A Not For Sale story

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Some ideas start very small.

This one started with a pot of soup.

A Not For Sale story

A Bowl of Soup

How a soup program in an Amsterdam safe house grew into Dignita, a restaurant that trains survivors of trafficking for real jobs.

About 6 minutes · October 2026

The kitchens are illustrated and no real person is shown. The facts and figures come from Not For Sale’s work in the Netherlands.

2012, Amsterdam

Not For Sale’s work in the Netherlands began in the Red Light District.

There, social worker Toos Heemskerk-Schep and Not For Sale started Home Soup, in the kitchen of a safe house.

Survivors made soup and sold it. They came away with a certificate, a skill and an income.

Survivors of trafficking do not need saving. They need opportunity.

The idea behind Home Soup, in Not For Sale’s words

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

2012

It began here. The safe house itself is not on the map.

2015

The soup becomes a restaurant. Dignita opens in the Vondelpark: a brunch place that has to win its guests like any other.

2017

A second Dignita opens in the Hoftuin, a garden in the east of the city center.

2020

A third, in Westerpark.

Today

Dignita runs from the Hoftuin, on the Nieuwe Herengracht, open every day. The Vondelpark and Westerpark restaurants have closed.

What made it work? Dignita is a real restaurant. It has to win its guests like any other brunch place.

Its Academy, built with ROC van Amsterdam, gives survivors government-accredited training on the job.

Trainees choose a track: the kitchen, the coffee bar, nail styling and beauty, or administration through FAIR Finances, set up in 2021.

What they make is served to paying guests from the first day.

And every euro of profit goes back into training the next group.

Since 2012, Not For Sale has supported 4,561 people in the Netherlands. Each square here is one person.

3,507 of them are survivors and people at risk, served directly.

1,054 more were reached through outreach and prevention.

263

have completed the Dignita Academy.

Source: Not For Sale

2012

One pot, in the kitchen of a safe house.

Today

A restaurant open every day, an academy, and 263 graduates.

Many of the survivors Not For Sale serves in Amsterdam come from Eastern Europe.

So the recipe may travel back. Not For Sale is exploring a Dignita in Eastern Europe.

Read The Offer: one of those journeys, told through a phone

About this story

Opportunity, not rescue

Dignita is not a charity kitchen. It is a restaurant that has to earn its guests, and that is the point: trainees learn inside a real business, and the business pays for their training. All profits return to Stichting Dignita to fund the next group of trainees.

Visit Dignita Hoftuin at Nieuwe Herengracht 18a, Amsterdam. It is open every day from 09:30 to 16:30, as listed on Not For Sale’s site.

2012Home Soup begins in a safe houseNot For Sale
4,561people supported in the NetherlandsNot For Sale
263Dignita Academy graduatesNot For Sale
100%of profits back into trainingNot For Sale

No one is for sale.
Help us prove it.

DonateAbout Dignita

Sources and notes

  • Home Soup, Dignita’s three restaurants, the Academy, FAIR Finances and the profits: Not For Sale’s Dignita page.
  • The start in the Red Light District and the figures for the Netherlands: Not For Sale’s Netherlands page.
  • Toos Heemskerk-Schep is named as on Not For Sale’s site. The kitchens and the people in them are illustrated.
  • Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Pins are approximate; the safe house is deliberately not shown.

Concept mockup for review. Not published, and not the live site. Illustrations are drawn in code as placeholders for commissioned art.

All story mockups

Mockup for review. Not the live site.