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European RoyalsThe Netherlands

Dutch royals do volunteer work for #NLdoet

The Dutch Royal Family was out in full force, just like previous years, to do volunteer work for NLdoet. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima were in Breda in the communal gardens, where the King helped build a greenhouse while the Queen was painting. The communal gardens are maintained by volunteers in the area and the local care home, child care facilities and other social organisations are involved with it. It consists of several different gardens, including a nature playground.

This volunteering weekend was organised by the Oranje Fonds (Orange Fund), which was founded in 2002 and was the national wedding gift to then Prince of Orange and Princess Máxima. The King and Queen are both patrons of the Oranje Fonds. It is expected that a total of 350,000 volunteers will join in this weekend.

Princess Beatrix was in IJsselstein on Saturday morning, where she was tempted to spray to the press with the pressure washer. “I really want to do it!”, the laughing Princess said while she looked towards the press.

She managed to resist temptation and used the pressure washer to clean benches of their winter dirt. Princess Beatrix stayed for three hours and attended a lunch with the other volunteers afterwards.  Her appearance was not made public beforehand, as usual, and the volunteers were quite surprised.

Princess Laurentien wasn’t in the Netherlands, but she volunteered on Curaçao. She was in Willemstad with the project Thinker Shop, where children and teenager take apart computers to recycle them. She was also in Bonaire, where she attended a conference on children’s rights and she installed a Council of Children. The Caribean will have a total of 2534 volunteers for this weekend.

 This is a record year for NLdoet with the number of jobs and volunteers in both the Netherlands and the Caribean.