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Spreading joy in The Gambia

Why we did it

A lot of brands donate a certain percentage of their revenue to a specific major charity and that is beautiful. However, at Bigger Picture Clothing we do not believe that this is the way. Not 100% of the money ends up where it actually should and you as a customer will never be able to see the direct impact of your purchase. We aim to be as transparent as possible and actually show you who is supported in what way by your purchase. In order to kickstart the brand and show this concept to you, we have started a project that is called ‘Spreading joy in the Gambia‘. This project made us rethink life. Just seeing what impact a pair of socks can have from a 1st person perspective made us so determined to make this brand work. Together with you we can establish the new world by spreading joy & inspiring others!

Freek and Sambu making bigger picture sign

What we did

We started collecting 3 things that were needed for this project. Firstly, we collected empty shoeboxes which we turned into gift boxes. Secondly, we collected school supplies, clothing, toys, sport accessories, care products, etc. in order to fill all the boxes. At last, we started a crowdfunding in order to pay for the transportation costs and to enable us to invest in local causes. Then we established partnerships with two organisations that could help us with our project. ‘Gambia For You’ helped us with the transport of all the filled shoeboxes. Besides, ‘Kans voor Gambia‘ established our contact with the Fankanta school in the Gambia. Eventually, we collected over 165 shoeboxes and lots of other supplies. In the end of February 2021 our CEO Freek travelled to the smiling coast of Africa, in order to make sure that they will end up where they should. Furthermore, we managed to invest on a small scale in a few local causes. As we only had relatively small funds, we could not do much, but we did the following:

Girl receiving giftbox in The Gambia

How we did it

We made a folder about this initiative and started spreading it on social media to our friends and family. The amount of response was overwhelming. On top of that, a lot of shoe retailers donated their empty shoeboxes and a few companies donated €100 for the transport costs. After going from door to door for weeks, we raised €1.000 for this project and words can’t describe how it felt to have so many people supporting our project. We gave all of our supporters multiple updates about the progress of our cause. They were all able to follow what we did exactly, how we did it and could even see footage of the impact. In this way we have been able to spread positivity and joy both in the Gambia as in the Netherlands. We always aim to show you, what your impact is and how it has a positive impact, so that is how seriously we take the concept of ‘transparency‘.

Fankanta school in The Gambia

Sustainable Development

As I fulfilled this project as a 22 year old part-time student at the time and we did not yet earn a single euro, it was very hard to have an impact on a huge scale. We raised around €1.000 and I personally added another €1.000. With these funds we were able to do the following:

One year later... we came back, with help!

We got in touch with Dutch Youtuber Frank van der Slot (a.k.a. Slotta). We raised around €15.000 and invested it in both local sport communities (10%), as well as education (90%). All of our operations have been documented and published in a documentary on his YouTube channel. With over 250.000 subscribers, we were able to reach a lot of people and share our positive movement.

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