Project HOPE: This T-shirt is giving us major travel goals during the pandemic

Siddhant Agarwal.

2020 was a life-changing year for a multitude of reasons. Not only did a virus force us to stay indoors and work remotely, it also deprived us of the joys of travel.

Over the years, travel has assumed an important role in our lives, helping us escape from the frenzy of everyday life.  The pandemic changed all that and more, as the farthest people could move was from their ‘living rooms to their bedrooms’.

As the world restlessly waited for life to resume post-lockdown, a T-shirt embarked on a journey of a lifetime in September 2020.

Stop 1: Gabriel - Singapore.

HOPE (as she is called) has already made a stop at 13 cities, 10 countries and five continents. From New Delhi to Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Japan, Los Angeles and New York, the T-shirt has been on a remarkable world tour, and there’s really no stopping.

The project, conceptualised by 24-year-old marketing executive Siddhant Agarwal (@originalnewdelhi), is rooted in his personal struggle. Like many others, the young professional found himself dealing with severe anxiety, when he was asked to go on unpaid leave after the imposition of the COVID-induced lockdown.

He made his way from Delhi to his hometown Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh to live with his parents. Soon after, he found himself with nothing much to do, and feelings of unproductivity began to creep in.

“It was the end of June, and I remember one night, sometime at 2 am, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I went to the rooftop and sat there for three hours straight, trying to calm myself down. There was no apparent reason to feel this way. The very next morning, I called up a friend to discuss this episode, and that’s when I realised it was an anxiety attack. Music helped me cope with my situation, but the episode left a deep impact on my mind. It made me feel that I needed to do something for others, to help them overcome similar feelings,” he recalls.

Stop 2: Jack - Hong Kong.

The motivation behind Project HOPE

After his anxiety attack, Siddhant started to have conversations with several people to know what they missed most during the lockdown. The majority of people didn’t think twice before saying ‘travel’.

“During these conversations, it also struck me that people did not feel bad because they had nowhere to go, but because they had nowhere to hide from themselves, their feelings and their demons. I have always loved the idea of traveling, and how it proves to be an escape from all the feelings we are scared of. Something clicked, and I said to myself ‘humans can’t travel, but a t-shirt can’, and that’s how it all began,” he shares.

Stop 3: Takashi - Tokyo.

Although it was a risky proposition to experiment with this idea during the pandemic, Siddhant knew he was ready to take a chance.

“I had a gigantic task of confirming inter-connectivity between all these countries, as the situation was quite uncertain during the lockdown. Thankfully, on the logistics front, DHL came to my rescue,” he shares.

Once logistics was taken care of, Siddhant worked towards making the T-shirt a beacon of HOPE, something that had its own personality.

Although it was a risky proposition to experiment with this idea during the pandemic, Siddhant knew he was ready to take a chance.

The circle of collaboration 

To document the journey of the travelling T-shirt, Siddhant got in touch with several video content creators across the world, be it in Singapore, Tokyo, New York, and Toronto, among other places.

Although most of them were excited about being a part of this novel project, some were a little wary of doing this during the pandemic.

Siddhant laid out only one condition: these content creators had to make vlogs, while wearing the black-coloured HOPE T-shirt. But in no way did he want safety and hygiene to be compromised, which is why he assembled a metal box that included a set of stencils of the HOPE logo, as well as black T-shirts, and sent it to the creators.

Stop 4: Chris - Los Angeles. Hollywood

With all the tools available at hand, it was simple for them to paint the logo onto their own tees, and capture local sights and sounds in unique ways; basically their rendition of the word HOPE.

Once a vlogger has completed documenting his/her journey, the box has to be passed on to the next chosen one.

But how did Siddhant zero in on the chosen content creators?

“I had to do a fair bit of research before starting the project. I got in touch with content creators through emails, Instagram, Facebook and other social platforms. I never chased them based on their number of followers, but it was always about the quality of work,” adds Siddhant.

For him, the biggest concern was to keep the content fresh and relevant, and he has successfully managed that until now.

“I onboarded content creators from different walks of life: skateboarders, free-climbers, parkour artists, graffiti artists, BMX riders, buskers, rap artists, and some vloggers,” he shares.

Project HOPE has several milestones to its credit, but Siddhant feels there’s one that particularly stands out. “It was when the t-shirt was worn by a free climbing artist, Chris, in front of the famous Hollywood signage.”

The vlogs can be accessed on the project’s YouTube channel, as well as on their Instagram page.

The future

Project HOPE has already covered over 25,000 km, and its next stop is Canmore, a small town in Alberta, Canada. The future looks even more exciting, feels Siddhant, who aims to spread solidarity through this project. 

“I want to complete the project in 2021 itself. HOPE plans to travel to Alberta, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Istanbul, Cape Town, and Mumbai this year, before she comes back home to New Delhi,” shares Siddhant.

He is eager to send the T-shirt on another world tour, once the existing one comes to an end, but it all depends if HOPE: the traveling T-shirt can be auctioned.

“I would want to use that money to promote art and culture in our country by making some more content that revolves around books, gaming, new-age cultures, events, urban sports, and so much more. I want to document topics, which are not talked about, but have a potential audience,” he says, while signing off.