Video“I think art can change society.”

In 2010 Ommulbanin Shamsia Hassani took part in a workshop organized by Combat Communications in Kabul, Afghanistan. She learned the art of graffiti and brought her work to the streets of her city. This inspiring video produced by Kabul at Work, serves as a reminder of the power of art to empower an individual and its potential to create change in a society.

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Column“Drawing lets me explain my feelings, all my happiness, all my sorrows, because drawing is the spirit of expression for all artists.” – Artist Jean-Mark Delphonse

Captured in a sentence, the emotional connection art can have with our souls holds a power that often becomes bigger than any of us. Clothing label Moral Fibers appears to have tapped directly into that internal connection through their mission: “Moral Fibers is a sustainable clothing brand with a commitment to artists in developing countries. We use art and education as tools to grow talent and build financial stability in the poorest communities in the world.”

Co-founded in January 2011 by Matthew Brightman (CEO) and Martin Weiss (COO), Moral Fibers is built upon the idea that international development revolves around employing the unemployed in jobs that require education and art to provide financial stability. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Brightman traveled to Port-au-Prince to assist with relief work. Upon that adventure, he met Erick Frazier, who has now become Moral Fibers’ local manager, or “Bossman” as they call him.

With the seeds of inspiration planted in Brightman’s mind after his experience in Haiti, he wrote up a business plan and approached Weiss to be his potential partner in crime. As Weiss tells EcoSalon, “He convinced me to come to Haiti with him and find artists. We had no idea how we were going to turn their art into clothing.”

Artist Jean-Mark Delphonse’s artwork and Moral Fibers tee

With the help of “Bossman” Frazier, they identified their first eight Moral Fibers’ artists from his community in Carrefour, Haiti and the surrounding tent areas. Following that groundbreaking trip, Brightman and Weiss mocked up their first tee by artist Jean-Mark Delphonse and got to work sorting out how they were going to make this new dream a reality.

Martin Weiss (COO), Erick Frazier (Moral Fibers’ Haiti “Bossman”), & Matthew Brightman (CEO)

In the course of the next year, Moral Fibers had expanded its artist base to include 15 creative minds, and since then, each of those artists has gradually moved out of their tents and into houses in Carrefour. As Weiss tells EcoSalon, “When an artist is hired, they provide 12 pieces of art monthly, are required to attend school, and give hours of service to their community. If we decide to use a piece of artwork in a piece of clothing going into production, we get our local manager Erick to ask questions to the artist about their ideas and the process of creating the piece.”

While all the company’s current partner artists are based in Haiti, Brightman and Weiss are working with the artists in Carrefour as a test-bed for their international development model. Moral Fibers’ artists receive salaries of five times the average national income, and get to choose from four benefits: education subsidy for one child, home rental subsidy, healthcare subsidy, or an entrepreneurship fund. In exchange, the artists must deliver 12 pieces of art per month, be actively attending school, and volunteer in their community.

“We’re actively trying to improve our artist development model,” says Weiss.

While both men are full of passion for international development, Weiss and Brightman are also both intent on continuously evolving their model to improve the quality of life and lifetime earning potential for their artists.

“We strive to make the best fashion, and our artists strive to make the best artwork,” says Weiss.

In just a year since their initial launch, Moral Fibers has already embraced a massive shift in perspective.

“The Fall Collection is the embodiment of a large step forward. Moral Fibers was founded as a t-shirt brand that wanted to change what a clothing brand could be, and our artists were found as inhabitants of a tent city in a failed state that wanted to change what art could be,” says Weiss.

Sharing the intimate stories behind the artwork is something key to the DNA of Moral Fibers.

13-year-old artist Jean Daniel Maurilus tells his story

While the profiled artwork originates in Haiti, Moral Fibers does much of the the behind-the-scenes work designing in their Montreal headquarters, and has manufactured their past collections locally in Montreal. Recently, their team has been working on a new initiative, which involves manufacturing at INDEPCO in Haiti. Some of their upcoming Spring designs, launching in April, have been made at this non-profit group of Ateliers that are based in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince.

Spring 2012 teaser, launching in April 2012

Managed by Hans Garoute, Haiti’s 2010 entrepreneur of the year, INDEPCO has a 20-year operating history of success, and is funded by the Clinton-Bush Haiti Foundation and USAID. As Weiss tells EcoSalon, “Garoute pairs clients like Moral Fibers with ateliers who focus on low-to-medium quantity, high-quality fashion production, and who will scale with their clients.”

A graduate of New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology and a former buyer for Macy’s, Garoute is all about incentives for his employees. Offering free sewing classes to all of his workers to increase their skills, Garoute also presents his “sewing graduates” with their very own sewing machine upon completion of his courses.

Moral Fibers sees value in producing their garments at INDEPCO for two reasons. “While a ‘Made in Haiti’ tag adds intangible value to Moral Fibers’ brand image by further supporting economic and infrastructure development in the company’s pilot country, outsourcing sewing to INDEPCO saves Moral Fibers an average of 35-50% on the total cost of goods of each piece sewn in Haiti before shipping expenses,” says Weiss.

