USG teams with Taggle to aid victims

Beginning this past Thursday, Taggle, a startup company created by a USC student, and the Undergraduate Student Government joined together in a collaborate effort to provide relief aid to victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

The tropical storm, which tore through the Philippines a little more than a week ago, is said to be one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded. It left thousands of people dead and millions more seeking shelter. As part of the push for aid that is taking place on a global scale, Jason Wei, a senior majoring in business administration at USC and co-founder of Taggle, decided to pitch into the relief effort.

“As a T-shirt company, we thought that the best way that we could give back would be to give away free ‘Support the Philippines’ shirts,” Wei said. “We’re taking this purely out of pocket in order to help out the people in the Philippines.”

Taggle is a reverse-auction site for T-shirts that was founded by USC students Wei and Sarah Bernosky last year. On it, local printers can bid to secure custom T-shirt orders that were previously posted by customers. Through the same site, interested parties can now also access a donation page for the Haiyan relief effort. On the page, they can post a donation of any amount, and receive in return the limited edition T-shirt.

Taggle released an update to the campaign on Monday, in which donors also receive a promotion code that gives them a 10 percent discount on their next purchase from Taggle. All proceeds from the campaign go to the Philippine Red Cross.

“We noticed that there were no other campaigns out there that offer a free T-shirt,” Wei said. “Because of our team’s design expertise, we thought that we could come up with a shirt that could spread awareness of the issue, because not many people are aware.”

As part of the attempt to raise awareness, Taggle has teamed up with USG, which is currently working on publicity on a more local level, aiming to bring the relief effort onto campus. Through its newsletter and a wide range of social media — including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — and word of mouth from more than 300 delegates, USG is alerting the student body of Taggle’s ongoing campaign and what it can do to help.

Olivia Diamond, USG senior director of communications, set up the current partnership with Taggle. She said the value of such group collaboration is that it provides a quick and efficient way for students to get involved in relief efforts.

“[Starting] something from scratch is hard, because in these types of natural disasters, immediate response is key,” Diamond said. “It’s putting our expertise to better use to promote an already existing initiative, because Taggle is doing a great job.”

Beyond its collaboration with USG, Taggle itself is hoping to reach out on a national scale, and has already prompted responses from across the United States and the Philippines. As of now, more than 50 people have donated on the Taggle site, in addition to hundreds of likes on social media.

USG’s promotion efforts have had a similar effect in the USC community, as Diamond said there has been a strong response from the student body.

“We have had feedback directly from students who have messaged the USG page who have thanked us for working on this,” Diamond said. “And hopefully students are taking our information and our posts and sharing it well.”

The donation page is scheduled to be up for at least another week.

 

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