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Andy
Cannabis has been doing some really interesting things in the community with regards to helping and giving back. And today we’re going to explain a little bit how we are getting involved in the community. We’ve been, we’ve been in the cannabis space for ages now, since long before there was an announcement that it was going to be legal for everyone to grow at home and things like that. And yeah, we’ve watched the industry develop. And we’ve basically since the get go been trying to push a narrative that or not push the narrative, but change the stigma of the cannabis industry. And it’s not easy. I mean, there’s a lot of traditional folk out there that still think cannabis is this evil thing, and it’s demonic and gateway to this and that, and it’s really just not true. And, you know, I’m hoping that we’ve been doing a good effort at bringing a professional image to the cannabis space. And yeah, and we’ve quite proud to have done something quite cool. I don’t know if you guys have heard about Mac yet. listening in, it’s called making a change. It’s an organisation that me and Dean and the team at marijuana sa have been funding, it is still a division of our company. But we’ve been primarily funding it. And he’s going to tell you a little bit about what we doing there.

Dean
So Max, a project now, which we’ve been working on going on, I’d say it’s probably around four to five months old. And basically, we Ty has joined our team, he’s the front of the end of the of the channel, which we’ve created and Mac are making a change is basically an organisation not for profit organisation in which we’re trying to bring light to individuals who are creating change, or to create our own kind of change through video format. And in the last sort of five months, we’ve seen the craziest kinds of stories and people who are doing good, and people who are struggling themselves, but still, you know, ending up to feed hundreds of children a day. And it’s really been an incredible experience to be part of just so far. And you know, it’s, it’s, there’s more, there’s more to come. There’s just so many people out there who need help, and so many people who are trying to help. And yeah, it’s been an incredible experience to, to be a part of, and to see that, you know, we actually can potentially make a difference.

Andy
And the nice thing is like we utilising our experiences that we’ve learned here on YouTube, and doing these videos and podcasts over the years and editing and doing facility tours, except where are we applying it to sort of documenting the process of where we we obviously rely on you guys and our network of friends and businesses that provide, they either sponsor videos, so they get the name or brand or image put in the videos or a certain maybe corporate agenda, which we don’t mind doing because we get to then help people in return. And we just sort of they essentially paying for like an advertising PR service. And we get to then facilitate some of that. Not all of them give a direct agenda. Sometimes they just give cash and then we’ll put it to good use. We last week, we it was such an amazing day, we basically raised like 2200 bucks. 1000 of that was from previous companies that had sponsored and then 1200 words from another member of the cannabis community, lumberjack labs. And they Yeah, we use that we’d like to get to this lady in. I think it’s Athlone area in Cape Town. And basically she runs a soup kitchen and she feeds kids. And yeah, he’s like, it’s it’s so heart wrenching to see the response of what 1200 2209 can do. So we refilled the gas and the Dan gave her credit but

Dean
Jays bought all I mean, just yeah, it might not seem like a lot of money. I mean, it is a decent amount of money, but it might not seem like a lot for a lot of people. But what she was able to do with those donations, made it all feel like you know, the last sort of five months of hard work from from the whole team was was worth it because it really did actually make a difference for a lot of people in our community. He wouldn’t have been able to open her soup kitchen without the gas and she literally was telling people it wasn’t going to happen. And I wasn’t expecting us to be obviously bringing in bringing in the donation. We weren’t in the morning. We weren’t even expecting it ourselves. You know, we the lumberjack labs came through on the same day that we put out the piece of correspondence saying that they did require it and it was yeah, it was to see her reaction to see the kids reactions. It was super, super incredible stuff.

Andy
And the lady was talking about you know, it’s yeah, she was talking about these kids you know, and how they asked for literally they’ll they’ll go on the streets when they should be in school and they beg for like a one round which is like the equivalent of Like, five cents US and like was with that one ran, they could get one slice of bread plain. And then with a two round, which is 10 us cents, or 10 Pradesh paints. And with that, then they can get a piece of bread. And then they’ll just take, they’ll dusted with sugar, just like white sugar, and they put that on, and then you get your bread and sugar. And I was just thinking, I mean it. Yeah, it’s, it’s, you don’t see that all the time. And we as you know, I suspect if you guys are watching this, you’re part of the, the group of people that lives in a bit of a bubble, myself included, not not saying anyone isn’t, but it’s, yeah, I’ll be honest, I, I bought a mango the other day for like, 35 grand. And, you know, I’ve bought an ABA in the past, you know, maybe two hours for 50 bucks, and it’s just like, shit, that’s maybe like 50 kids getting a slice of bread, and they don’t always have money for that, just that one slice of bread. It’s crazy.

