Yes, who is Bonki anyway?
I think we all need a friend like Bonki and I also think we all have a little Bonki in us.
That's how I want to start my description.
Bonki shows the contradictions we all carry within us. With her way of being, she tells us that we can be so many things at the same time, we don't have to decide!.
"I think we all need a friend like Bonki and I also think we all have a little Bonki in us"
Bonki is a character in our fairy tale. The story was told by big sister to little sister, to explain this with feelings. It accompanied the little sister while growing up and stayed with her when she became an adult. A drawing in the bag had to symbolize that it's okay to be big and strong while being small and weak - seemingly contradictory feelings exist in us at the same time.
The drawing traveled around the world when little sister worked and gave her the strength she needed in meetings with people and herself!
The story lives on even today and forms the basis of everything we do - with the hope that all children will learn to put into words what they feel.
That's how Bonki - and we - want to change the world.
I asked little sister Filippa, our founder, who Bonki is to her:
Bonki is the girl who taught me that you shouldn't identify as just one type of person. That you are not afraid or brave, strong or weak, smart or stupid, different or normal. Bonki showed that you can manage to be brave despite your stomach screaming with fear. Finally, to be considered strong does not mean that one does not carry countless weaknesses. It also does not mean that one overcomes one's weaknesses, but instead that they do not define you, they are not the whole of you, and do not exclude that you carry so much more. There is great room in all of us for "heroic acts" despite our fears (and other emotions) that feel so overwhelming.
I lived by the belief that if I feel cowardly, I am a coward. You cannot possibly be a coward and then accomplish something great. But Bonki carries enormous sadness, great fear and even greater loneliness. She feels small and invisible. But when she is faced with a situation that is different from the one she has faced so far, new sides of Bonki emerge. For every obstacle in the way, she is as afraid as she was from the beginning. She doesn't necessarily become stronger or braver, but she learns to accept other sides of herself and accept the fear she carries. She is not a hero, she is an ordinary girl who, with the help of her friends, decides to try. Just try.
Most importantly in the story, Bonki finds her strength/security without family, in a foreign world with completely foreign characters, completely unlike her. She becomes a "hero" only through the help she receives from the unlikely friendships she builds along the way.
Get to know Bonki more in our products. Take a look at the webshop HERE
