PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten – Every year the Oranje Fonds hosts the ‘Appeltjes van Oranje’ award, whereby NGOs in the Netherlands as well as in the Dutch Caribbean are nominated based on a specific theme. In the end 3 NGOs are selected as winners, thereby receiving a bronze statuette, created by Princess Beatrix, and a €15.000 euro cash prize to further their cause.
This coming year’s theme is focused on ‘mental strength’. Oranje Fonds put out a call to all NGOs that are hosting projects that provide that bit of extra help to persons in need of a boost in their mental health, mainly through the work of volunteers. From that call 8 NGOs from the Dutch Caribbean were selected to proceed to the next round. 4 hail from Curacao, 2 from Aruba, 1 from Sint Maarten, namely Player Development, and 1 from Saba, namely Expertise Center Education Care (EC2).
Normally all nominees are invited to the Netherlands for the preselection rounds, but due to the pandemic, the preselection round will now be done digitally. In January 2021 all nominees will be asked to present their ‘mental strength’ projects in a quick pitch round to each other, and a total of 10 organizations from the Netherlands and the Dutch Caribbean will be selected to proceed to the finals. The finalists will be visited by a team of juries in February, and the winners will be made known in April. As of now, it is the intention to have Queen Maxima present the winning NGOs with their well-deserved statuette and cash prize in May of 2021. An exciting time to come for many well-deserving NGOs.
Samenwerkende Fondsen Cariben (focus: Sint Maarten, Saba and Statia), of which Oranje Fonds is one of the funders, would hereby like to congratulate all nominees, especially Player Development and EC2.
For more information on the ‘Appeltjes van Oranje’ Award, please visit: https://www.oranjefonds.nl/appeltjes-van-oranje-2021-eng
