What follows is not a formal founding history. It is how we tell our own story — honestly, in the spirit in which the foundation was set up.
Three chairs at a table
The idea for Support a Bit took shape around a kitchen table in Rotterdam. At that table sat three people, three generations, two countries.
Pearly, born in Paramaribo in 1959, carries with her the Suriname she left as a young woman — the sounds, the Sranantongo, the way people looked after each other without making many words of it. She has grown older in Rotterdam, has seen generations come and go, and knows how easily a person can become invisible in a big city.
Melvin, born in that same Paramaribo in 1982 but raised in Rotterdam, knows the in-between world. Growing up between two cultures, two languages, two ways of seeing. He sees, around him, people who lack just that one nudge — not from unwillingness, but because the system does not always see who is standing in front of the desk.
Shania, born in Rotterdam in 1999, looks at things from a different generation. For her, Suriname and the Netherlands are no longer separate worlds but one continuous story. She sees peers who fall through the cracks, young people who have no one to ask, and a digital world that connects people but just as often leaves them lonely.
A thread between Paramaribo and Rotterdam
The link between Suriname and the Netherlands is not abstract on this board. Two of the three board members were born in Paramaribo. For them, taking part in the Netherlands has never been self-evident, and that awareness runs as a thread through how this foundation works: with patience, without judgement, with an eye for what people themselves bring in knowledge and strength.
Much of what Support a Bit wants to do has been learned from the way people in the Surinamese community look after one another — not through formal structures, but through family, neighbourhood, church, association. That model of closeness is what we want to bring into our Rotterdam practice, for people of every background.
What we learned along the way
In the conversations around that kitchen table, three words kept returning. Three words that would eventually become the names of our core values.
- Seeing — because so many people are treated mainly as a file, a number, a case. Those who are truly seen can show themselves.
- Connecting — because loneliness and exclusion are rarely solved with money, but almost always with another person.
- Valuing — because people who know they are valued can value others again. It is contagious, in both directions.
Recorded on 29 April 2026
On Wednesday 29 April 2026, Support a Bit was formally established before mr. P.C.L. Kooijman, civil-law notary at Kooijman Autar Notarissen in Rotterdam. With that, what began at a kitchen table was set down in articles of association.
But the foundation is not the articles. The foundation is what the three board members, and soon the volunteers, and soon the people we meet, will make of it together.
