By Thomas Welle, Head of Partnerships for the WOW! nature film
I had come up with plenty of ideas of what I could do once based in Aruba, but auctioning off local artworks in support of a film about the Dutch Caribbean islands? – that had never crossed my mind.
“But what am I going to do there?!” I still remember saying that to my wife Femke a few years ago, right after she was offered a position as a medical specialist at the hospital in Aruba. “Uhh… no idea,” she replied, very honestly.
It all sounded a little too good to be true, of course. As a family with two little kids, you get the chance to move to a tropical island. More time together, more sunshine, more space for the kids, and everything poko-poko (slowly-slowly). Beautiful, sure, but I knew for myself that I wanted to contribute; so the big question was: What do I do? One thing was clear from the start: I wanted to focus more on “doing good” and less on the commercial agency world I was coming from.
My appetite for adventure outweighed the uncertainty, and so I said, “OK, let’s do it.” We sold our house in Rotterdam, packed our stuff into a container, and a few months later landed on the island with our kids, ready to make it our new home. Quite an experience, considering I had never been to Aruba before, or anywhere in the Caribbean for that matter.
After we’d “landed” – both literally and figuratively – and life began to settle down, that familiar itch to do something useful quickly returned. I started having coffee with as many people as I could to build a network. And through one of those chats, I was introduced to Bianca, the driving force behind WOW!
While selling lettuce (yes, one of her other ventures) from a greenhouse, she started telling me about WOW! Her eyes lit up and her energy struck me immediately. “This could be something really special,” I told Femke in the car on the way back.
After a few more meetings with Bianca and her partner Elton, I joined their team. My focus would be on “partnerships and funding” – since there was still a significant budget needed to bring the WOW! project to life. We reached out to all kinds of businesses and organizations with our pitch asking them to get involved.
Along the way, I learned so much about the islands, the way of working here, and their rich culture. To be honest, I had never even heard of Saba or St. Eustatius before. And now that I live here, I’m struck by how little people in the Netherlands know about the islands at all. And that, of course, is exactly the heart of WOW! – to showcase what the islands within our Kingdom have to offer, and to raise awareness that we all share the responsibility to protect their beauty and culture.
Fast forward to today: I’m sitting among a select group of about 100 people who have gathered to buy local art in a stunning venue by the ocean. The artists receive their fee, and the proceeds go to the WOW! Project.
All the art pieces were either lovingly created especially for WOW!, or generously donated from existing collections. Together with our team, and a bit of outside help, we’ve organized this entire event, and it’s completely sold out. We’re honoured by the presence of the governor, who even took the stage to auction off a few pieces himself.
Everyone in the room knows exactly why we’re doing this, and that fills us with pride. And I feel proud to be part of it all. I get handed the auction gavel and a wink from Bianca. Now it’s my turn to auction off some of the art. I’ve never done anything like this before, so yes, it’s a bit nerve-wracking. But hey – if we can move to the Caribbean on a whim, we can handle this too. So here we go: “Who’ll give me more?!”
