Sometimes all you need is a knapsack. It's easy to get all wrapped up in the latest technical features, but maybe you're just heading to class and you just want a stylish bag that doesn't shout "steal me!" Joggo has some handsome little bags that do the trick, and allow you to do some good along the way.
Joggo's selection is small, with just a festival bag, messenger bag and backpack, but the products are not just fashionable, they're designed to make a difference: 10 percent of proceeds go to CARE Canada to educate refugee children around the world, and Joggo bags are produced in a woman-run co-op in a developing nation.
We tested the Purpose backpack, a soft canvas bag with a perfectly minimalist feature set: a padded laptop sleeve in the main compartment, and a smaller pocket on the front. The small pocket has a zipper and flap to make it lightly water resistant, and the main compartment has a much larger flap that buttons down in the front and has a zipper in the back so you can detach it if you'd like. The larger flap is also reversible so it can show either the pack color or a contrasting color as shown in the picture above.
The shoulder straps are comfortable and adjustable, there's a grab loop on the top and the quality of the pack is pretty good: stitching and materials were all solid on our pack. We only missed two things: the bottom of the laptop sleeve is open, so your laptop rests on the bottom of the pack, which is padded as well but it would be nice to have a closed bottom to suspend the laptop off the bottom to isolate it better. And there is no water bottle pocket, which we solved by clipping the bottle to the grab handle, putting it in the main compartment and zipping the two zippers closed in the middle.
In the end what we've got is a pack that is great for everyday duty for school, work and play, with a very stylish appearance that sets it apart from the hypertechnical look that's so popular these days. You'll pay a bit more for the Joggo, but knowing that you're buying from a company with a social mission makes it an even deal in our book.