We believe that charity and community support should be part of every day life, not just something you do on top of a busy life, and it all starts with making your morning coffee more than a morning ritual. 

From 1st July - 8th July 2016, 20 cafés in Melbourne will be encouraging you to Make a Strangers Day by paying forward a coffee that you bought, to a stranger, with each café donating $1 for every coffee that is gifted to a charity of their choice. To support us, all you have to do is Make a Strangers Day at any of the participating cafes (see below) or support us right here!

This is just the beginning, Make a Strangers Day is on a mission to promote social change makers, social enterprises, smaller charities and individual people, to transform the way we engage with charity and our community, making it part of our everyday lives.

This grass roots movement has been founded by Peter Lynagh after a pivotal moment, let him tell the story of where this all started.

Imagine for one week each year, everyone made it a habit to profoundly ‘Make a Stranger’s Day' in a really simple way.

We believe there's no greater happiness like that which comes from doing something for someone else without expecting something in return on a daily basis.

Make a Stranger’s Day is simple pay it forward program to promote giving in our local/online communities through a gift or service and aims to initiate a community-driven conversation, 

in person and on social media, between participants to promote more acts of service, so a 'Strangers Day' can be made everyday.

The cafés that are confirmed so far:

The Treehouse (Balaclava)

Matcha Mylkbar (St. Kilda)

Il Fornaio (St. Kilda)

Patch (Richmond)

Clement (South Melbourne Market)

Tall Timber (Prahran)

Friends of Mine (Richmond)

Serotonin Eatery (Burnley)

Drugstore Espresso (South Yarra)

St. Ali (South Melbourne)

Deadman Espresso (South Melbourne)

Speak Easy (Chapel Street)

Sensory Lab (Little Collins St CBD)

The Little Sunflower Cafe (Elwood)

Home Juice Bar (Etihad Stadium Docklands)

We have cafe spots available. If you are a café owner and would like to participate this year please contact [email protected] to see if you're a good fit for this initiative. Thank you :)

Here is exactly how the money will be spent....

Stickers for the 20 cafes:               $1500

Window decals for the 20 cafes:   $250

Stationery for the 20 cafes:            $250

Social media campaign:                 $500

Website:                                          $500

PR:                                                   $1000

Video:                                              $750        

Pozible costs:                                  $250

If we reach our target of $5000 I've put in a STRETCH GOAL to make sure if there's extra money made on top of our goal it will be spent well.

STRETCH GOAL:

If $10K is raised: We will donate the $5K to the charity of the cafe which raises the most money within the week of the Make A Stranger's day campaign.

The challenge we forsee are with the actual cafés involved and their point of sale. As it's going to be the employee who takes the pay it forward order, it's going to be their responsibilty to write that person's name on the sticker and make sure it makes it's way to a gifted coffee cup later. We understand this will be different for each café so we will visit each café before the launch on July 1st to make sure there is a solid, easy process in place that doesn't take up extra time for the staff involved.

Another challenge is the fact that when July 1st comes there's a possibility no one knows what the Make A stranger's Day concept is. We have taken this into consideration and employed a PR company to promote this project on every avenue possible, alongside running a social media campaign.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this! Very much appreciated and thanks for your support :)