Last October, employees at Stella Group, a longtime Timberland factory partner, organized a schoolbag donation at the Long Xiang primary school in Qingyuan City, Guangdong province, China.  The school, which is located in a remote, mountainous area, serves more than 250 students between preschool and grade 6.  There are just ten teachers.

For the school bag donation, Stella volunteers contacted the school to determine how many students in each grade, and the number of boys and girls.  Then, they purchased school bags and study tools, including pens and pencils, erasers, notebooks, painting books and stationery cases.  Once the supplies were packaged in each new schoolbag (pink for the girls and blue for the boys), the volunteers delivered and distributed at the Long Xiang school.

The students were all so happy to receive these colorful new schoolbags full of study tools!

The boys love their new blue bags

Colorful pencil boxes!

Long Xiang students proudly displaying their new schoolbags

In honor of Presidents’ Day (in the US), we’d like to take this opportunity to highlight some of our own American-born favorites: the boots in our Timberland Boot Company Eastern Standard Series.

Eastern Standard 6" Canvas and Leather Boot in Tan Chamois (also available in black)

Made in Maine and featuring materials sourced in the United States, our Eastern Standard boots are expertly constructed by local craftsmen and designed to be lightweight, durable, comfortable and beautiful.

Eastern Standard Plain Toe Chukka in Red Rum and Brown Suede (also available in tobacco)

Our founding fathers would have worn these well, no?

To learn more about the American lineage of our Eastern Standard Series and to shop the collection, visit our Timberland Boot Company website.

We want to thank all of the auction’s bidders and supporters for making it a success, but we think that the folks at WaterAid really say it best:

If you haven’t already been to our website and memorized the tips and stats in our Green Guide to Dating and Love, it’s not too late – you’ll find everything you need to know about giving and getting eco-love right here.

Consider it our Valentine’s Day gift to you.

Learn more about how important eco-behavior is to finding and keeping true love by reading the complete results of Timberland’s Eco-Love Survey.

Stuck for last-minute gift ideas for your valentine?  We’ve got a few red hot suggestions:

Plastic Frame Sport Sunglasses

Whiteledge Backpack

Timberland Logo Baseball Cap

If you’re looking for more head-to-toe crimson, check out our rain jackets and Radler Trail Camp shoes.  And if red isn’t your style, we’ve got plenty of other great accessories in more subtle shades and great materials – check them out.

Need a bigger dose of Sundance? Check out our Festivals page.

Those of you more interested in fact than funny stuff can feel free to check out Timberland’s Technology Guide, where we outline the materials and technologies we use to keep our products and our consumers dry – the very idea our company was founded on.  And if you’re not sure a duck-laden parka or “all-hood” jacket is your style, check out our collection of more socially acceptable waterproof apparel and footwear.

Want to turn on your mate?  Turn off the lights, say the respondents of Timberland’s Eco-Love survey, conducted last month.  According to the survey, more than three-quarters (77%) of Americans find eco-minded behaviors (like turning off the lights when you leave the room) attractive.

It’s just this kind of tip you’ll find in Timberland’s Green Guide to Dating and Love — full of dos, don’ts and creative eco-romance ideas.  We teamed up with the dating experts at OKCupid to create the guide, in hopes that we might help to foster a little bit of green love this Valentine’s Day.

Here are some other ways to increase your odds of attracting an eco-lover:

• Get outside! Nearly 60% of people said they would prefer to meet a potential date while participating in an outdoor leisure activity (think about it: better chances of meeting Mr. Right at the park than in your living room).
• Dress for success in eco-conscious gear. Nearly one-third (30%) of Americans are attracted to people who consider the environmental impact of the products they buy, including clothing.  (Lucky for you, we’ve got Earth-conscious Earthkeepers footwear and apparel.)
• Don’t be an eco-slacker. Top turnoffs, according to our survey, include littering, not recycling, and being a “climate change denier.”   Embrace the Earth and maybe someone else will embrace YOU.
• Don’t be an environmental zealot. On the flip side, there is such a thing as too much eco-passion.  46% said if their date pushed them to order environmentally-responsible food (think organic, locally-grown), that first date might also be the last.

Check out the Green Guide to Dating and the results of our Eco-Love survey, and then go get yourself an eco-minded Valentine!  You can thank us later.

Last year, members of our Timberland team in Thailand worked together with students and staff at the Woradithwithayaprasooth orphanage school to create a vegetable garden.  The school, established by a Buddhist monk in 1952, provides education to approximately 500 children.

On their service day, Timberland volunteers turned 1,000 square meters of land into a vegetable garden.  Once the garden grows, the vegetables will be used in the school’s kitchen — reducing the organization’s food expenses and also providing healthy, organic food to its students.

See how Timberland Thailand’s garden grows!

To give more insight into what Timberland has to offer this spring, here’s Trend and Color Designer Layla to explain where she and her team found inspiration for this season’s “color of nothing:”