Growing Change

Edun Live Collection T-Shirt

"People say fashion is frivolous," says Ali Hewson, co-founder (with husband Bono) of fashion label Edun Live "but in its own way, it can change people's lives."

       

Aweko Joska, planting cotton seeds with family members

Founded in 2005 by the power couple after an eye-opening visit to Africa, Edun Live certainly has been changing lives alongside its Conservative Cotton Initiative (CCI), employing local cotton farmers in Uganda to grow the 100% organic cotton required for the label's t-shirts. Within the first year of the project, more than 80,154 kilograms of cotton were produced, and more than 1,097 affiliate farmers given another chance.

        

CCI, a team project given life through the combined efforts of Edun Live, Invisible Children, and the WCS, has a mission "to build sustainable farming communities [in Africa] and provide a fair trade market for their cotton." Based in the Gulu District of Uganda, the area in which CCI primarily functions is recovering from a tumultuous civil war which displaced hundreds of thousands of families. CCI provides the returning farmers with tools, training, and funding necessary to start "a sustainable cotton business".

       

With the funds provided by Edun Live and CCI, Aweko Joska, a member of one of the farming groups, was able to send her daughter, Gloria, 19, to a boarding school for the first time in her life, and was given the opportunity to spend Christmas with her family for the first time in almost twenty years.

images from treehugger.com and elle.com