Otiumberg x Choose Love

2022 marks the launch of our partnership with Choose Love, an organisation that provides humanitarian aid to, and advocacy for, displaced people around the world.

100% of the proceeds from these two unique heart-shaped necklaces will fund Choose Love programmes that support displaced women and children.

The partnership came about through Jess Mills, Director of Choose Love, and loyal Otiumberg customer.

Our co-founders and team were taken aback by the story of how the organisation started and its demonstration of the profound impact a group of people can have when they decide to act.

Everything Choose Love does is powered by a vision of a world that chooses love and justice for everyone.

Our campaign for the partnership is an amalgamation of incredible women who have been touched by, or involved with, the charity - from writer Zarlasht Halaimzai to Syrian filmmaker, Waad Alkateab. This series of exceptionally personal portraits form the visual narrative for our partnership.

Dorine and Diana

Dorine and Diana are part of the Say it Loud Club Community. Say it Loud Club provides support for LGBTQIA+ refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Dorine and Diana both came to the UK to find a safe place to rebuild their lives after fleeing persecution in their home countries. 

Jess Mills

Jess is a musician and podcaster by trade, but was a founding member of Choose Love and is now on the board.

She is also the CEO Founder of the Tessa Jowell Foundation, a pioneering new organisation delivering her late mothers huge legacy in Public Health, starting with transforming NHS brain cancer care and treatment

It's been an honour getting to know Jess and welcome her into the Otiumberg family.

Zarlasht Halaimzai

Zarlasht is the Co-Founder of Refugee Trauma Initiative (RTI). RTI provide vital, trauma-informed early childhood development support to refugee children and families in Greece and beyond. She is an Obama fellow, and she was included in the BBC 100 most inspiring women of 2021. She also has personal experience of forced displacement. She’s written extensively on the issues of trauma and displacement. 

Waad Alkateab

Waad is a Syrian documentary film-maker. She won countless awards for her film, For Sama, which she captured during the life and fall of Aleppo, including an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Palme D'or at Cannes. She continues to work in film production in the UK, where she now resides with her husband Hamza and their two daughters. 

Rosanna & Christie Wollenberg

Christie and Rosanna are the co-founders of Otiumberg.

Family has always been at the heart of Otiumberg; every design is a personal expression inspired by the people that surround them, and the transitional life moments they experience together as women, sisters, and mothers.

The sisters were introduced to Choose Love through Otiumberg customer, and Choose Love Director, Jess Mills.

The pair were inspired by the story of how the organisation started and the profound impact it has in supporting vulnerable displaced women and children globally.