K unable to afford basic items of clothing. Give Your Best is here to bridge that gap and solve both problems with one innovative approach. We have created the first online platform where people can donate clothes directly to those who need them most, refugee women and children, who can in turn shop online for free, with the choice and dignity they deserve, so they can express themselves, their culture and improve their well-being as they rebuild their lives away from home. We're committed to tackling both fashion waste and clothing poverty, in a way that is inclusive and empowering to marginalised communities.
Give Your Best Social achieves social impact by including communities living in clothing poverty in our solution, our organisation, and our team throughout. By co-creating our services with them we ensure to maximise impact in the communities we support.
Give Your Best Enterprise is our commercial arm which tackles fashion waste and the exclusion of marginalised communities from fashion. Most solutions to the problem of brands and retailers' overstock focus, primarily, on either on resell or recycle. And while there is a time, a place and a market for those solutions, there is a gap for a service which also achieves social impact. Marginalised communities unable to afford clothes oftentimes can't even buy from charity shops or reselling platforms. This is when a basic necessity like clothes becomes an unattainable luxury. That is, unless, there is a solution that addresses both: making the fashion industry more circular by giving clothes to those who otherwise wouldn't have any and with emerging legislation in the EU regarding EPR it is more pressing than ever to create solutions that benefit communities, cultures and wellbeing.
Over the past 2 years our organisation has proven that this model works: we have received over 30,000 items of clothing donated and shopped for free, have supported thousands of refugee women and children, partner with several brands and businesses and organised 2 highly successful fashion shows.
This is the heart of what makes Give Your Best so special, the unwavering passion for giving people dignity, choice, agency and empowerment. To include those who are routinely excluded, to give them the chance to wear what makes them feel good regardless of their financial circumstances. As our now board member Basma, who first came to us when she was seeking asylum, said to Vogue: "Being able to pick what I want to wear, clothes that suit my taste and style, allowed me to feel dignified and normal again. I felt like an equal human being."
One of our organisation's pillars is to include the people from the community we support since its inception. Women who are refugees, seeking asylum, destitute, victims of trafficking and so on, are included in all our teams as volunteers, advisors, directors and employees. We want to continue to provide opportunities for them to create the future of Give Your Best together.
To further our mission we also host our annual flagship event The Good Fashion Show which has become (along with the success of our platform) the biggest breakthrough for our organisation. The Good Fashion show is a celebration of refugees and the power of fashion for good. In 2022 we hosted our first ever fashion show in partnership with London Fashion District and London College of Fashion with great success (we have also collaborated with them in other events). In 2023 we hosted our second event, this time in collaboration with Cambridge Grand Arcade where we transformed the walkways of the shopping centre into a catwalk, and celebrated refugee women and children from the Give Your Best community who become models for the day, wearing a curated fashion selection including a range of over 20 high street and small sustainable brands who partnered with us to donate all outfits to the models and the community. The Good Fashion Show is an opportunity to not only bring communities together, to empower the refugee models to express themselves, reflect their cultures and feel their best, but also to raise awareness of both women's rights, refugee rights and clothing poverty, and most importantly to involve the fashion industry in supporting, including and celebrating marginalised communities under our motto: Passion for Good; Fashion for All.