About Us

Fred

fred@giveandtake.co.nz
Give and Take Director, MBA (International Business)

Fred has travelled the world and come to the realization that the free giving and taking of goods and services is a great model for the facilitation of community growth and resource efficiency. He is at the core of the Given and Take website and loves his motorbike.

Mikael

mikael@giveandtake.co.nz
Give and Take Website Developer

Ask him anything and he will put it into the shape of a website. He loves challenges and technology is his cup of tea.

Milena

milena@giveandtake.co.nz
Give and Take Marketing (Master of Foreign Languages Applied to International Trade)

Milena was born in France, from Portuguese parents, studied in Germany and then decided to live in New Zealand. Very informed of what is happening overseas, she has experience in Translation and Project Coordination. Excellent administration skills and coordination are her key attributes.

Marion

marion@giveandtake.co.nz
Give and Take Marketing

Marion comes from France, and has been travelling on the five continents before landing in New-Zealand. She likes the anti-consumerist, human and ecological spirit of Give and Take. She is glad to participate in this team adventure and also to contribute to the exchanges on the website. She likes meeting new people and creating contacts, and she thinks our lives are more interesting with plurality and moral qualities.

Clelia

Give and Take Designer & Front-end Developer

Clelia is an international citizen and through out her travels have seen how generous people can be. She has also always been a strong believer in sharing so when she got the chance to help on Give & Take, she jumped on it. Her background in computer science and design made her skills fit perfectly with the rest of the team to create enthusiastic dynamic.

Birth of Give and Take

Once upon a time (ages ago), Fred and his partner moved to Auckland and found a wonderful new home in West Auckland. The house was perfect, private, sunny and quiet. However neither of them were very happy about what was happening in the bedroom on their first night. The house came with a super king sized water bed. An absolute novelty for Europeans, but a nightmare for first-timers. After plenty of laughter, Fred and his partner decided it wasn’t worth the sea sickness and set up a mattress in another bedroom.

It was clear that Fred and his partner were not interested in keeping the bed. The problem was this ; how do you get rid of two cubic meters of water in a massive plastic pouch from the second storey of your house ?

A plan was devised. First, siphon the water out the window using a hose. This took 2 days. This left Fred with a massive water bed shell weighing about 50 kgs. The next challenge was getting it downstairs. Because he was not intending on keeping the bed he decided that dissecting it would enable him to carry it down piece by piece. He ripped the top off, cut the internal metal foam into smaller pieces, drained the remaining water, and cut the plastic shell into pieces. He was left with a pile of rubbish a meter high in his bedroom and had to rent a trailer to take it to the dump.

The result of the operation was three days of irritation and labour and more than $100 spent. At the conclusion Fred thought that surely there must be a better way, surely someone would have wanted the bed and he would have happily given it away for free.

Fred’s resolution to set up a network through which goods like his water bed can be given away to someone who wants them has now manifested into Give and Take.