Everyone who attends TEDxAmsterdam 2010 receives a giftbag. This giftbag is a tangible memory of the day, complemented by an unforgettable experience. This year, Irene Rompa managed to pull together an incredible number of parties to compose a TEDxAmsterdam-worthy set of giveaways. Irene joined TED in April, and quickly got assigned the job to organize this year’s giftbag. Since Irene is eco-conscious and has a passion for sustainability, and her attention went to small, often idealistic start-ups with small budgets. “During the summer months”, she recalls, “it was difficult to get things sponsored such time in advance, but the closer we get to the 30th of November, the more willing parties became to contribute.”
Finding the perfect bag
But, before acquiring any gifts to fill the giftbag, the bag itself needed to be found, too. Luckily, eco-fashion label Studio JUX turned out to be the perfect partner, and teamed up with Irene to design, and produce a thousand bags in their factory in Nepal. Firstly, Irene assumed Studio JUX to be too small to take on such a project, but Carlien Helmink, founder of Studio JUX, was immediately excited and found a solution by creating the giftbags out of valuable waste-material from other production processes. That’s what we call synergy.
The search for TEDxAmsterdam-worthy gifts
The moment the bag was guaranteed, Irene started collecting the goodies. “It was a fine balance between sponsor-requests, recommendations from within the TEDxAmsterdam crew and approaching organizations I thought would fit TEDxAmsterdam.” When a targeted goodie could not be fully sponsored by one organization alone, Irene found other parties willing to contribute. The chocolate-letters, also distributed on TEDxYouth last Saturday, are a great example. Irene: “I found Tony’s Chocolonely prepared to sponsor the chocolate, but they could not design the mould, or provide packaging. Since Tony’s Chocolonely is fair-trade chocolate, I approached We Are Perspective, a cradle-to-cradle design agency, who subsequently offered to create a mould and design a compostable wrapper, produced by one of their partners, Moonen Natural, who also provide TEDxAmsterdam with 100% compostable crockery. A late night Google Search led me to Charl Odijk, a chocolatier who immediately positively responded to my request asking him to mould the letters. And that’s not all, the last party involved is Lagosse, the company that actually wraps the letters!” That makes the realization of a fair-trade chocolate-letter a co-creation of five contributors, thanks to Irene’s promptness of action.
Looking back, Irene was amazed by the goodwill that’s unleashed by all parties contributing to the TEDxAmsterdam giftbag. Realizing donations of so many small, visionary organizations and initiatives truly resembles TEDxAmsterdam’s spirit of ideas worth sharing.
To take this even a little further, Irene themed the bag: Gifts worth sharing. So true dissemination is guaranteed!
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