The Fashion School Community Interest Company is opening the doors to create sewing workrooms in our studio space for refugees (currently Afghan and subsequently Ukrainian) and we desperately need your help!
We urgently need the following to get the workrooms running and cover basic running costs, admin and supervision. You were all so amazing offering as volunteers and sending donations when I set up the PPE sewing workshops during the shortage crisis in the first lockdown. Thanks to you we created approx 35,000 for the ICU wards in The Royal Brompton Hospital and over 70,000 in total.
WE NEED!
Leftover Fabrics (if you're a company, I can collect in the van)
Balls of Wool, Knitting needles, crochet hooks
Sewing equipment such as scissors, rulers, pins, hand sewing needles and tailor's chalk
Volunteers
Volunteers who can speak Pashto, Dari or Hindi
Donations of any size (payable to The Fashion School Community Interest Company. Account 99941840. Sort Code 60-83-71. Reference: Refugee Sewing Appeal)
Paypal Donation link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=DJSW8UAZJKETL
Over the past month, I've been in meetings with refugee women, Afghan Refugees Support and volunteers listening to the needs of displaced women who come from cultures with strong sewing and garment making heritage. They are desperate to continue this tradition and to continue passing skills and techniques onto their children to keep their rich and sustainable custom alive.
Sadly, living in a hotel room makes this impossible and that's where we know we can help - but with your help.
Our first workroom session starts this Thursday and Friday and continues every week. We have 12 - 15 women and more will come after Ramadan is over. As long as there are refugees and asylum seekers, we are here for them.
It's so interesting to watch the women expertly cut into fabrics without patterns, mostly using the span of their hands to create shapes is artistry in itself and I'm certainly learning so much from them. Skirts, dresses, trousers, baby and children's clothes are run-up in no time! What a privilege it is for us to exchange methods and techniques with these amazing people.
The long term view is to train the women to sew as machinists so they can be employed within the fashion industry and for their children to continue to make their clothes.
Please contact me on 07749090847 if you would like to volunteer or have any fabric and haberdashery donations. The drop off point is currently at The Fashion School, Ground Floor, 6 Burnsall St, SW3 3ST - but phone first as we may not be open.
Kids clothing created in a refugee sewing workroom
