Team Toekies

We are Toekies, a social enterprise run by seven students from Utrecht, The Netherlands. We all major in quite different area’s, from social sciences to earth sciences, but we all have one thing in common: our interest in social entrepreneurship and making this world a better place! Our specific goal is to create a safe space for refugee children in The Netherlands, that came here from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. Because the children usually have already experienced a lot of misery in their short lives, we aim to help them in a creative and playful way that allows them to be children again. Therefore, we asked refugee children from a specific part-time language school to draw their future dreams and aspirations for us. We use their drawings to make t-shirt prints and we sell these organic t-shirts online and in-store. With the profit of the t-shirts we help the language school help these children even better, by providing materials such as books in three languages, other facilitating materials and organizing social, playful events. This will enhance the education these children receive and will help their integration process in The Netherlands in the long run!

We ask refugee children to draw their future dreams and aspirations for us. We use their drawings to make t-shirt prints.

Toekies is part of Enactus Netherlands, which is the largest student platform for social entrepreneurship. The idea for Toekies all started at Enactus in Utrecht, with a specific group of students that is responsible for generating new ideas within Enactus. They recognized the need to help refugee children specifically, because most initiatives that want to help refugees focus on adults. Because of the language barrier, it became clear soon that creativity was the best way to reach the children. Moreover, it serves as a perfect distraction from life as a refugee, which can be pretty difficult at times. For the principle of reciprocity, we decided to create a ‘by children, for children’ model, where the refugee kids draw the prints on the t-shirts that other kids can wear. To stimulate entrepreneurship and other small initiatives in Utrecht, we like to collaborate as much as possible with them. For example, with local kidsstores to sell our shirts, local designers to digitalize the drawings of the kids in order to make them printproof for our shirts and other organizations that aim to enhance the integration of refugees in Utrecht. However, we aspire to become so big one day that we can help children all over The Netherlands, and who knows, all over the world!