Our biggest dream project and horrible movies

Long, long ago, far, far away, there has never been a magical dream world where no one feels left out, frozen, discriminated, bullied or ignored. No, not really. Not even in the fairy tales.

But we can strive for a place where more people have knowledge, where more people work actively and enlightened how to handle what is going on around every single one of us. There is never a single child affected, there are several thousand. And there are always several in the victim’s environment. I think everyone knows someone who knows a child who does not want to go to school, who has no friends. Who feels lonely, scared and invisible.

It’s serious. It can lead to death.

But the nice thing is. We can all influence. We all have the power to support, improve, deepen and act! In small portions, and in big. An easy way is to talk to your children about exclusion, about kindness and about how to act in difficult situations. Another way is to think about how you yourself talk about others in front of your own children. The Friends Foundation works with this and has lots of tools and materials to take part in.

When we first contacted Friends, it was because we wanted to do something. We had seen a horrific movie about a bullied guy. His name was Måns. And when you see that movie, you can never go back.

You can no longer close your eyes, no matter how bad it hurts. How much you wish it was not true. We really wanted to make Snällkalendern, a fantastic idea and initiative created in 2014 by the brilliant Nikki and Didrik. More of this brilliant previous project here. 

And than we saw this football movie and cracked. And this is not even a movie. That’s the reality, for so many children. Since we could not make the 2019 “snällis”, we instead made ‘Hello miss Julia‘ and ‘Dear Friends‘ two posters which, thanks to our best resellers and customers, raised more than SEK 20,000 for the Friends Foundation’s important work. They are still available for purchase and SEK 25 per item sold goes in full to their important and invaluable work.

But this year, our dream project became a reality. We will contribute and create the design of ‘Snällis’.

The feeling of happiness and nervousness were mixed in the stomach, the the performance became a fact. Will we succeed in making it so nice that it continues to collect money to Friends’ important work? We let the gut feeling spiced with a touch of Christmas feeling rule. We have worked hard to find our style, a style and design we hope will appeal to many. Because it is important, to Friends’ and their work towards a kinder and safer place for our children.

The design process looked much as usual. We start from an idea, in this case winter and friendship, then the characters come to us. We had just brought out Sixten and Iris and loved their expression. So they had to come back. And then we added elements based on the lyrics and changed, changed, and changed until everything felt good. Then it is usually great if the document is allowed to “have a nap”.To rest for a night or two (quite a long nap) and then go back and changed even a little more.

In June, the calendar was sent to print and this week it will come here. A little calendar baby in our arms. An important little winter baby.

‘The kind calendar’ is a simple and fun way to spread kindness and talk to your children about important, but sometimes perhaps difficult things. Behind every door is a call to spread kindness, to make the world a little more cozy place. For all.

Every year the calendar sell out, so do not wait if you want your calendar!

Here you can buy your Snällkalender: Miniroom, Barnklassiker, Systrarna Erenlöf, Little Eko, Theo & jag, Brands for kids, Fru Vintage, Katrin Bååth, FGL store, but also at all COOP, Telia’s stores and on Friends’ website. And so, in our webshop, of course.