Iconic Fashion Magazine Harper’s Bazaar has announced the nominees for its annual Women of The Year Award. The award, created to shine a light on “women who are role models for those who have yet to realize their dreams” and this year includes Aruban twin sisters Ira and Ayra Kip.
Known in Aruba for their educational arts program Art Rules Aruba, the ladies have been well known on the island for bringing young people together to cultivate their artistic talent and inspire the youth. They consistently produced Art Rules for a period of 7 years making an impact with and being role models for aspiring young people on the island since 2010.
They now run the successful international creative agency, KIP Republic, based in Amsterdam, in which they produce culturally creative projects and events that activate, as they say, critical and inspiring conversations.
One of these projects being Free Heri Heri for All which launched in 2020 as a means to put keti koti, the commemoration of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on July 1 1863/73, on the map in the Netherlands. By simply
handing out free heri heri meals on July 1st they have succeeded in activating a national movement and increasing awareness around this commemoration day. The project has been so successful that it caught the
attention of King Willem-Alexander this year, who resourced the Royal Palace Amsterdam for Ira and Ayra to use his kitchen to produce the heri heri meals. They did so with 8,000 heri heri meals being cooked for the city out of a total of 20,000 heri heri that were eventually produced nationwide. Reason enough for Harper’s Bazaar to nominate the twin sisters for Women Of They Year, as they say: This
initiative proves Ayra and Ira's excellence as connectors and at the same time bringing attention to an important shared history that should never be forgotten