Social Responsibility
Bubbles has a strong commitment to social responsibility!
As a local family-owned, community-focused business, we receive many requests for donations and have over the years contributed to a wide variety of charitable causes. We have decided to focus our efforts on a concentrated number of initiatives in order to generate the greatest impact.
We have spent many months researching causes that would best benefit from our efforts and we have identified “Wash Away Thirst” as our dedicated partnership.
Wash Away Thirst is a campaign designed to bring awareness to the fact that 1 billion people in our world lack access to clean drinking water. Approximately 80% of the world’s known diseases are attributed to the lack of clean drinking water and as a result, a child dies every 8 seconds. However, clean drinking water can be provided to someone in need for as little as $0.01 per day.
The Wash AwayThirst program provides clean drinking water to those who do not have access to something so simple in India, Kenya and Guatemala. For each car washed, Bubbles is committed to providing one person with clean drinking water for a day for every car we wash!
Bubbles Car Wash & Detail Centres are proud to be the first car wash & detail company in Canada to join this great humanitarian initiative.
Our Other Ongoing Efforts
Our Calgary franchisees Andrew & Tracey Bitcon and their dedicated team members continue to volunteer their time with Inn from the Cold.
Our Kelowna team continues volunteer their time to raise funds over the holidays for the Salvation Army’s Kettle Campaign.
Our Past Accomplishments…
We have helped countless organizations with donations throughout the years but some key efforts include…
Two million Canadians have chronic kidney disease or are at risk. Most people don’t know that they are at risk. Most don’t know they have it until it’s too late. The numbers are growing at an alarming rate. In southern Alberta alone, the number of people living with chronic kidney failure has doubled in the last ten years. 70% of people who are on the organ donor waiting list are waiting for a kidney.
To help raise much needed funds and public awareness, Bubbles Car Wash was proud to support the 2011 KIDNEY MARCH in September of 2011. The March involved a gruelling 3 day, 100 km trek through the Kananaski Mountains to Calgary, Alberta. Bubbles Calgary owners Andrew & Tracey Bitcon participated in the March completing the entire 100 kms. With the great support of our customers we were able to raise over $8000 ourselves! The total raised by the March was over $750,000.
Africa Trip Reinforces Bubbles Commitment to Water Issues
In May of 2010, the owners of Bubbles Car Wash Calgary and 3 staff members travelled to Rwanda, Africa to attend a wedding, visit our World Vision sponsor child, and investigate several humanitarian projects we were interested in. While in Rwanda we spent time with many government and non-government agencies, including the United Nations Millennium Village project, the World Vision Khali district, Solace Ministries (widows, AIDS), eQuinox (solar power), and Nuru Lights (alternative energy). We also spend a fair bit of time on our own touring villages and visiting relatives of our employees back in Canada.
In Rwanda, the most pressing issue we experienced was the lack of clean accessible water. The endless supply of safe water we take for granted here in Canada does not exist in Rwanda. Very few Rwandan homes have running water. Everyone in Rwanda carries water jugs to collect their daily water for drinking, washing, etc. Many Rwandans, including small children, have to make several trips a day, walking long distances to water sources that are of poor quality.
As the Rotary International organization states “it all starts with water”. Without safe water, people get sick and cannot help themselves or take advantage of the opportunities other projects provide.
Bubbles Car Wash, and indeed the entire carwash industry, is very focussed on local water issues such as conservation, quality, and recycling. As a result of visiting Rwanda, we now want to broaden our focus to include international water issues. We’ve heard the statistic that nearly 1 billion people on our planet lack access to clean drinking water and that 4500 children will die every day as a result of this. In Rwanda this fact became more than a mere statistic to us and reinforced our commitment to do something about it.