Move Dance’s Donated Dancewear Ethical Journey

We’ve been working with a few inspiring organisations for over a year now and it’s time to share our story with you!

Some happy Gambia Ballet Factory ballerinas wearing donated Move Dance. Image property of the Gambia Ballet Factory.

Here are our extra special partners:

The Gambia Ballet Factory, The Gambia, West Africa

Annos Africa, Kenya

Centre Ballet, Clarens, South Africa

Nova Grace International, Uganda

As a business it’s very important for us to have as low a carbon footprint as possible, and that starts with ensuring that all of our surplus dancewear at Move Dance always finds a loving home...its true partner with a loving dancer! Over a year ago, our team set out to locate a charitable organisation who was in need of a tonne of dancewear. Since then, we’ve sent 162KG of clothing and shoes to the Gambia Ballet Factory, Annos Africa, Centre Ballet and Nove Grace International via the lovely Rosy Nevard at Nova Grace Productions in London. The heaviest load we sent was a whopping 60KG of dancewear! We actually sent so much stuff that we’ve had to hold off for now as all the happy dancers we’ve been helping have more than enough dancewear for quite some time. Do you know an organisation in need of donated dancewear? Get in touch with us if you do!

Here are some snaps of our donations leaving Move Dance HQ:

Find out more about these amazing organisations we’re working with:

Annos Africa

This charity is supported by UNICEF, Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig - just to name a few. Their work is to enrich the lives of over 2,000 children living in African slums with motivational arts programmes and workshops, such as ballet classes. The aim of this work is not just for entertainment purposes, the intended outcome is that children leave these workshops with invaluable skills to help them secure paid work in the future.

Centre Ballet

This charity’s work in their haven “Tshepong” ensures a safe play space for African children. They recently built an Arts Centre to house creative activities like ballet and dance classes, for which of course they required some dancewear!

Nova Grace International

UK based Nova Grace collaborate all over the world with other charitable organisations to deliver dance performances and workshops to those who it would otherwise be unavailable to, thus spreading their love of dance globally! The foundation of our donations this past year, we’re really grateful to Nova Grace and Rosy for involving us with their outreach projects.

The Gambia Ballet Factory

We love the concept of all the charities we’ve worked with who want to bring confidence and joy to underprivileged African children through the beauty of dance. Inspired by Michaela DePrince’s journey, the Gambia Ballet Factory want to help girls in particular to expand their horizons and future possibilities through being classically trained in ballet. They’re still in need of a permanent Arts space to bring these motivational activities to African children, which means they’re still fundraising to meet this goal.

Read their kind blog post about our donations here.

This is just the start of our journey to become more ethical, so keep following Move Dance to stay up-to-date with our latest donation projects.

Feature images are property of The Gambia Ballet Factory.