ABAN: Empowering Girls in Ghana, One Fabric at a Time

ABAN co-founder Callie Brauel, bottom right, gathers with a group of young Ghanaians benefiting from their own work through ABAN. At top left is Emmanuel Quarmyne, ABAN’s Ghana Programs Director, beside UNC graduate Carly Brantmeyer.

So, I thought I would start this week off on a bit of a lighter note than the one I left you with on Friday (sorry girlfriends, but I have to keep it real, you know?). Before turning to the final installment of my interview with Eco Fashion pioneer Marci Zaroff, I wanted to highlight a truly inspiring non-profit called ABAN (A Ban Against Neglect), co-founded by Callie Brauel and Rebecca Brandt while studying at the University of Ghana in the capital city of Accra in 2008.  Upon arriving for their semester abroad, the two students were confronted by the huge problem of environmental waste left behind by the plastic bags of pure water sold to Ghanians, in the amount of forty tons a day. As their semester progressed, they eventually discovered another haunting problem: the 30,000 street girls from rural areas of the country who had left their families in the hope of finding work in the capital, only to be left homeless in the streets. Although they volunteered at a local agency that helped some of these girls, it was only when they developed a mock nonprofit company for recycled products for a class, that the idea for ABAN began to form. Why not give these girls much needed job skills and economic independence by having them take the plastic waste from the water bags and ‘upcycle’ them into cute bags and purses? Teaming up with Ghanian University student Emmanuel Quarmyne, who is currently ABAN’s Ghana Director, the three students were able to get a few sewing machines donated by non-profits, and partnered with Street Girls Aid, a Ghanian NGO that aids a small group of mothers and girls that are living off of the street. In 2010, after winning the Carolina Challenge, the team launched their own job skills and vocational training non-profit with ten young mothers aged 15-20 coming off the streets of Accra. Now, two years later, ABAN has not only graduated their first class of girls, but recycles over ten thousand plastic bags a month!

OK, stop. Building cross-cultural coalitions to empower young girls? Through the craft of sewing? And upcycling waste while doing it? ‘Listen Girlfriends’ DIES.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with Callie Brauel, who currently resides in Chapel Hill, the other day over coffee, and she shared with me some of the challenges ABAN initially faced, how the organization works, and how they plan to move forward.

Nadia: So ABAN’s mission seems to be really holistic. In addition to the health care, living wages, daycare, and job employment the girls receive, there is also a staff of ten people, including a  house mother and psychologist on board. Was it always this way?

Callie: No, it wasn’t. When ABAN first started, we hired a seamstress and we thought it was enough to provide our class of ten girls with a job from nine to five every day. It became very clear however, that these girls had gone through so much trauma, and that unlike many Ghanians, who have a strong social and familial network, they really lacked that support.  They had, in some way or another, been neglected. And that obviously leaves scars, and it was clear that they needed emotional support as well, especially since most of them, even though they were all under the age of 20, had children. Once we realized this, we knew that we had to expand our organization’s mission and team.

So in May of 2011, Rebecca and I came back to the United States, and we went on a house tour through different parts of the U.S., and we raised $30,000 in two weeks. And with that money, we decided to get the girls out of Accra, and rent our own facility in Aburi, which is just east of the capital.

Nadia: So how does the program work now? What is a day like at ABAN?

Fun while sewing.

Callie: Well, in the morning the girls work on their products, and in the afternoon, they take Math, English, Business Education, Leadership and Empowerment courses. We really try to empower the girls as much as possible, so they take turns cooking as well. Keep in mind that most of the girls come into our program without having had much or any formal education, so vocational training is key to their success. Often the skills they learn at ABAN will prove useful in future careers or side businesses. Since the girls are paid for their work they also get the added benefits of learning to hold a job and budget their money before they graduate from ABAN, all of which are necessary skills to provide for themselves and their children.

Nadia: You describe ABAN as a ‘fabric of change.’ So how do the girls make their products?

Two students practice the art of batik dying.

Callie: What is awesome about the ABAN products is that each one is a piece of art. There is so much involvement in every step of the process, making each handmade product unique to the girl who made it. The first step involves the collection of bags. We network with local schools in the area to collect bags and promote environmental education in doing so. After collection, the bags are hand washed, sanitized and laid in the sun to dry.

