{"id":77,"date":"2009-12-10T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T08:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/12\/t-shirt-promotion-be-like-me.html"},"modified":"2009-12-10T08:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T08:35:00","slug":"t-shirt-promotion-be-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/12\/t-shirt-promotion-be-like-me.html","title":{"rendered":"T-shirt Promotion: Be Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/product_images\/repeater4.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer;width: 261px;height: 261px\" src=\"https:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/product_images\/repeater4.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span>I&#8217;m not sure <\/span>how to soften this with any measure of humility, so I&#8217;ll just be blunt. My friends at <a href=\"http:\/\/preemptivelove.org\/\">Preemptive Love Coalition<\/a> (the folks behind <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/\">Buy Shoes, Save Lives<\/a>) are doing a special t-shirt promotion called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/belikejason.php\">Be Like Jason<\/a>.&#8221; It&#8217;s entirely based around me and the t-shirt in the photo at right.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Um, what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Many of my promotional photos feature me wearing a cool BSSL &#8220;Repeater&#8221; t-shirt. It&#8217;s one of my favorite shirts that I own, due to the nice design. And the great fit. The fact that it supports a fantastic organization is icing on the cake.<\/p>\n<p>So BSSL has decided to take advantage of that visibility with a <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/belikejason.php\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">Get-a-shirt-like-Jason&#8217;s<\/span> special<\/a>. Here&#8217;s the deal:<\/p>\n<p><span>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>You can get the<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/belikejason.php\">BSSL Repeater Tee right now for $14.99<\/a>. <span>That&#8217;s 25% off the usual price of around $20. It&#8217;s a limited-time offer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/product_images\/repeater1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer;width: 196px;height: 196px\" src=\"https:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/product_images\/repeater1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Why should you buy this shirt?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>1. It&#8217;s a nice, soft fitted shirt with featuring sweet graphic design.<\/p>\n<p>2. You&#8217;ve discovered it&#8217;s no longer a good idea to strive to be like Tiger, and you need a new role model. Or at least a new fashion model. So you should be like me.<\/p>\n<p>3. By buying a shirt, you&#8217;re supporting a really great organization that helps little kids.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Why am I wearing a Buy Shoes, Save Lives shirt in my promotional photos anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the story: A couple of years ago, a church near Waco brought me in for a weekend to speak to their college students. That weekend I met<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jeremy_courtney\"> Jeremy Courtney<\/a>, a former member of that church who had moved to Iraq and started up a non-profit organization there called <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/\">Buy Shoes, Save Lives<\/a>. The crazy thing was that, upon meeting Jeremy, he introduced me to his wife, Jessica &#8212; at which point I realized that I already knew Jessica Courtney. She was one of my little sister&#8217;s best friends in high school.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_HXZOhc9ASlo\/SyEUV4D9eNI\/AAAAAAAAAWY\/xWO_EYZp0Nc\/s1600-h\/bssl.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer;width: 216px;height: 324px\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_HXZOhc9ASlo\/SyEUV4D9eNI\/AAAAAAAAAWY\/xWO_EYZp0Nc\/s400\/bssl.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Small world.<\/p>\n<p>But a great connection was made, because I was fascinated with the work Jessica and Jeremy were doing in Iraq. To explain it briefly, the organization operates out of northern Iraq &#8212; the Courtneys live there, with their kids &#8212; where they export authentic Kurdish footwear in order to fund <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/tees\/\">heart surgeries for Iraqi kids<\/a>. These shoes are called <span style=\"font-style: italic\">klash<\/span>, and they&#8217;re completely handmade. I own a pair, and they make me look very cool. At least from the ankle down. (That&#8217;s where it counts, anyway.)<\/p>\n<p>I ended up writing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.relevantmagazine.com\/poverty\/features\/18875-introducing-the-klash\">piece about BSSL for Relevant Magazine<\/a> back in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Now known by the umbrella organization Preemptive Love Coalition, BSSL brings the realms of fashion, social justice, interfaith cooperation, combating childhood illness, and radical peacemaking together under a single umbrella. Buy selling the shoes and t-shirt, they can pay for surgeries for kids who have heart problems due to their parents&#8217; exposure to chemical attacks by Saddam Hussein back in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>There are thousands of kids in Iraq waiting to have these surgeries. Jeremy&#8217;s goal for 2010 is to fund surgeries for 90 kids. It takes a few thousand dollars to do this. Your purchase of a shirt, or shoes, or whatever else helps this cause. No one&#8217;s making money on this: All profits from these sales go toward heart surgeries.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Please help me spread the word about this promotion, <\/span>and go buy a shirt for yourself or a friend. Wear it on Christmas Eve. Stuff it in a stocking. Sport it in your publicity photos. <a href=\"http:\/\/buyshoessavelives.com\/belikejason.php\">Be like me<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic\">Note: <\/span>Those publicity photos above are by my friend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kyletrafton.com\/\">Kyle Trafton<\/a>, who is also a friend of BSSL and does excellent work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure how to soften this with any measure of humility, so I&#8217;ll just be blunt. My friends at Preemptive Love Coalition (the folks behind Buy Shoes, Save Lives) are doing a special t-shirt promotion called &#8220;Be Like Jason.&#8221; It&#8217;s entirely based around me and the t-shirt in the photo at right. Um, what?&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizations-i-like","category-shameless-self-promotion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>T-shirt Promotion: Be Like Me - O Me of Little Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2009\/12\/t-shirt-promotion-be-like-me.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"T-shirt Promotion: Be Like Me - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m not sure how to soften this with any measure of humility, so I&#8217;ll just be blunt. My friends at Preemptive Love Coalition (the folks behind Buy Shoes, Save Lives) are doing a special t-shirt promotion called &#8220;Be Like Jason.&#8221; It&#8217;s entirely based around me and the t-shirt in the photo at right. 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My friends at Preemptive Love Coalition (the folks behind Buy Shoes, Save Lives) are doing a special t-shirt promotion called &#8220;Be Like Jason.&#8221; It&#8217;s entirely based around me and the t-shirt in the photo at right. 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