Redfern, Australia, 8 April 2020 – Global mentoring powerhouse AIME has launched This Hoodie Pays Rent, a social enterprise initiative to help alleviate income shortfalls for people struggling to pay their rent.
Across Australia, more than 710,000 households were struggling to pay rent, and 2.65 million low income and casual renters were at risk of default before the COVID-19 crisis. Now, with an estimated 1.13 million people likely to lose their jobs due to the pandemic in Australia alone, and 25 million people worldwide, the situation is set to get worse for families everywhere.
AIME will be helping people to keep a roof over their head by splitting profits from sales of its most successful fundraising product, the AIME Hoodie, with those struggling to get by.
The concept is simple: AIME has made a new hoodie and 50% of the profits will go to people having difficulty paying their rent. Anyone struggling to find money for rent has been invited to apply to become a Hoodie Connector. They will receive a referral link that they can share with whomever they like. For every hoodie sold using their referral link, the Hoodie Connectors will receive $30. The money will be deposited into Hoodie Connectors’ accounts every two weeks.
The product launches today and is being sold through AIME’s website. The remaining 50% of the proceeds will go to help AIME mentor kids.
AIME is also working with clothing brands to take on This Hoodie Pays Rent, by encouraging them to print their own hoodies and raise money for those being left behind. Partnerships are set to be announced in the coming weeks.
This Hoodie Pays Rent is in line with AIME’s philosophy of being mentors for a fairer world, a world Ecological Economics Researcher Simon Mair describes as having a global economy that is “more humane”, with “protection of life as the guiding principle”.
AIME CEO and Founder Jack Manning Bancroft commented, “We want to do our bit to keep the world moving, hope in people’s hearts and roofs over their heads. This is about what the future of our economy looks like. With the world’s 2,000+ billionaires holding as much wealth as the 4.6 billion poorer people of the world – that’s 60% of the world’s population – something is broken. Maybe with COVID-19, we will see the emergence of a front-and-centre social enterprise economy, where everything we buy has to have some good attached to it. Or perhaps the future of fashion and commerce is to have a good tax on everything.”
Australian media house PEDESTRIAN.TV is joining AIME on IMAGI-NATION{TV} on 8 April to launch This Hoodie Pays Rent. “Pedestrian Group has always been a voice of young Aussies. This is a particularly important time for PEDESTRIAN.TV to partner with AIME’s mentors as they go digital and drive positive conversation about the future,” said James McManus, Creative Director at Pedestrian Group.
Creative counsel Background will be co-producing a special episode of IMAGI-NATION{TV} on 15 April focused on the future of the economy and looking at how This Hoodie Pays Rent could help lead change in fashion around the world. “Businesses everywhere are reshaping the way they operate in a new world order. AIME is presenting a tangible opportunity to make immediate impact, and calling others to action. We’re proud to engage our global network of specialists to power and support this important conversation,” said Si Philby, co-founder of Background.
About AIME AIME is an Imagination Factory for marginalised youth, fuelled by unlikely alliances, to create a fairer world.
Starting in 2005 with one school in Redfern, Australia, and a group of Indigenous kids – Australia’s most marginalised students – AIME has since been creating pop-up Imagination Factories on university campuses around the world to unlock the internal narrative of marginalised kids, taking them from a world that tells them they can’t to a world that tells them they can. Through its work, AIME now directly transforms the lives of kids from diverse backgrounds across six countries, spanning three continents.
In Australia, the 20,000+ Indigenous youth who have experienced AIME’s Imagination Factory have gone on to achieve educational parity, accelerate their growth as entrepreneurs, and unlock a whole new mindset that prepares them for success.
AIME Mentoring
8th April 2020
Press contacts: Taryn Marks (Asia Pacific/Australia/North & South America) Email: tm@aimementoring.com
Irmin Durand (Africa/Europe) Email: id@aimementoring.com
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