Additionally, further investing in generating more job opportunities through manufacturing in Haiti gives Moral Fibers an added-value edge.

By artist Victor Phalange

For Moral Fibers, being a for-profit business in their sector means upholding a responsibility of creating “real social good” that’s sustainable. Shamelessly, Weiss mentions a Men in Black quote when asked about the message he hopes to share via Moral Fibers: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

For Weiss, “this quote kind of sums up the problem that you encounter when you generalize about ‘people in developing countries’ or try to teach a crowded classroom instead of an individual.” Experiencing so many aspects of life in Haiti, Weiss has realized directly that individuals are smart, but a lot of them are simply dealt terrible lives, without the opportunity for education, safety, happiness, food, or shelter.

For Weiss, companies like Toms Shoes use a model that is less-than-sustainable. “The ‘Buy One, Give One’ model accomplishes the goal of charity, but will never work for development—no matter how many shoes you send to Africa. You will never succeed in substantially improving the quality of life for anyone there simply by shipping goods.”

On the contrary, Weiss pushes the fact that if you “build a shoe factory, train a foreman and workers, and produce Toms shoes there, you will.” Unfortunately, he explains, Toms Shoes are made in China because production costs are low and workers are already trained.

What Toms Shoes is doing is considered international development and it is doing social good. But, Weiss emphasizes that “Moral Fibers is trying to change this paradigm of sending the excess products of our industrialized world to developing countries and counting it as social good. Our model of international development revolves around employing the unemployed in jobs that require education and art to provide financial stability.”

While it’s all a journey of self discovery, Moral Fibers seems to be treading a particularly positive path, using art as the driving force.

The post THREADED: Moral Fibers – Wearable Art With A Focus On International Development appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sometimes, the solution is as simple as a bicycle.

Girls who stay in school for seven or more years marry four years later and have two fewer children. Countries where women’s share of seats in political bodies is greater than 30% are more inclusive, egalitarian and democratic. Two-thirds of the 130 million children worldwide who are not in school are girls.

There is an indisputable need for investing in and empowering women. Given the global scope of the issue, that task is daunting. Yet a solution as simple as a bicycle can make – and is making – a meaningful, measurable difference.

This year, 88bikes Foundation, a nonprofit organization that gives bikes to kids in developing countries, is launching its sixth and most ambitious project, Asha 2012. With the help of the Nell Newman Foundation, Asha 2012 will endow bicycles to thousands of girls around the world, from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia.

The project was inspired by a bicycle endowment 2010 that took place at the Bihar Ashram in India, a shelter for girls who are survivors of sexual slavery. Sheltered by Free the Slaves for several months before reintegrating back into their communities this ashram provides a safe haven and a place to transition back into society after a gruesome reality. At Bihar, the 88bikes team met Asha. After six months at the ashram, Asha, which means “hope” in Sanskrit, reintegrated back into the same community from which she was sold. The story was so moving, she later became the namesake for the organization’s current project.

The goal for Asha 2012 is to provide bicycles to girls who have endured and transcended similar situations of slavery and abuse, in turn empowering them to take part in their communities, attend school and grow as strong women.

“We’ve found that girls tend to appreciate the bikes more and demonstrate greater maturity [owning the bicycles]. Women and girls deal endure and transcend tremendous abuse and unequal rights, especially in the developing world. We believe focusing on girls has the greatest overall impact on the community. We want to do everything we can to foster leadership and healing among heroic girls who’ve risen above challenging circumstances beyond their control,” says 88bikes co-founder Dan Austin.

Bicycles can be an excellent catalyst for empowering women, in all kinds of communities, as writer and cycling advocate Eleanor Blue points out. “Bicycling is a great economic equalizer especially for women. Women worldwide tend to have more domestic work than men, and bicycling when it can be an alternative to walking and transit is often safer, cheaper and makes things like school and working outside of the home possible where they might not otherwise be.”

Not only a tool for economic and social empowerment, having access to a bicycle often achieves a very simple, but powerful, goal: inducing a smile. “A bicycle is a tool of happiness and autonomy. With a bike, your world instantly expands,” says Austin.

At a first glance a bicycle might not appear to be the key tool for solving international development challenges, but consider all the elements that it brings together – transportation, education, health, etc. – and it becomes clear that at a grassroots level, two wheels could be one of our most effective ways forward when it comes to empowering women and making significant and long-lasting change.

“The 88bikes model is refreshing and effective,” says Nell Newman of the Nell Newman Foundation. “It empowers women though a grassroots and somewhat radical approach. Bikes are such a fantastic, low cost way to expand an individual’s freedom – freedom to move, freedom to do commerce – and receiving one will make a profound difference to these girls who have transcended so much already. We are happy to be supporting their efforts.”

If we are to bridge the gender and economic gap around the world, it will be imperative that individuals and organizations consider programs like these, as they deal with larger, more complex equality issues on a personal level. “Asha, our namesake for this project said that the bicycle ‘helps me feel equal to men,'” says Austin.

