Social entrepreneurship on the Beursvloer Haarlem
What is the relationship between the scholarship floor and social entrepreneurship? What is the scholarship floor?
The fair floor Haarlem is an annual event, where local businesses and social organizations meet, with the aim of making matches. It’s all about supply and demand just like on the regular fair floor, only here we trade with closed exchange. In other words, you have something I can use and you get something in return. In a successful match, the request for help from a social organization is met by a company and the social organization offers a nice quid pro quo. This ranges from a homemade apple pie to a peek behind the scenes.
Kurdish House Haarlem Foundation
NewArmstrong is a participant of the Beursvloer Haarlem and has signed an agreement with the Stichting Koerdisch Huis Haarlem this year. The Stichting Koerdisch Huis Haarlem welcomes Kurdish refugees and tries to help them find their way in Dutch society. They do this with forms such as writing courses, literary forms, sculpture and painting. For the youth, they work with video workshops ne Tiktok workshops. For video editing, they often need laptops to work.
One of the founders is Rozien Khalil, who has lived in Haarlem for 32 years and works for the municipality. “After the attack by the radical Islamic IS group on the Kurdish region of Rojava in Syria, many people had to flee to different countries in Europe, including the Netherlands. A group of Kurds came to Amsterdam and Haarlem and over time sought a place to come together.”
“Living together with people of different cultures and supporting them I learned in the Netherlands. For years, the Kurds experienced many painful events. Unfortunately, this has led to fragmentation of the Kurdish community. With meetings, we want to bring the Kurds in this country together. At the founding meeting five years ago, two hundred people attended. Every Kurd has the right to participate, we respect everyone’s beliefs and as a foundation are not political or religious.”
NewArmstrong’s contribution
NewArmstrong has made a commitment to check for depreciated laptops at the end of the fiscal year. Written-off laptops are often still perfectly usable, but no longer always have the right specifications for NewArmstrong’s work. We then donate these to the Kurdish House Haarlem Foundation for the younger refugees (Unaccompanied Minor Alien, MVA) to use in their video art work.