We’re also working on producing a batik fabric, which is a multi-toned fabric. To make this, the girls take a piece of white fabric, and then use a wooden stamp to dip it into wax. You dye it in the first color, which is a lighter color, and then repeat the process with a darker color. That gives you the three-toned look of the fabric. And then water is used to remove the wax. And the dye we receive differs so much in color, because it is dependent on the weather and climate. So a red we get one day might be completely different from the red we receive the next. Which makes the process all the more exciting and a true learning process! Currently, the girls are learning how to make the batik fabrics,  and we’re also supporting local artisans to meet our demand. The products are finished with a final detail- a key chain made from recycled glass! We had college students come over this summer and work with a local artisan to make us a bead center on site.

Nadia: So where do you sell your products?

Desmund, Denicia’s son, sits with an ABAN travel case. One case recycles 24 plastic sachets, and provides life and job-skills training for a month for an ABAN girl.

Callie: We have an online store, and the list of retailers who sell our products are listed on there as well. Currently, 40% of our revenues come from sales, and 60% from grants and donations. We really like the idea of becoming self-sufficient through sales and having 80-90% of our revenue coming from sales, eventually.

Nadia: Are you looking to expand in the future?

Callie: Yes! We recently bought six acres of land, and in the next one to two years we will expand our program to thirty girls. Our hope is that within the next five years, we can start an actual ABAN campus for seventy to eighty girls! We are also have a sister organization called ACE (ABAN Community Employment) with ten seamstresses employed at fair wages and with key benefits who further support our organization as demand grows it the US. This extra revenue will help us expand our mission on the ground to support more girls in the ABAN school.

Nadia: So I have to ask, why is ABAN so invested in girls?

Callie: Well, for two reasons. Living in Accra, you see how vulnerable the girls are, because they are the ones who are forced to migrate to the capital to find work for their families. Secondly, there is a mounting amount of research supporting what is being labeled as The Girl Effect, that investing in a girl’s education doesn’t just change that girl’s life, it changes her family’s life as well, and betters the community. And we are definitely seeing that with the young women who have children. When their lives are improved, economically and emotionally, they can provide a better life for their children.

First graduation!

Nadia: Do you have any success stories you would like to share?

Callie: Well, there is Asimaw, who loves to sew and is currently working as an apprentice. She is dreaming of starting her own business and employing and educating many other women like herself. Oh and I have to tell you about Denicia! She’s another girl who graduated from her program and received a scholarship at a private boarding school just outside the capital in Ghana. We have recycling initiatives with several schools that send us their plastic waste, and for several months we tried to get a recycling initiative started at her school, but it never transpired. Well one day, she saw all of these bags and bags of plastic piled outside of the school that were going to be dumped in a landfill. When they started to burn all of these bags, releasing all of these chemicals into the air, Denicia sprinted across the field and put a stop to it. And now the whole school has a recycling initiative, and they send all of their plastic bags to us. She is determined to be a top military officer in Ghana and with her determination, I know she is bound to get there.

Nadia: So how can people get involved and help?

Callie: There are so many ways! We have some great educational resources for teachers who want to introduce the culture of Ghana to their students, such as the craft of bead making, music, and dance. We also have a ‘Life Change’ kit where we send students a recycled water sachet, a piece of hemp, and beads to decorate with. It is a wonderful way to empower students with the idea that they indeed, can make a change.

You can also check out our website and donate online. We have a detailed explanation of where the money goes and how it changes a girl’s life. Or you can throw an ABAN party to raise awareness with your peers. We have all of the resources online to make it really easy!

Looking for other ways to connect with ABAN? Check them out on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Want to share a short video on what ABAN is all about? Click here.

Interested in selling ABAN products at a retail location? Click here for a promotional video of all of their products!

Here’s a ten-minute documentary on the girls of ABAN:

My Related Posts:

Ethical Fashion: Introduction to an Ongoing Series

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The iPhone 5 and the Latest Technology: Why We Consume at the Expense of Others

Just a few months ago, the new iPhone 5 was officially released. Featuring all of the coolest new gadgets and the ‘thinnest, lightest design,’ it sold out in stores in an impressive three days. The commercial for the new phone is so cool, it practically renders all iPhone 4 users as irrelevant in one 30-second swoop. But as I wrote in a recent post on the textile fire in Pakistan that killed 300 people the same week that models were walking down the runway in beautiful designs for New York Fashion Week, sometimes the most glamorous things are a facade for tragedy.

As this brilliant article revealed, the iPhone 5 has been made in China by exploited workers in FoxConn sweatshops. Many of these “underpaid, underaged, and overworked staff” have gone on strike, only for their complaints to be denied and downplayed by Foxconn. As the author notes, our constant complaints and expectations for more ‘perfect’ technology is what drives this labor machine to move faster, to demand more from their workers than is humanely possible. Saturday Night Live recently aired a clever skit that contrasted the ‘first world’ complaints of American tech experts (the phone is too light, I can barely feel it!) with the retorts of the Chinese sweatshop workers. My favorite line? “Oh, twitter’s too slow, you can’t read about Kardashian’s handbag? My brother has a handbag too. He has hand. Keeps in bag. Until he can afford to re-attach!”

