(Photo: Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock.com)
Joan Smalls has pledged to donate half her earnings for the remainder of 2020 to organisations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The supermodel and activist has teamed up with marketing agency FlyteVu and digital agency Aardvark Brigade to re-launch the online donation platform Donate My Wage, making it easier for anyone to follow Joan’s lead and donate a portion of their salary to fight racial injustice too.
“The site helps you calculate donation opportunities based on your annual salary whether it be a month’s, week’s, day’s or hour’s wage, or a custom amount, ” Joan explains on her socials.
Her agency, IMG Models, was among the first to give. They pledged $250,000 to 11 organisations picked by Joan herself including the Black Women’s Blueprint, Know Your Rights Camp and the Equal Justice Initiative.
Joan, who’s walked countless runways for Givenchy, Chanel, Gucci and Victoria’s Secret, has been a powerful voice in urging the fashion industry to “do more” than just posting a black tile to their feeds.
“You have continually let us down with your insensitivity and tone-deafness and the damage control apologies of ‘We will do better,'” she says in an Instagram video.
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“You fall short trying to narrate our stories by toning us down or having them curated by people who haven’t walked or lived a day in our shoes. Well it’s now time to give us a real seat at the table because we are worthy, because we are talented, because we are unique.”
“There have been so many times where I’ve had to face issues against my race within this industry because I was their token Black girl,” Joan captions the video.
“This industry that I love has profited from us but has never considered us equal. This. Stops. Now.”