Blog

29 NOVEMBER 2016

We are so grateful to receive more and more bookings every day! Thank you for helping us - to help others! As the number of donators is growing, we thought it would be interesting to share our daily stories and short articles of what happens inside the iCollect Clothes project – on our blog!

‘i’ on behalf of iCollect Clothes team have decided to join one of the drivers, for one day on their daily collections. i was very inspired by the drivers and their stories, so i thought it would be a great idea to meet some of the donators.

We travelled around 200km on the day – at one address we’ve spent almost an hour trying to find the correct office. It was like a maze! Hundreds of exactly the same doors! Haha

The driver told me that this happens often and it causes a delay on other addresses. This is the main reason as to why iCollect service cannot give a specific time for collections. As the driver said ‘everything can change in minutes; I can get lost, stuck in traffic or just cannot find the address and that’s it, we’re off scheduled time’. 

Trying to escape from central London, delayed us even more… It took us around two hours to get to the next address. When we arrived – we found no one to open the door. So with no collected bags, we headed to the next address. We had various collection points, in different places on the day. Doors by doors changed; some left the bags outside the door, others kindly handed them out from their home. Sometimes people would open the door and point to a certain direction and then found their bags to have been stolen…

When we stopped outside a lovely house, i decided to join the driver to meet the donator. An elderly lady opened the door with the biggest smile on her face. She was very welcoming and agreed to answer a few questions for my research. She has asked to remain anonymous due to her work commitments but had agreed to share her story with us.

She said that iCollect Clothes service is very convenient, as she is elderly it’s great that she can donate of her doorstep. ‘The reason why I am so inspired to donate is because I’ve had breast cancer myself and one of the charities has helped me massively’. Just a few days after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, sadly her husbanded passed away… ‘We were married for 50 years. I was devastated and to find out I had cancer, was just too much for me to cope with. Thankfully the charity had given me so much support and helped me to get back on my feet’. The lady received daily visits by volunteers who helped her morally to handle all the pressure that came her way. ‘I believe that charities and fundraisers do a wonderful job, that’s why I always donate, when I can’.

This wonderful lady had left me thinking, how many people there must be in the world, who are as grateful as she is to charities for their work… And then I came up with a great idea…

To Be Continued…

04 November 2016

The English writer James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855) once said, “The highest exercise of charity is a charity to the uncharitable.” As illogical as this might appear it is undoubtedly the purest form of giving. Doing good unto others who you are certain would be averse to doing good unto you, on the surface seems to be against all conscience and indeed, common sense, but to give wholeheartedly necessarily must mean, to give without the expectation of something of material value in return. It is widely understood that the philosophy of giving rests on the dichotomy of the expectation of receiving something tangible in return, and the psychology of pure philanthropy. After all, few would be reluctant to dismiss entirely the prospect of receiving something beneficial for free, even if there was an unspoken reciprocal arrangement at some future juncture.

Therefore, donating for charity collection for its own sake, while admirable affords only a form of ephemeral self-gratification and for many people that in itself is life affirming enough, but for others there needs to be the promise of a far more tangible reward before the spirit of naked altruism is awakened. It is not unusual when we think of charitable donations, for us to be confronted with issues such as, will my donation be appreciated? Will it be enough and will it make a difference? In this instance, the one thing you can be certain of is that, until you make the donation such questions cannot be answered.

In an increasingly cynical world, if that in itself is not too cynical a statement, giving something for nothing can be seen as some form of a con, some sleight-of-hand whose only purpose is to demean and obfuscate, yet unsolicited acts of kindness, are perhaps what, in an increasingly cynical world, might find some form of resonance in the least conscientious and even the hardest of hearts.

Regardless of how small the resonance of selfless acts within each individual, and it would be a great shame to believe it was not substantial, all appeals for even the most meagre form of charitable support must find a way to ignite the spark of human kindness which resides somewhere even within the most rebellious spirits. 

In a world of burgeoning consumerism and dwindling resources, ways and means of reusing and recycling the readymade has to be made feasible, and in some circumstances nigh on imperative. The list of resources on the brink of total depletion are too numerous to mention, therefore some form of sustainability in the way we consume some products and materials, needs to be explored. For this reason, an appeal to the spirit of donating for its own sake might be what is required, where the only form of material reciprocation lies in the knowledge of waste reduction, and the mutual satisfaction your gift, particularly of unwanted clothes might bring to another.

It cannot be such an absurd proposition to suggest that instead of discarding (as waste) unwanted clothes, simply allowing said clothes to be collected and reused, might provide some form of sanguine comfort that is akin to giving for its own sake, or philanthropy for its own ends. Moreover, as far as clothes are concerned, few would readily deny that they have never bought an item of clothing they have only worn once, bought a garment they have never worn, or purchased a garment they should never have bought. Not only are their charity fundraisers willing and able to divest you of your wardrobe dysfunctions through unwanted clothes collections, but there are also fundraisers willing and able to turn your embarrassing purchases into something resembling graces.

Yet apart from the bad purchases there are the clothes that for one reason or another you simply don’t or cannot wear. The clothes that have become too large or too small, and the unrelenting panoply of persuasive marketing, designed to convince us that we must have the latest and the most trendy. Most of us know that using resources in this manner is ultimately unsustainable and the day cannot be far off when the trendiest thing to do will be to embrace the second-hand.