Jay Stafford, Sambazon’s friend and ambassador, has taken his summer tour on the road. Jay will be touring music festivals across the nation setting up his own Açaí stand and selling Sambazon goodness. Last weekend, Jay hit the Harmony Festival and here’s a quick update from the road...
"Well, the Trail is officially ablazin'...Harmony Festival was spectacular and the people were in love with acai all over again. It's easy to remind them why it is the best food at the festival. Just a little taste and there body tells them, "YES!" We tried out some new topping combos the goji berry, cacao nib, mulberry, and pistachio mix from Kopali (from hereon out called "Kopali Mix" on top of shredded coconut was very popular among luminaries and good old folks alike. I had five lovely ladies helping keep the booth afloat all weekend. At, Sierra Nevada, people were still ordering "Rasta Bowls," a classic acai berry blend topped with granola and shelled hemp seed from Manitoba Harvest, the best hemp on the market. And that was a kick because that's not on the menu. Great to see the reggae fans keeping it local."
To read more about Jay’s Green and Purple tour and to find out when he’s coming to a town near you, check him out on facebook!
Upcoming events: * High Sierra Music Festival Quincy, Ca Thursday, July 2 at 10:00am
* Emrg N See ten miles east of Salem, OR Friday, July 17 at 2:00pm
* Mystic Garden Party Jackson WellSprings Thursday, July 23 at 9:00am
International Surfing Day was created 5 years ago by the Surfrider Foundation and Surfing Magazine to celebrate surfing and protect the quality of our ocean waters for future generations to come. Tomorrow’s the big day, and it will roll out with scheduled beach cleanups at nearly 100 beaches in the US and worldwide. We encourage all of you to get out there and help support the cause (plus there are going to be challenges and prizes to be won too!)
Sambazon will be out at Huntington Beach fueling the cleanup crew. So come find us!
Check out Surfing Magazine for more information and to find an event near you.
We’ve been waiting for the premiere of Dear & Yonder all year! A surf movie created by Tiffany Campbell and Andria Lessler, Dear & Yonder is an epic ocean odyssey of the female kind. The summer screening tour starts in Cocoa Beach, FL this month, then travels to the West Coast and around the world. Hope to see you at one of the showings!
Full Tour Schedule:
CITY: Cocoa Beach, FL LOCATION: Ron Jon Surf Shop (4151 N Atlantic Ave) DATE & TIME: Friday, June 19th at 8pm DETAILS: Part of the Roxy Design-A-Bikini promo starting at 5pm. Lots of fun activities and giveaways…all FREE!
CITY: San Clemente, CA LOCATION: El Mariachi Restaurant (1925 S El Camino Real) DATE & TIME: Tuesday, June 23rd at 8pm DETAILS: Buy dinner and join the NSSA groms and Roxy team surfers for a casual movie night and free giveaways
CITY: Galveston, TX LOCATION: Saengerfest Park (22nd & Strand) DATE & TIME: Saturday, June 27th at 8:30pm DETAILS: Bring your beach chairs and blankets and join Roxy team surfer Kassia Meador for this free outdoor premier and Roxy giveaways.
CITY: Encinitas, CA LOCATION: La Paloma Theatre (471 S Coast Hwy 101) DATE & TIME: Thursday, July 2nd at 7pm DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers Lisa Andersen, Kassia Meador, Sofia Mulanovich and Sally Fitzgibbons for the official Southern California premier and Roxy giveaways. $5 ticket at the door.
CITY: Honolulu, HI LOCATION: Doris Duke Theater (900 S Beretania St) DATE & TIME: July 23rd & 24th (times TBA) DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers for the Surf Film Festival at the Doris Duke Theater
CITY: Biarritz, France LOCATION: St Eugénie in Biarritz during the Roxy Jam Biarritz DATE & TIME: Saturday, July 11th at 10pm DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers for the Roxy Jam Biarritz surf festival
CITY: Venice, CA LOCATION: TBA DATE & TIME: Friday, July 17th DETAILS: TBA
CITY: Ventura, CA LOCATION: TBA DATE & TIME: TBA DETAILS: TBA
CITY: Grand Haven, MI LOCATION: Grand Haven City Beach DATE & TIME: Saturday, July 18th at dusk (around 9:30pm) DETAILS: Bring your beach chairs and blankets and join Roxy team surfer and former World Champion Sofia Mulanovich for this FREE outdoor premier, great music and Roxy giveaways.
