Steem Charity: Supporting women and girls empowerment/entrepreneurship at ecoDesigns with Steem

ecoDesigns, a textile recycling and fashion designing hub that is training women and girls for free

What is ecoDesigns?

ecoDesigns workshop
@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 14 women and girls who are learning textile recycling and fashion designing for free.

The four (04) years old hub has graduated five 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.

ecodesigns textile recycled products

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.

2021 graduates of ecodesigns
On the 28th of March 2021, ecoDesigns graduated her second batch of trainees, 03 of them in number as you can read here; https://steemit.com/graduation/@thegreens/ecodesigns-graduation-report-or-the-women-and-girls-empowerment-project

Below are some videos of the graduates who share their experiences during their time at ecoDesigns.

Meanwhile her pioneer graduation of two trainees was in June 2019.

ecoDesigns pioneer graduates with @mr-greens

@thegreens is currently educating and recruiting her trainees to #Steemit so that they can get further social and financial empowerment.

Some of our trainees who have already introduced themselves on Steemit include;
1.Fai Roseline: https://steemit.com/introducemyself/@fairoseline/new-to-steemit-my-name-is-fai-rosaline-from-bamenda-cameroon

1. Tebo Zenobia: https://steemit.com/achievement1/@tebozenobia/new-to-steemit-my-name-is-tebo-zenobia-and-i-am-from-bamenda

Why we need Steem support.

A few weeks ago, The Greens' @ecodesigns account was hacked via a phishing scam. At the time of hack, the account was worth over $500 and pending over 35 SBD payouts. The account was hacked by @thomblanco and has been powered down whereas all post payouts are being transfered to different accounts.
You can learn more about the hack here: https://steemit.com/hive-155868/@thegreens/ecodesigns-account-hacked-or-a-big-loss-for-our-women-girls-empowerment-project-or-we-need-your-support

The SBD payouts where supposed to be used to complete the rents of our textile recycling and fashion designing hub meanwhile the account was used to raise funds to purchase machines and equipment for our hub. For some time now, ecoDesigns has been with funds from Steemit, hence the account hack is a very big loss for our women and girls empowerment project as we are now lacking funds to complete the rents of our hub, as well as funds to purchase more equipment for our women and girls empowerment center.

Our workshop rents will expire in June and we need to pay the remaining 6 months of rents for the 2021 year
Our monthly rents stands 60 Steem and this implies we need 360 Steem to complete our rents for 2021. Besides our rents, we need more machines to further facilitate our women and girls empowerment project.

With Steem Charity support, we will continue to educate and empower women and girls and continue to give the results we have been giving above.

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.