Give Your Best - Empowering Refugees
Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian / ‘Those clothes were like gold’: fashion donors give refugees dignity of choice
Not long ago, while browsing the internet I came across this remarkable initiative called ‘Give Your Best’, which helps women refugees and asylum seekers live a better, more joyous life and I cannot wait to share their mission with you here on the Fearless Nomad.
“Give Your Best aims to empower people in need of women's clothes who are refugees, seeking asylum, destitute, with no recourse to public funds or with precarious immigration status, through access to choice. We want to contribute to restoring people's dignity as they choose what they want to wear from our catalogue of donated clothing, where people can 'shop' for free.
We are also passionate about sustainability and tackling donation waste.
We’re an LGBTQI+ inclusive platform and we stand strongly and passionately for all human rights.”
'Give Your Best' is a remarkable online platform where clothes can be shopped for free by refugees, individuals seeking asylum, individuals with no recourse to public funds, the destitute or individuals with precarious immigration status. The organization was born when Sol (the founder of the platform) connected with Ilda - a woman seeking asylum and surviving on an allowance of £5.60 a day during COVID19, unable to afford most of the basics we often take for granted. Sol decided to send a care package to Ilda, containing necessities like clothes, period products and toiletries so she put out a call for donations on social media and got an overwhelming response. So generous was the response of the women wanting to help that Sol had to come up with a system. Her idea was to create a platform on instagram where women could be empowered to choose the items they wanted to receive from the catalogue of donations. Sol shared her idea with her instagram community and shortly after, Give Your Best was born.
The organization believes that contributing to restoring people's dignity is important, and that someone's legal status and financial circumstances shouldn't mean a lack of choice in what they want to wear.
GIVE YOUR BEST Statistics as of September 16th, 2022
In Partnership with Tropical Nomad Coworking Space