Second life
I have met three powerful women who have given me a second life. The first woman is Jane Walker. Now I am walking with her in this mountain of garbage. The stale, heavy odors make me gasp. Here in this Smokey Mountain community, people live like rats. Jane is a dynamic and untiring British woman working to elevate lives and give hope. She is the CEO of the Philippine Christian Foundation, Inc (PCF). The PCF has focused on protecting children and families in communities around dumpsites for over seven years. Its programs include poverty alleviation through education, medical and family enhancement programs, feeding programs, fair trade and livelihood development programs; values formation and spiritual care. Three PCF communities are in Smokey Mountain in Tondo (4,500 families), Navotas (2,500 families) and Baguio.
It was during this walk that a partnership between PCF and ECHOstore was born. Our challenge: to help community livelihood and product development, offer fair trade wages and retail the products. We were especially taken by the beautiful and stylish ring pull bags. PCF-trained workers from the dumpsite community crochet these ring pulls into beautiful clutches, laptop bags and different styles of fashionable conversational pieces. The ring pull or “tab” of aluminum beverage cans are collected by thoughtful customers and are sent by the jars and bags to PCF, in particular, to a dumpsite in Baguio. These bags have been exported to Fair Trade stores in the United Kingdom and all over Europe and though a little more expensive, the price differential gives the women who create these bags a decent wage, helping them out of extreme poverty.
The second woman is visual artist Ann Wizer, another untiring lady who makes “stuff out of disposable stuff.” Now we are discussing design aspects of a whole collection of crocheted plastic bags. Our challenge is how to market the bags. While I have known Ann for years, it needed a cause to bring us together. Ann created the Invisible Institute as an advocacy to give livelihood to urban poor women by training them how to crochet and make lifestyle bags out of plastic shopping bags. Ann started her work in a community in Malibay, Pasay and has since adopted another community at the periphery of Fort Bonifacio Global City. She is untiringly helped by her household staff who doubles up as trainers and as delivery staff as well.
Ann’s creativity results in new forms from knickknacks, old CDs, computer wires, disentangled mish mash of wires and circuitry from mother boards and computer cases or whatever trash she can get her hands on. From “invisible women” who make these items, “invisible waste” is gathered and recreated. And so another partnership was formed with ECHOstore tasked to try to sell all that these women make.
The third woman is Nida Cabrera the indefatigable baranggay captain of Baranggay Luz in Metro Cebu. She set up the Baranggay Luz Homeowners Multi-Purpose Cooperative. Now we are discussing possible design development directions from their existing stocks. Nida has started women empowerment programs amongst its 16,000 residents. She established the cooperative whose members are about a thousand mothers who now have added income from sewing bags made from recycled materials. This baranggay, with the help of Cebu Holdings Inc. is also in charge of picking up more than three tons of garbage from Ayala Center Cebu, sorting them and making compost out of the wastes the mall tenants dispose of every single day. The compost is then sold to customers like Shangri-La Mactan, making yet another livelihood program for the male members of this progressive baranggay. And so another partnership was formed for ECHOstore to bring their products to market.
With the power of these three women, I then assume a second life. I put on my artist’s hat long kept on the side, get down on my knees in a roomful of donated old tarpaulins. All these tarps were courtesy of my friend and supplier of many years, Rupert Sales who owns Rupert Signs & Display Services. He sent over tons and tons of misprinted tarpaulins and banners to ECHOstore and wanted us to find good use for them. And as I unfolded and studied tarp after tarp for design potential before sending off to the communities, something new was born: a new product line called SECOND LIFE. Focused on supporting the environment, these ECHOstore products are made from old, discarded or unused items. The items are recycled, redesigned and recreated into new functional products, and literally given a “second life.” SECOND LIFE (under which product items made by communities of these three women leaders, Jane, Ann and Nida fall under), supports home livelihood to assist in poverty alleviation, women empowerment and dignity of life. Not only old materials are given a second chance for a new life. Second chances, too, are given to many who labor and work to create items to help get them out of poverty.
ECHOstore Sustainable Lifestyle is located at the ground floor of Serendra. Call 901.3485 to order personal or corporate gifts or donate recyclable items. Email Stephanie Panganiban at steph@echostore.ph or call her at 0922 -8234647.
