In the summer of 2010, Eric Cope and his wife, Geri, traveled to Central America on a trip that sparked a vision to improve children’s health around the world, and led them to launch Smile Squared – a company that asks consumers to rethink their toothbrush purchases and consider giving a smile to someone in need.
How Smile Squared came to be: All of our children are adopted, and our son, Benny, who’s the oldest of our three, is from Guatemala. Our hearts have been invested in that country since we picked up Denny in 2005. Our loyalties and desire to help came to a head in 2012, when my wife and I decided it was time to give back to the communities surrounding the one that gave us our boy.
As per the dental health give: well, that seemed more of a decision made FOR us instead of BY us; it really happened by chance. We went down to Guatemala in 2010 to fact-find to see how we could best help local women and children. At the same time we were packing up for the day, a group of volunteers with the same travel host were headed to a dental clinic and asked us for some help. It was kind of a natural situation, but I felt a little silly since I didn’t know any Spanish and I didn’t know much about dental health, until someone in the group asked me, “You know how to brush your teeth, right?” And I said yes; and he said, “Great! Show the kids.” So I did, and with no sinks or running water, I was also assigned the task of holding trash sacks open for kids to spit in.
And the rest is history, really. Being in Guatemala and seeing the severity of the dental situations brought on because poverty doesn’t always make room for purchases like toothbrushes gave way to the realization that there exists so much opportunity to help improve children’s health.
By the time we returned home, this full-circle concept was etched in our hearts and minds.
Shortly after the trip to Guatemala, I was doing more research than I’d done in a long time, and ran running across an article about a trash vortex in the Pacific that floats around collecting garbage, and it’s basically the size of Texas.* With the article there was a picture of a scuba diver holding up plastic, alongside a caption that read, “Is this your toothbrush?” And there was the lightbulb!
I didn’t want to keep contributing to that problem, and this solution linked directly back to our learnings of a need in Guatemala. Eventually, after tons of research and consulting with people who understand environmental affairs better than we do, we arrived at the concept of a buy-one-give-one business built around bamboo toothbrushes, which are excellent to people and good to the Earth.
How they give: Right now, we have a few giving partners, and as the business grows, we will do more, but we know we need to remain sensible and responsible, taking good care of the partners we already work with.
With Buckner International, the organization that helped us get started with giving, we plugged into an already-existing, strong and meaningful program. Smile Squared has also donated to other programs, one of which is International Justice Mission (IJM). When IJM rescues someone in from abuse or opression, be it a man, woman or a child, they give that person an after-care kit with some basic goods, like clothes, toiletries and other articles, including a toothbrush. All the items come from local vendors to keep the package culturally appropriate, but we donate the toothbrushes. We’re proud that our contribution is impactful but still simple enough to not require an instruction manual.
Why Smile Squared makes Eric a happy businessman: When all is said and done, it’s simply amazing to work full-time on a project that does good. The mouth affects so many systems in the body; plus when there’s pain and infection, kids don’t want to smile. With Smile Squared, we’re enabling consumers to buy an item that they already have made habit to include on a grocery list, plus to give the opportunity for better health to a person in need. That’s why we call it Smile Squared.
*Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914145,00.html
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