While the article continues to lend fresh insight into the labor advocacy that is surrounding this issue, I want to focus here on a simple question: what drives us to buy, and why we are never satisfied with what we have? Is there a certain satisfaction that people in the West gain by being able to whine about trivial things, knowing that the people who are making these technologies are unable to complain half as much over issues that are far more important?

Left: the first person in line to buy an iPhone 5 in England preens with his loot. Right: the family of a young laborer who killed himself at Foxconn (photo courtesy of “Is it Immoral to Own an iPhone 5?”)

Technology has always connoted progress and development in the West. Because technology isn’t available to everybody, those who do not have access to it are often viewed as ‘backwards,’ as ‘behind,’ as ‘less-developed,’ as ‘Third-World.’ For many, technology is a word that refers to the inaccessible, the things they would like to have but cannot afford. It allows those in the West to establish meanings of progress for the world, and to view poorer countries as less capable.

That is not to say that technology does not have cultural and social benefits. It obviously does. The technologies we use can facilitate social movements, create a greater amount of information, help us realize our goals as a ‘global village,’ and forge a “two-way” connection between disparate groups of people. Who can dismiss the important (though arguably overblown) role of new media networks like Facebook in the Arab revolutions last spring? Or how in Afghanistan, entrepreneurs like Roya Mahboob are using software companies to empower women?

Technology can have real positive social and economic effects, but it seems that in the West, it is more often being reduced to its ‘thing-ness,’ to the idea that this conspicuous consumption of more things that may have no tangible impact on one’s life is a symbol of our wealth and privilege. We spend big money on a cool color, on a slightly lighter phone, on marginally faster internet connection. We are obsessed with this notion of newness, with this idea that buying an iPad Mini will make us seem ahead of the curve in some way, when, let’s face it, it is really a slighter bigger iPhone.

And then of course, there is the technological waste that is left behind by our unconscious consumption. Three million tons a year, to be exact. The technology that is dumped in the backyards of people’s homes in China, India, and Africa, ruining both the environment and their lives. How better to reiterate this notion that those in the ‘Third World’ are behind when for many, their primary means of access to technology is the waste tossed out by those in the West?

Electronic Waste dumped in parts of Africa (photo courtesy of DanWatch and Consumers International)

Is that how we are measuring progress now? Not just by what we have, but by how much we can throw away?

We often think of poorer countries as constantly needing to ‘catch up’ with our modes of consumption for the sake of development. I believe however, that the people in these countries who use technology as a means of transforming communities and even resisting oppressive regimes, are actually more progressive than those in the West who have reduced technological innovations to just ‘stuff.’ Take, as another example, the four African girls who created a urine-powered generator that produces six hours of electricity using a single liter of urine as fuel. Unveiled at the Maker Faire in Nigeria, the girls and their ‘pee-generator’ created buzz at an event that was instituted to highlight innovations that actually solve “immediate challenges and problems in society,” rather than, as Next Web put it, “a bunch of rich people talking about how their apps are going to change the world.”

Three of the four inventors of the urine-powered generator (photo courtesy ofEric Hersman)

This holiday season, perhaps we should look to, and start adopting, the slower and more sustainable modes of consumption of so-called developing countries. Why not give a hand-made gift, or practice more conscious consumption if we do not want to abstain completely from purchasing presents for ourselves and our family. What does it mean to be a conscious consumer? Well, perhaps these two examples of different iPhone buyers will help clarify the difference:

Consumer 1: “So I’m going to buy the iPhone 5 today. It just seemed…cool. I mean there’s nothing wrong with my iPhone 4, but my bromance bro got the new one, and it’s so light I just thought it would be dope to see which one we could toss higher. I’ll just trade it in at Apple for a 10% discount. Whatever. When’s the iPhone 6 coming out?”

Consumer 2: I’ve been holding out buying the iPhone, because I don’t really need it. But then my iPod broke, and my cell phone is several years old, so I wanted to get the new iPhone. I heard about all the strikes in China though, so I didn’t want to get the iPhone 5. I’d feel too guilty. So I traded the iPhone 4 for a ton of my DVDs I don’t watch any more. And then I sold my old iPod and cell phone to a green company called YouRenew, which recycles your old technologies without filling up landfills! I love my new iPhone and I plan on keeping it for a loooong time.

I think we all can guess which one is the conscious consumer, peeps.