CITY: Hampton Beach, NH LOCATION: Ashworth by the Sea in the Sandbar (295 Ocean Blvd) DATE & TIME: Tuesday, July 28th at 8:30pm DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfer Kassia Meador for this free outdoor movie premier and Roxy giveaways
CITY: Brooklyn, NY DATE: Thursday, July 30th DETAILS: Art show and movie premier with Roxy and Paper Magazine. Invite Only
CITY: Olympia, WA LOCATION: Capitol Theater (206 5th Ave SE) DATE & TIME: Saturday, August 1st at 7pm DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfer Kassia Meador for the Washington premier and Roxy giveaways. $5 ticket at the door.
CITY: Portland, OR LOCATION: TBA DATE & TIME: Tuesday, August 4th (time TBA) DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfer Kassia Meador for the Oregon premier and Roxy giveaways.
CITY: Vancouver, Canada LOCATION: Grace Gallery (1898 Main Street at 3rd) DATE & TIME: Thursday, August 6th at 8pm DETAILS: Art show and movie premier
CITY: San Francisco, CA LOCATION: Potrero Del Sol Skate Park (25th & Utah) DATE & TIME: Saturday, August 8th (time TBA) DETAILS: Art show & movie premier
CITY: Avalon, NJ LOCATION: Avalon Community Hall (3001 Avalon Ave) DATE & TIME: Thursday, August 13th at 7pm DETAILS: Proceeds from this event will benefit Brendan’s Fund, a pediatric cancer fund. For more details visit www.brendansfund.org
CITY: Hermosa Beach, CA LOCATION: Saint Rocke (142 S Pacific Coast Hwy) DATE & TIME: Friday, August 14th at 8pm (doors open at 5pm) DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers for FREE Roxy giveaways, a movie premier and great music. Visit www.saintrocke.com for tickets
CITY: Santa Cruz, CA LOCATION: Pie Ranch (2080 Cabrillo Hwy) DATE & TIME: Friday, August 14th (time TBA) DETAILS: TBA
CITY: San Clemente, CA LOCATION: Surfing Heritage Foundation (110 Calle Iglesia) DATE & TIME: Friday, August 21st at dusk DETAILS: For details & tickets visit www.surfingheritage.org
CITY: Wilmington, NC LOCATION: Lumina Theater on UNCW campus (601 S College Rd) DATE & TIME: Wednesday, August 26th at 7pm DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers for a FREE movie premier and Roxy giveaways
CITY: Virginia Beach, VA LOCATION: Waterman’s Surfside Grille (415 Atlantic Ave) DATE & TIME: Thursday, August 27th at 8pm DETAILS: Bring your beach chairs and blankets and join Roxy team surfers and ECSC groms for a FREE outdoor movie premier and Roxy giveaways
CITY: Oceanside, CA LOCATION: Swiv Tackle Circus (530 S Coast Hwy) DATE & TIME: Saturday, September 19th (time TBA) DETAILS: Join Roxy team surfers and the Keep-A-Breast Foundation for an art show and movie premier
Our friends at the San Juan Capistrano Ecology Center are hosting the first ever Summer Speaker Series this summer to address the issue of Basic Needs – food, water, shelter, and clothing. Fulfilling these basic needs has an inherent impact on our communities and environment. Guest speakers will discuss how to make a positive environmental impact in how we choose to live our lives.
