Thousands of homeless people live in Amsterdam: people in need of a helping hand to regain their confidence and turn their lives around.

Amsterdam is also known for having a lively film and advertising industry. For many film productions background actors, or extras, are cast to complete the picture of a scene.

Extras get paid a compensation fee for every day on set (ranging from 60-120 euros a day).

We saw an opportunity to mix these worlds and set up Homeless Extras. The first casting agency for homeless people.

Homeless Extras is a permanent service in the Amsterdam industry. The aim is to create meaningful day jobs for Amsterdam’s homeless.

With this initiative we are changing the negative image around these people: most of the homeless do not match the stereotypical image people picture; they often are well dressed and groomed.

The first shoots with homeless extras were documented for an introduction film. The film was made with the voluntary help of film companies and production houses.

We depicted reality: the homeless extras were immediately accepted by the whole crew and supported in doing their job. Crew, clients and the homeless extras were very happy and proved that the concept works.

We pushed the video and booking website with the voluntary help of a PR agency.

The project quickly got picked up by industry media as well as big Dutch and international media titles.

This way Homeless Extras was established and the first bookings were made.

After the introduction we kept on sending look books in DM and social media reminders to 150+ Amsterdam-based companies to keep reminding them to book our extras.