Back in 2011, we were asked to visit Pakistan to design children's clothing in a factory, where they support woman living under persecution. We entered a world of poverty and desperation on a scale that we had never seen before. Our health suffered as we worked in difficult circumstances. When we expressed our shattering feelings towards the hopeless situation of what we saw and experienced, the local people would say to us: “That’s Pakistan, there is no hope for us!”

We realized that we would love to do something more about it. Instead of just designing fancy clothes for a European market, we would love to devote our artistic talents to make things grow deeper and stronger. We wanted to see people get empowered to become who they really can be.

Once we asked a friend, “How come you turned out to be an activist and involved in social justice issue?” She said,

“Because I didn’t ignore unrighteousness.”

If you are called for a mission, God will keep reminding you from time to time. Pakistan was the starting point of our soul awakening journey.

In 2015 I, Rahel, had a very specific dream, where I saw a tree was hanging above the water. People were giving hugs to the tree, using watering pot to give it water, talking to the tree, but it looked like the tree would soon die. One woman came desperately up to me and said: “Rahel, what shall we do so this tree will not die?” I looked at her and simply said: “just put the root under the water!”

I woke up and couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next day I went for a long walk with Damon and asking God: “What’s the meaning of the dream?”. Suddenly like ‘scales falling from our eyes’, we saw the whole picture - The tree was held up by a rope which was carrying a heavy weight at the other side.

We both knew that was our fear of stepping out into the uncertainty and following our hearts. 

So three months later we sold most of our things, cancelled the house contract and we left Switzerland with our three kids to go to Asia. In 2016 we founded “Zaemespiel” (which we changed the name in 2019 to “Cup of Color”), together with our teammates Simon and Conny Bär. Since that time we have been working on different community art projects in Hong Kong, India and Philippines and witnessing the constructive impact of doing public visual arts in communities.