This will serve as a forum where the residents of Orange County can explore these crucial topics with cutting-edge thinkers from a variety of backgrounds:
June 18th: Food Michael Besancon, Whole Foods Market
July 9th: Water Emily Pilloton, Project H Design
August 13th: Shelter Matthew Miller, Appropriate Architecture
August 27th: Clothing Erik Joule, Levi’s Johnny Schillereff, Element Skateboards Roian Atwood, Sole Technologies Derek Sabori, Volcom V.Co-logical Series
Join us for an evening of conversation, 6:30-9PM, wine and beer, and light fare. Registration for these unique events is $15/members, $25/non-members. Guests can sign up via The Ecology Center's website, or call The Ecology Center at 949.442.4223.
If you’re not able to make this, we encourage you to do a quick google search to find and get involved with a local ecology center near you.
Last month I had the pleasure of sampling out some of our new products at Denver’s first ‘Greenfest’. As I stood in front of the booth to make sure our display was dialed in, I couldn’t help but smile to myself about how many awesome products we now have available and how far we’ve come. It all started with our Original Acai Rio Blend and Amazon Cherry frozen smoothie packs in the summer of 2000. Up and down the coast of Southern California, Juice bars, cafés and restaurants made a variety of smoothies and acai bowls using these frozen smoothie packs. People loved the smoothies made from these products and it didn’t take long for the acai bowl experience to catch on too. The success of the frozen smoothie packs in rootsy SoCal eateries led to them being picked up by Whole Foods Market and many of the natural foods stores across the nation.
Thanks to the popularity of the original frozen smoothie packs in natural foods markets, we were able to expand our acai offerings to bottled juices, sorbet pints and freeze dried acai supplements. Now we even offer a line of 32oz (family sized) acai beverages that folks just can’t seem to get enough of the 32oz bottles. I wish my family had a 32oz bottle of acai juice on the breakfast table when I was kid!
In addition to the buzz around the new 32oz, family sized acai beverages; I was amazed at the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our 3 organic energy drinks . Energy drink lovers at Denver Greenfest were so happy to see that they can now look to Sambazon for delicious energy drinks that not only work but are actually organic too! Checkout the new Jungle Love, packed full of aphrodisiac herbs and Diet Amazon Energy which was created utilizing the natural, low calorie sweetener stevia.
I had the pleasure of meeting all kinds of people at Denver Greenfest and it was seriously cool to have ‘something for everybody’. Keep your eyes peeled for even more variety cuz it doesn’t stop here. And now you can find Sambazon products at a rapidly increasing number of conventional supermarkets too! Click here to search our retailer finder for a list of stores near you . Look for more new Sambazon products in 2010. I actually just sampled a couple new top secret products and they were insanely awesome – yeah! And, if you can’t seem to find the Sambazon products you love in the stores where you shop – don’t hesitate to ask the store managers to start stocking our stuff! Let us know if you have any success getting it on the shelf in your local stores, and we’ll send you a little ‘thank you’ just from us!
In 2000 we first experienced Açaí and observed that it had become a huge success within Brazil and was destined for international fame. We also recognizing that this non-timber forest product (NTFP) had the potential to become a sustainable force in the Amazon Rainforest rather than an exploitive industry as countless others had before it (sugarcane, soy). As social entrepreneurs, we set out on a mission to prove the case for sustainable development in the Amazon and founded Sambazon - “Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon”. We developed a Fair Trade “market driven conservation” business model around bringing açaí to the worldwide marketplace that would ensure positive environmental and social development in the açaí harvest regions – thus linking each dollar of sales with economic and environmental gain on the ground, fighting poverty and protecting biodiversity and social justice. We knew that with sound business practices and a lot of hard work, Açaí could be an overwhelmingly positive impact for the local communities and the environment.
Today all of the hundreds of independent family farmers and cooperatives we work with are USDA Organic certified and have been assisted and/or trained in wild crop harvesting to ensure a sustainable source of the fruit. We remain the first and only source of Açaí to be certified Ecocert Fair Trade, providing sustainable employment for over 3,000 people and fostering environmental stewardship on over 1.7 million acres of biodiverse agro-forestry farms in Amapá and Pará States. Both the IEPA (Institute for Environmental Research of Amapá State) and the IBAMA (Brazil's equivalent of the EPA) have officially confirmed that Sambazon’s açaí extraction does not harm the environment.