That isn’t just a feeling, it’s a reality. “Gender and equality starts with children. Often girls in many places are not always able to go to school, especially if they have to travel a long distance, and bicycling can bridge the gap, quite literally, between male and female education,” says Blue.

88bikes is currently accepting sponsorships of $88 per bike for Asha 2012. Donations can be made online at www.88bikes.org. Donors are asked to email a picture of themselves, to be presented with the bike. In return, 88bikes sends back a photo of the child with her new bike and her donor’s picture.

Images: 88bikes, Lynsey Dyer, 88bikes

The post 88bikes’ Asha 2012 Program: Empowering Girls with Bicycles appeared first on EcoSalon.

Really.

With population growth, industrialization and limited resources, access to freshwater has become a crisis. 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water – that’s more than one out of six people. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related illness. Water is such an issue that it is a key component in achieving the United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals.

These statistics are hard to grapple with, but for perspective, consider that this past weekend, a 30-second advertising spot during the Super Bowl ran for $3.5 million.

According to Water.org, the same amount of money it took to bring you a baby being catapulted to a bag of Doritos, could have been used to get 140,000 people water for life. For every 30 seconds of advertising, you could give hundreds of thousands of people around the world access to the one of the essential items that you need to survive.

Diverting Super Bowl advertising dollars to the water crisis may not be a viable solution, but it’s a start. Instead of being captivated by flashy cars and beer, imagine if just a percentage of those advertising budgets went to solving global problems instead of funding a vicious consumer cycle focused on buying more. One can dream.

Images: AngieSix [top left], hdptcar [right]

The post Just 1 Super Bowl Ad Could Give 140,000 People Water for Life appeared first on EcoSalon.

An exclusive photo essay from Shannon Galpin of Mountain2Mountain who rode through Afghanistan by bike and motorcycle.

It’s hard not to be inspired when you meet Shannon Galpin. At first look she’s your average smart, athletic woman, living in Colorado. Dig a little deeper and you’ll learn she’s a single mom. Spend a few more minutes talking and she’ll tell you the story of how she left her career, sold her house and launched a nonprofit, committing her life to advancing education and opportunity for women and girls.

Galpin focuses her efforts on the war-torn country of Afghanistan, and with her organization, Mountain2Mountain, has already touched the lives of hundreds of men, women and children.

As the founder of Mountain2Mountain, I’ve been lucky to travel often throughout Afghanistan, working with Afghans as they strive to rebuild their country. My passion is working with Afghan women and girls as they fight to prove their value and worth in this male dominated culture. Afghanistan is consistently ranked as the worst place to be a woman and yet women and girls are key to the future of the country.

As a woman, and specifically, as a foreign woman, I’ve had unique insights into this country thanks to the concept of the Third Gender. A concept that treats foreign women as honorary males, and allows them to interact as equals with men, while still being a woman and therefore have full access to the women. In essence, acting as their proxy when they do not have a voice.

Click on photos for larger version.

The post The Third Gender: Taking Action in Afghanistan, a Photo Essay appeared first on EcoSalon.

Help women and you help the world. It’s a philosophy gaining traction among international development gurus who say women in the global south are the best providers for their families and communities. According to a New York Times Magazine article by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published last August, women in the developing world are often more responsible than men when it comes to managing money in the home, making them prime beneficiaries for microfinance loans.

“In general, aid appears to work best when it is focused on health, education and microfinance (although microfinance has been somewhat less successful in Africa than in Asia),” write Kristof and WuDunn. “And in each case, crucially, aid has often been most effective when aimed at women and girls; when policy wonks do the math, they often find that these investments have a net economic return. Only a small proportion of aid specifically targets women or girls, but increasingly donors are recognizing that that is where they often get the most bang for the buck.”

In their book Half the Sky, named for a Chinese saying that “Women hold up half the sky,” Kristof and WuDunn argue for an increased focus on women and girls when it comes to international aid, maintaining that countries with pitiful track records on women’s rights are also the countries most mired in poverty and extremism. Fix the former and you fix the latter, they say.

Kristof and WuDunn provide a compelling argument. But their philosophy should go one further: in addition to reducing poverty, helping women also helps the environment. According to a recent article in The Jakarta Post, the Indonesian Environmental Ministry has begun offering classes to women in Yogyakarta and Central Java about water conservation. Since women provide food for their families, they’re also the ones who acquire water each day. “In almost every village, it is a woman’s responsibility to provide water, whether as a mother or daughter,” says Linda Amalia Sari Gumelar, the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Minister. Public works agencies that build water projects ignore the needs of women at their own peril. “Planners should be aware of the different conditions: women on foot and men on motorcycles. In housework, water is closely-related to domestic work. Distances between water sources and settlements should be calculated carefully.”

Since women transport water, and then use it to cook and clean for their families, they make natural gatekeepers for water sources, the first-line-of-defense conservationists who can teach their peers how to make their daily water portion go further. Though the true impact of the Environmental Ministry water protection classes in Indonesia has yet to be realized, focusing on the environment by focusing on women is smart policy. Women hold up half the sky – it’s true. And if we let them, it’ll be a cleaner sky at that.

Image: ESP Indonesia

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