot of hope and it's our main hope that the message of ROSA LOVES and not "ROSA LOVES" become "The Next Big Thing". Be encouraged to start today!

With much love and gratitude,
-The ROSA LOVES Crew

We have just met our goal of raising $3,000 for the Sharkar family in Netrokona, Bangladesh!

Thank you so much for everyone who purchased one of these T-shirts. We will be posting an update on the family soon.

Hello friends and Merry Christmas, Happy belated Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy 2008!

We hope that this finds you well and hopefully spending quality time with friends and loved-ones. So far for all of us involved with ROSA LOVES, it's been a season of many blessings. Many people have responded to what ROSA LOVES is doing and got involved by purchasing a ROSA LOVES T-shirt as a gift this month. We are nearly sold out of every style, and will be able to meet many of the needs almost all of our stories! The 2007 Holiday Meals Tee, which raised funds to provide ten local families with good holiday meals, sold out in just three weeks! This past Thursday, ROSA LOVES delivered those meals and wanted to share with you just how we did it.

We would like to keep the names of the families that were helped anonymous. The families that we chosen were all connected to people that us at ROSA LOVES have previous existing relationships with, whether through our church, mentor programs or through other close friends. Once we identified the ten families that were in need, we collected the money that was raised from the Holiday Meal tee and purchased all of the goods:





1.) COOKIES
What would a well rounded holiday meal be without a hand-full of homemade cookies? ROSA LOVES' inventory manager, Mary Joy, baked up some tasty ones for the gift bags, and graced everyone with her cooking skills!

2.) CLEMENTINES
Who doesn't enjoy clementines? The holiday gift bag included a nice bunch of these tasty fruits which were hard to keep our hands off of.

3.) $150 SUPERMARKET GIFT CARD
After some debates on how we should go about providing meals or where to buy them from, we came to realization that it would be best to buy gift cards from a local grocery store for those we were helping. Rather than cooking a meal or delivery a turkey per se, we decided that it was best to provide a gift card for a few important reasons.
1.) What if the recipient prefers to have something specific for their family's holiday meal? Perhaps that family cooks a traditional meal every year. Maybe the family wishes to buy food that they normally couldn't afford.
2.) We didn't want to take the risk of spoiling the food if we purchased and delivered it too early.3.) Most of all, we thought it was important for the recipients to have the choice to pick out what they wanted to cook for their family. What we realized was that many of these families live in poverty, and do not have the liberty to choose much at all. Many of their options are limited if not non-existent in some cases. We thought that giving them a gift card, as opposed to making them a meal, empowered them, blessed them, and encouraged them by giving them options to choose from.

4.) PLASTIC FOOD CONTAINERS
Another essential included in the gift bag were an assortment of plastic food containers. The reason we included these was to encourage saving left-overs for the following days after the meal.

5.) $15 CASH
Like we explained earlier, many of the recipients live in poverty without many options to choose from. Since they work at low income, unskilled jobs, there are not many opportunities for them to make a truly livable wage. A high percentage of them do not own a vehicle, and with a poor public transportation system in St. Augustine— many of them rely on taxis or riding a bicycle for their transportation. We realized that in order for them to get to the grocery store, they would need to take a taxi. That's why we included the $15. We learned that a one way ticket to the grocery store from where most of the recipients live costs around $6. So for $15, we figured that it'd be more than enough to get them over to the grocery store and possibly even somewhere else if they needed to.

It was great to see and hear how much of a blessing it was for all who were helped in this initiative. Ten families in St. Augustine are now able to share a great meal with their loved ones who perhaps may have not been able to before this T-shirt was created. Thank you so much to our local sponsors, ,, and. Thank you especially to all of you who supported this story and purchased a shirt! Blessings to you and those you love on this holiday season and Happy 2008! Check back with the website soon for new stories and shirts!

We're excited to announce that we have sold out of all of our newest Holiday Meal T-shirts! In only a couple of weeks, ALL of the t-shirts have sold— and we are so happy to have the funds to sponsor families in our local community with meals for the holidays! Thank you everyone who supported this story and bought a shirt.

There has been a giant influx in orders during the past weeks. Thank you so much for supporting us during this great season of giving. You truly are giving a gift that gives back by purchasing the T-shirts for your friends and loved-ones. We are also very excited since we are very close to meeting our goal for the Coley Family's story. Nearly 60 more shirts need to be sold to meet our goal of raising $5,000! Additionally we're over halfway to meeting our goal for the Sharkar Family and way over halfway for the kids of Mossel Bay!!!

It's incredible to see the massive amount of support these projects have been gaining in such a short amount of time. Thank you to all of you that have supported us and supported these great people in need. That to us, is what this holiday season is truly about.

Thank you for being gracious to us around this hectic time of massive order fulfillment. We will process and send your order as quickly as we can to ensure its timely arrival during the holidays. Friends- from our heart of hearts, we truly appreciate your support, your kind e-mails, and your purchases. We hope and pray that during this sometimes busy, hectic season, you can find time to genuinely help someone in need. It doesn't have to anything huge or flashy. We just encourage you to get out of your comfort and help someone that is less fortunate than you may be.

Happy Holidays friends, and thank you again for your support.

Love,
The ROSA LOVES Crew