The Women Who Built A Sustainable Fashion Brand After Quitting Dangerous Head Carrying - Kuoro Earth

Meet Latifa, Rahama, Zuwera, and Fatimah, co-founders of http://www.instagram.com/KuoroEarth The name Kuoro means “Queen” in Sisala, a language from Northern Ghana, and honors where the co-founders come from and who they are. Before launching their brand, the four co-founders worked as head porters, known as ‘Kayayei’ in Kantamanto, Ghana’s largest secondhand clothing market. Through The Or Foundation’s Mabilgu program, the co-founders trained with Nabi Yankey, Kennie Maccarthy, Berendje Willemina, Joseph Zotoo, and Urban Fibers and more to learn all sorts of techniques for repurposing textile waste into viable products like mops or mats made by crocheting t-shirt yarn. Today, they reimagine, re-engineer and remanufacture clothing that others throw away by turning them into useful and beautiful household staples like tote bags, pillows and roller mats. Each product is handmade using fabric that would have ended up in a landfill, fighting waste while creating jobs and preserving traditional skills all at once. “Every day, we carried heavy loads through the crowded aisles, helping customers move their goods. But what stood out most to us wasn’t just the weight of what we carried; it was the sheer amount of clothing coming through, some of it ending up as waste in our backyard where we stay. We joined Mabilgu, a program by the Or Foundation to help ‘Kayayei’ transition to better career opportunities. It was this program that showed us we could dream too. Through this program