Box for the rich and the poor

In 1997, when Elena was nineteen years old, she set about producing sixty cardboard boxes and accompanying orange signs. The signs read: “If you’re rich put money in the box / If you’re poor take money out.” Using strong double-sided tape, Elena hung the boxes all around the centre of Amsterdam. She chose locations next to ATM machines, at the stock exchange, by the opera house, on the façade of the royal palace.

Passersby noticed the box, laughed and often drew out their wallet to contribute an amount of change. Now and then a homeless person would come and empty the box to buy lunch. There was of course also some misuse. Children removed the coins to supplement their pocket money. The city cleaners took down a number of boxes. People used them as trash bins, the rain swept them away. All these troubles only served to enhance the disarming effect the boxes had.

A colleague of Elena’s at the café where she worked as a waitress suggested she might be able to attract more attention to her initiative. So Elena looked up instructions for writing a press release on the, then still new, internet. As a result several newspapers, magazines and television shows interviewed the nineteen-year old, who told her audience all about her worries for mankind.