The Asser community center Assen Bloeit is bursting at the seams. The Open Hof club building on Sleutelbloemstraat urgently needs a new roof, and it doesn’t stop there: an extension is also planned. In order to pay for this, Assen Bloeit has launched a number of special promotions.
For years, Assen Bloeit has been a place where Assen residents gather for a chat, activities or to meet new people. The organization focuses on residents who, for whatever reason, need extra contact.
“We are open twelve half-days a week,” says Laura Zuidema of Assen Bloeit. “You can safely call it a community center. About 150 volunteers ensure that it is vibrant here every day.”
To keep it that way in the future, the club building must be renovated. The church building, which now only has services on Sundays, has simply become too small. That is why Assen Bloeit is starting a striking campaign: the paperclip campaign.
“That idea comes from Canada,” Zuidema explains. “Someone there once started with one paperclip, exchanged it for a pen, then for a doorknob and eventually ended up with a house. We thought: whatever he can do, we can do too.”
“We started a similar campaign in June,” adds Rudolf Setz, colleague from Zuidema. “We exchanged quite a few special items with a lot of paper clips.”
Assen Bloeit then continued trading with those items. The organization collected special items from private individuals from all over the country.
A weekend in a forest villa, a luxurious bed and an arsenal of gold jewelry. Nowadays it is all part of the contents of Assen Bloeit.
But not for long. “We are going to raffle the exchanged items to raise money for the new construction and extension,” says Zuidema. “We hope to raise 40 to 45 thousand euros.”
The big raffle will take place on December 17, during a special gala. Until then, the organization calls on everyone to buy raffle tickets. “It would be fantastic if the whole of Drenthe participated,” Setz concludes.
And if sales are really booming, it may not turn out for once: exchange brings crying.