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When she first came to Britain as a refugee from Nigeria six years ago, Kemi had a three-month-old daughter, a room in a shared house and £5.39 a day to survive on.
Because her daughter has a milk intolerance, most of that meager pay went to buying food and soy milk for her baby, meaning that Kemi herself was often hungry. Finding money for clothes, even from a charity shop, was out of the question.
“Kids grow every month, especially at that young age. It was difficult for me [because] I had to keep us safe and warm”, says Kemi now.
The only thing to do was to get up early and walk the streets with her daughter, hoping to clean clothes that someone might have thrown in a charity bin or on a sidewalk. “It felt so embarrassing sometimes when people would walk by, watching me rummage through the bins to find clothes to wear. [But] I didn’t care which people [thought]I had to keep my daughter safe.”
After four years, Kemi was granted refugee status and secured her first job interview – surprisingly, she had nothing to wear. However, instead of scrambling or begging for something suitable, she was referred to a small social enterprise called Give Your Best, which asked her about her size and what kind of clothes she liked. “And they gave me three nice shirts. Those clothes were like gold to me… They asked me what I really wanted. It makes you feel valued.”
The initiative was started during the Covid lockdown by Sol Escobar, a well-travelled Uruguayan now living in Cambridge, who had spent several years volunteering in refugee camps in northern France and who felt “desperate”, when Covid hit, to how heavy the refugee was. the community would be affected.
A friend put her in touch with a family of refugee women who, unable to shop online and with charity shops closed, could not use any clothing. Escobar realized she had excess clothes she could donate and called on her friends and networks for help.
She was inundated with offers, but didn’t want to overwhelm the women with potentially inappropriate clothing. “So I thought, if I take pictures of all these items and put them on an Instagram page, everyone can choose the things they actually want. Maybe we can remove that part of the power imbalance, so that the refugee is the person who gets things without having any choice.”
Eighteen months later, Give Your Best has processed almost 11,000 items of clothing donated by 1,500 people and has more than 800 refugee women approved to “shop” for free in its virtual storefront.
However, it aims for much more. Having reached the limit of donations and requests it could handle through Instagram, even with the support of hundreds of volunteers, the enterprise has just launched a new digital platform that will allow it to grow tremendously, becoming what Escobar calls ” a Depop for Donations”. “.
Like the hugely successful clothing resale app, clothes are photographed and uploaded to Give Your Best, where customers choose what they like and donors then post the item. Most importantly, however, no money changes hands.
In addition to giving choice to its wearers and minimizing fashion waste, Escobar says an unintended consequence has been the small but intimate connections created between donor and shopper. Many donors choose to include a note of support and a small gift of toiletries or chocolates – extremely welcome by recipients, but also a reminder that “on the other side of your package, there’s a woman your size and your fashion sense , because she’s shopping from your wardrobe.”
The new platform means they can now offer children’s clothing, with menswear to come; eventually they intend to open up donations to others in need of clothing and potentially share their technology to replicate the model overseas. “There’s a lot of fashion junk and a lot of people who need clothes,” says Escobar.
Having volunteered with the organization, Kemi is now its first staff member, guiding women in a similarly vulnerable position to a place where they too can choose clothes they like and fit, for free.
She kept a file with the notes that were sent to her with clothing. “They say [good] Congratulations, I hope you enjoy your article, know that someone in the UK cares for you. Imagine how it feels.”
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