Countdown to ecoDesigns Graduation 28: What is ecoDesigns?

Green greetings Steemians,
As agreed during last week's meeting that led to the announcement of the graduation of trainees of ecoDesigns on the 28th of March 2021, it was resolved that we do a countdown to the graduation ceremony on Steem so that we can be able to raise funds to support the graduation as well as pay rents and purchase items for ecoDesigns.

You can learn more about the graduation announcement and the meeting resolutions here; https://steempeak.com/graduation/@thegreens/the-women-and-girls-textile-recycling-project-or-graduation-graduation-graduation

For day 01 of our 28 Days countdown, we will be talking about what ecoDesigns is and tomorrow, we shall look at some of ecoDesigns' achievements as well as share a video from our hub.

What is ecoDesigns?

@ecoDesigns is @thegreens' textile recycling and fashion designing hub that is training women and girls for FREE in Textile Recycling and Fashion Designing in a bid to reduce female unemployment, inequalities and poverty, promote female entrepreneurship, combat textile waste pollution and climate change as well as improve the health and wellbeing of orphans, prisoners, underprivileged and poor people via the donation of free clothes and shoes the hub is collecting from the city.

ecoDesigns was created after our 2017 research that involved over 400 Tailors/Fashion designers in the city of Bamenda, North West Region, Cameroon, were we realized that;

1. They are more than 800 Tailors and Fashion designers in the city, with each tailor generating an average of 2 – 5kg of textile waste per week and more during festive periods. We realized from this research that the tailoring/fashion industry in Bamenda generates about 1600kg to 4000kg of textile waste every week.
2. More than 75% of the tailors/fashion designers burn or throw their textile waste in the landfill and that many of them were unaware of the environmental impact of the textile waste and the textile industry as a whole.

On the other hand, in an oral interview with more than 100 persons from diverse households in the city, we realized that more than 80% of the people burn or throw their old/unwanted or damaged clothes and that not up to 5% of them knew the environmental impact of the textile industry as a whole.
Its against these research backdrops that ecoDesigns was created. The hub currently has 02 Training Directors and 07 women and girls who are learning textile recycling and fashion designing for free.

pioneer graduates of @ecodesigns with @mr-greens
The two years old hub has graduated two ecoFashion Designers, collected and upcycled over 12,000 pounds of textile waste into reusable pads, pillows, chalkboard erasers, garments, dolls, mattresses, Laptop bags, scarecrows, etc.

The hub has also collected over 2000 dresses from the city of Bamenda and redistributed to over 300 persons who are internally displaced, orphans, underprivileged, etc.

You can learn more about our needs and support us by here; https://steempeak.com/graduation/@thegreens/the-women-and-girls-textile-recycling-project-or-graduation-graduation-graduation

@steemcurator01
@booming
@likedeeler

The Greens is a grassroots environmental organization that strives to educate, inspire and engage young people to take action to combat climate change and be at the forefront of biodiversity conservation and waste management.