Sambazon’s efforts in developing industry standards over the years have been felt on a large scale, working directly with the Brazilian authorities on Food Safety and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs). This influence has caused significant positive change throughout the entire Açaí supply chain, from the tree to the processing plants to the community at large.
In 2003, as part of our commitment to our mission, Sambazon founded the Sustainable Amazon Partnership (SAP), a public and private collaboration with the Brazil Foundation and the Peabiru Institute to ensure the lasting sustainable management of the Açaí regions and communities in the Amazon. From inception, this organization has been supported by the Nature’s Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund, and through collaboration from its partners, the SAP has been able to add value to the social, environmental, and economic issues for thousands of families and acreage. This has included Açaí training programs, technical assistance, establishment of baseline bio-social indicators for future statistical evaluation, sustainability programs and alternative income generating activities for thousands of woman, youth and small family farmers.
But it’s not just us saying this: Greenpeace, claimed that Açaí may be one of the best ways to "save the rainforest". The Royal Tropical Institute, stated that "Sambazon's work with açaí is aimed to contribute to sustainability in the Amazon Rainforest and alleviate poverty". We also received the 2006 “US Secretary of State Award for Corporate Excellence" from Condoleezza Rice along with the Ashoka Organization’s 2006 Changemakers Innovation Awards: "Market Based Strategies to Benefit Low Income Communities".
We are proud to have built a state of the art Açaí plant in the State of Amapá, which has become the global reference for excellence in Açaí processing. Run by Brazilians, our plant has developed leading edge manufacturing technologies and new açaí products and remains an environmental and industrial relations landmark in the Açaí industry.
Recently, an article was published in the press which irresponsibly suggested that a “Superfood on Oprah (Açaí) was robbing the Amazon poor of their staple”. To the contrary, Açaí has been the source of significant economic gain for the Amazon’s poor family farmers and fortunately when harvested in a way which is consistent with Sambazon’s benchmark industry practices, protects the bio-diversity of the world’s most important source of flora, fauna and scientific potential. It is true that the local price of Açaí has risen over the last 20 years as one might expect when it is “discovered”. But it is also true that 98% of this fruit has been purchased and consumed in Brazil. Further, the increased prices have resulted in a better standard of living and financial freedom to thousands of family farms, not to some multinational. Supporting family farmers while protecting the world’s most important rainforest is what Sambazon’s mission has been all along.
Yesterday, Fox News gave us the opportunity to go on national television and tell the plain facts. I encourage you to check out the segment here and help us spread the word so we can continue to make positive change in the Amazon Rainforest and beyond.
We celebrate our Earth for one day a year officially, but this usually turns into a week of Earth Day events, positive people doing positive things, raising awareness. We participated in our fair share too, supporting events like Bob Burnquist’s Earth Day at his Megaramp ranch,
the eco launch of our newest product Amazon Energy Jungle Love in Hollywood,
Earth Day at Camp Pendleton,
Yoga Shakti,
And many more including, Volcom Earth Day Event – Orange County Reef/Transwolrd Earth Day Beach Cleanup - Oceanside San Juan Capistrano Middle School Earth Day Celebration San Juan Ecology Center Earth Day Celebration Franklin Zoo Earth Day - Boston Sammy and Sue Book Launch - NYC The Lab Earth Day Events - OC HeadSets and Highballs Cocktail Hour – NYC Element Skateboards Earth Day Beach Cleanup – Florida MIT Sustainability Conference – Boston
In everything we do, we live and we breathe, we try to spread messages of sustainability and healthy living to create a happy future for us all. Now that Earth Day is over and done, Sambazon’s message stays the same, our local harvesters continue to sustainably wild harvest organic açaí for fair wages, our factory continues to increase it’s ability to run on biofuel and process açaí more efficiently, people all around the world continue to support what we do. In the end, Earth Day is just a reminder to live consciously – we will continue to do all we can to help keep the earth and ourselves happy and healthy – spread the love!
