Kledingbank Eindhoven (Clothing Bank Eindhoven) has launched a campaign to raise awareness of poverty in Eindhoven. They have designed T-shirts bearing slogans relating to poverty and money struggles.
One T-shirt has bears the Lacoste logo and the text, ‘Lacosteveel’. This is a play on the Dutch words for (costing) ‘too much’ or ‘too expensive’. Another bears the Nike logo with ‘niks’, the Dutch word for ‘nothing’, underneath.
Kledingbank Eindhoven receives donations of unwanted clothes and distributes them amongst low income people in the region. More than two thousand families used the clothing bank last year. Volunteers fear that this number will continue to rise as many people feel the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The clothing bank say more donations are desperately needed as winter approaches. They hope that the T-shirt campaign will help with this, as donors receive a free T-shirt in return for a donation of clothes.
The campaign’s organisers say the T-shirts give out the message that ‘every person in Eindhoven is “brand worthy”’.
Well-known figures in Eindhoven have posed for photos wearing the T-shirts, including cabaret singer Theo Maassen and musician Bjorn van der Doelen.
Emily Zwartkruis, Kledingbank Eindhoven’s chairperson, says, ‘the campaign is not an attack on well-known brands, but a plea for inclusivity’. She explains that children from low income families are often bullied for not wearing the designer clothes that children from other families can afford. She hopes the T-shirt campaign will ‘draw attention to this social problem’ and that ‘we hope to continue to narrow the gap between rich and poor’.
For more information about the campaign and to donate, visit Kledingbank Eindhoven’s website.
Source: Studio040 and Kledingbank Eindhoven (Facebook)
Translation: Rachael Vickerman
