In Honor of the Resilience and Strength our Partner Centers, We are Thrilled to Introduce “113” Made for Freedom Tee Shirts!
Imagine...
...that you are a young woman living in Port au Prince dealing with extreme poverty. You have been doing all you can to provide for your two children. Everyone in your slum community is struggling and feels The Reality of Economic Inequality. The best you can do is dig through local trash bins, hoping to find something of value to sell. You do not have the training you need to get the better jobs, and the lower level jobs receive hundreds of applicants per position. Your children are hungry. They need food. You want them to have a better life. Several of your friends in similar situations have dropped their children off at a local orphanage. They assure you that if you turn your children over, they will have a better life.
Then...
a manufacturing facility is built near you. The mission of that facility is to provide dignified employment for single mothers--like you! You are hired, spend a couple months learning how to sew apparel, mainly tee shirts, and you get paid a really good wage. You are now able to not only feed your children, but you are also able to afford the school fees so that they can get a good education.
Imagine...
you are a young man. Your mother works 3 jobs to provide for you and your siblings. She continues to tell you that your primary job is to do well in high school so that you can go to college. You can handle the classes but sometimes it is difficult to fend off your friends who are anti-school. You live in a rough neighborhood where "thug culture" is predominate. Many kids who grew up with you have dropped out of school. Some are in gangs, some are dealing drugs, some have become pimps. Everyone is finding some way to fit in and make some money, whether legal or not. You want to get a job to help out at home and begin saving money for college, assuming someday you really can go. You do not have a car, and no jobs are anywhere near your home. You want to do more, but the odds seem stacked against you.
Then...
a family center in your neighborhood opens a small screen printing business, and they will only hire high school students who are consistently attending school and who have maintained good grades. The leaders at the center provide training on integrity and leadership. In addition to learning new skills and being challenged in the way you look at life, you get paid to work alongside some really cool people.
You can stop imagining now, because these stories are true.
Single mothers in Haiti really have found dignified work sewing high quality tee-shirts, giving themselves and their children a more hopeful future.Young/at-risk men in North City St. Louis really are building character and learning a trade screen-printing on those same tee-shirts.
And you really can support both of these enterprises each time you purchase our new Made for Freedom tee shirts!
These 100% cotton, women’s cut tees are made in Port au Prince, Haiti at a center that intentionally employs singles mothers with the hope of building strong families and communities. We then have the screen printing done in North City St. Louis by high school students from that area.
Made for Freedom has been helping provide dignified employment at centers around the world for the past couple years. We are excited about this new partnership in Haiti and overjoyed to bring part of our supply chain to St. Louis.
This new line of shirts is called our 113 Shirts is named for
1 Shirt + 1 Screen Print = Style, Dignity & Freedom
Style for you
Dignity in employment for at-risk, inner city youth
Freedom from poverty for single mothers in Haiti
Our first design for this line is Love, Freedom, 314 which is near and dear to our St. Louis hearts!
Be sure to check out the Volleyball and Yogo versions!
No matter which style, the impact will be Dignity and Freedom!
Leave a comment