I know that being socially responsible about our purchases takes a little more time, a little more thought. But if the holiday season is when we give thanks by spending time with our loved ones and sharing gifts, perhaps we should also take the extra time to consider the people behind these gifts, whether it is the workers who make them, or those in the  ‘Third World’ who have to live with them as unrecognizable litter in their backyards.

Want to learn more about the global trade of electronic waste? Check out this amazing twenty minute documentary that won an Emmy for its investigative reporting:

Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground:

Louis CK on why we’re never satisfied with what we have:

Further Reading:

• Culture and Technology, by Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. Macgregor Wise
• Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, by Arturo Escobar

This is the first article of a series that focuses on issues of sustainability and conscious consumerism – stay tuned for more on the subject, including an upcoming interview with eco-fashion founder Marci Zaroff!

Can Fashion Change the World?

“It’s quite incredible that we might save the world through fashion .” -Vivienne Westwood

In my recent post on New York Fashion week, I focused on the disconnect between the glamor and fantasy of the fashion industry with the exploitation that often hides beneath the glossy surface. I wanted to emphasize in this post, a few key players that are trying to work for more sustainable, ethical practices in the industry.

OK so first of all, what is ethical fashion girlfriends?? While I will no doubt touch on this subject many more times in my future blog posts, I really loved this definition from the ultimate in sustainable fashion information, the Ethical Fashion Forum.

” The meaning of ethical goes beyond doing no harm, representing an approach which strives to take an active role in poverty reduction, sustainable livelihood creation, minimizing and counteracting environmental concerns.”

Artisans at the Nairobi hub with Lisa Barratt, left, Jane Kabura, center, and Jeremy Brown, right, standing behind bags for Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood and Sass & Bide. Credit: Chloé Mukai/ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative

Obvi, that’s kind of amazing, but can it be done?  While the coverage of labor issues during fashion week was pretty paltry, The New York Times did run an incredible story on Simone Cipriani, head of the Ethical Fashion Initiative. Cipriani is connecting designers like Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney with Ghanian artisans,  who are working to the fair labor standards of $5 to $11 a day, making luxury items for the couture designers. Besides achieving a living wage, the work also gives many of these women employable skills that can empower them and help raise their families out of poverty.

Sustainability is still not widely understood though, and many associate the word with hippie-trippy, unattractive clothing, and well … Birkenstocks. Perhaps that’s why the awareness created by luxury brands could prove to be influential for changing the consumption patterns of the mainstream.  When Vivienne Westwood of her Ethical Fashion Collective line and Ilaria Venturini Fendi of her Carmina Campus line ask questions at New York Fashion week like ‘Was this made ethically?’ ‘Are the fabrics green?’ and ‘Were the workers treated fairly?’, this can have an incredible impact by encouraging ethical consumption but also proving that being stylish doesn’t come at a cost to others.

Martin Luther King Jr. said 45 years ago that “True revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” What exactly is it going to take to shift our values, to create a shared paradigm of ethical labor practices and more sustainable consumption? If it seems to be impossible, consider the resistance towards smoking reform in the mid-century, to the current situation where almost 50% of the U.S. population lives with smoking regulations in all workplaces, restaurants and bars. Yup, change can happen girlfriends, we just need to believe in it!

And a revolution seems to be happening,  and it’s not just within haute couture. Just this month activists staged flash ‘faint-ins’ at fast-fashion retailers H&M and the Gap to protest sweatshop conditions in countries like Cambodia, and workers in Cambodia are in turn striking for better pay. Check out this website, Fashioning Change, a self-described ‘do-gooder’ website that offers cute, eco-friendly alternatives to popular designer name brands. Their ‘Wear This, Not That’ feature is an easy way to compare some of your favorite clothes with more eco-conscious lines that have transparency in their supply chain. What’s more, these lines usually come at a cheaper price-tag then their brand-name comparison! Aaaand, it’s time to go shopping. 🙂

We need to fix the bloated nature of a fashion industry that creates a lot of waste with too many products that end up in landfills on one end, and too little pay for those who labor on the other. Vivienne Westwood, who is using her fashion line to promote environmentalism, has argued that fashion and anti-consumerism don’t necessarily contradict each other if people buy less, and in a more sustainable way. Check out her show from the London Paralympics in late August, where she ends her somewhat haphazard collection with a pointed cry for environmental advocacy, rolling out of a banner that reads “Climate Revolution.” A nod to her punk roots, it had me thinking, “Where is Pussy Riot??”

Have any thoughts on how we can shift our fast consumption to sustainability? Do you have any links to share, or know any peeps who are working on this cause? Please share with me, either in the comments below or via email! 🙂