Dean
Yeah, and I think that’s also why it’s so important to bring light to these kinds of organisations, which are trying to help because, you know, a lot of the time they’re also struggling for funding, they may not, you know, unfortunately, they may not be sort of, I don’t know, what’s the correct word marketing themselves well enough to be to be getting, you know, the kinds of donations that they need. And, you know, a little bit of bringing, bringing to light the good tasks that people are doing good, you know, in turn, help hundreds of hundreds of kids or get people off the street or even animals, you know, so it’s, it’s really, it’s also really important to start to have these kinds of discussions and start to start to look out, you know, to start to find these kinds of people, because there are actually a lot of people who are trying, you know, and they also know, they’re giving help, but they also need help at the at the same time in order to keep doing what they’re what they’re doing.

Andy
And sadly, I think it’s up to is up to people like us, and you know, those organisations that we support, it’s, you know, the government’s not just going to magically fix the country overnight. And it’s, you know, like with these these places, in the night shelters, they do help they make it that you know, that if they can put someone in a night shelter, they’re not gonna get a job, if they sleeping on the street are not easily you know, they’re dirty, they, you know, they’re unemployable. They have no access to phone that it’s impossible in today’s society to function without like, a certain baseline of things you need fine, you need a bit of airtime, and you need this and that and like with no money, you’re not getting any of that the internet as well. Access to browse the internet, we all just take it for granted. But yeah, so that’s, that’s, you know, it’s gonna take us sorting that honest, that’s the only way we can you know, down the line, I do want to push or we want to push things more educational benchmark, I’d love to pay for some people to get through school, some kids to get through school, parents to help their kids stay in school, school programmes, computer development within the schools, I’d love to push those agendas. We obviously just small at the moment. And we basically, we donate we’re trying to donate as much as possible. But we also are covering the full cost of the division, which is basically a full time salary for Ty me and Dean, we obviously volunteer hours on just like mshs cost. And then the thumbnails from Jana and Cole that helps with the editing and the audio and uploading and like, you know, everyone’s sort of volunteering their time in internally, but we do have some really cool Patreon support on Patreon really does help a lot. It’s basically the future of the business would be that and, and YouTube revenue when we get there. I mean, what we are like 150 subscribers on YouTube, and tic TOCs, also seeming to pop off. But Scott, it’s exciting. It’s exciting times.

Dean
It’s exciting to see all the hard work paying off, but it’s also exciting to get into the comments and to see the kinds of comments that people are saying. And then like 111 of the ones on what the the night shelter we did someone who’s an ex attendee of the night shelter was commenting to say, you know, super, super cool to see, and that they, you know, they used to be in the shelter. And then on sort of the Tick Tock video that did really well, the day before yesterday, it was super also super cool to see how much support there was, and you know, the positive comments. So it’s, you know, it feels like there is a lot of positivity coming from it, but it obviously does need help from more than just asset as a team and internally and that’s why we putting out the call and that’s why we making this content, you know, we do have ways you can get involved and if you would like to get involved, we’d appreciate it a lot.

Andy
Yeah, it’s and it’s not just even if it’s not just money, but time. You know, we’re always looking for people, you know, it’s a lot of work that goes into video, videography. All of these things sometimes I just need the person to help carry the camera for the day or shoot a certain event or social media, things like that. It’s all going to be volunteer based but for the moment you know, I’m I’m proud that marijuana SA is gone so far. With this, I mean, we’ve run it for about five, six months now. It is at a cost to us but it regardless, it’s it’s worth it at the end of it and you know if we can make it sustainable at some point where it’s covered fully by ad revenue even better, and it’s just one of those things that’s you know, coming out of cannabis industry that’s you know, it’s modern it’s good for the economy is another good thing in the favour of cannabis. And yeah, it’s just proud proud of the industry you know, it’s not every it’s scarce. You see other industries doing as much with you know, focus on the small guys and the community. But yeah, that’s pretty much it for the for the ramble today. We do appreciate you guys listening all the way to the end. Make sure you just check out the socials check out Mac checkup MSA for updates on Insta there’s patreon link for Mac is also listed below you can get a lot of info there and if you guys want to help out just reach out to us and we can hopefully do something awesome especially if you’ve got a business and that you want to the business wants some advertising or it’s got a cool video or you’ve got a yeah like a some sort of company we can always pair you up with an organisation you guys can make something really cool happen. But yeah, till next week. Peace guys