Currently, our dominant fashion system embodies ideologies of white supremacy, colonization, and patriarchy — all of which have mutually reinforced each other and given rise to an exploitive, environmentally detrimental culture of overconsumption. These forces have driven the industry to its current unsustainable pace and level of output, leaving historically marginalized groups, especially in the Global South, to bear the brunt of its ecological, social, and economic consequences. The Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, is the largest second-hand clothing market in West Africa — home to importers, market stalls, retailers, and countless bales of imported second-hand clothing. Kantamanto is a hub of creativity, upcycling, and sustainability, though also subject to exploitation by a corrupt secondhand system that traps people in debt. Given fashion's undeniable intertwinement with geopolitics, a circular transition must center environmental justice if it is to overcome the predominant socio-economic system of corporate colonialism. New systems must equitably benefits designers, retailers, consumers, and the most vulnerable supply chain participants alike. The OR Foundation believes that the path to Justice begins with Reckoning, Recovery, and Reparations.

Since 2009, The OR Foundation has been operating in the US as a 501(C)(3) public charity and in Ghana as a registered charity. The organization supports alternatives to the dominant fashion model, seeking to create change from within through both direct action — to provide immediate relief on human rights and environmental abuses — and educational programming — to inspire awareness and action on the individual level. As part of their ongoing initiative, Our Long Recovery, the OR Foundation is acting to regenerate and decompose material resources in Kantamanto Market that would otherwise become toxic waste. The program also fosters food sovereignty for women working as Kayayei (head carriers of clothing bales). Research has been documented via video and photography to aid in the process of unlearning and stimulate the transition from a linear economy to regenerative one.

Youth-centered educational programs carried out in the USA, Ghana, and South Africa are focused on achieving liberation from the dominant consumer-based relationship with fashion. In collaboration with the University of Cincinnati, the OR Foundation has helped to form the Sustainable Fashion Initiative, a coalition of students and professionals working to center sustainability and social inequity education in the UC's fashion design program, while actively reducing textile waste. SFI also hosts clothing swaps, mending circles, panels, and workshops in their efforts to promote circular culture. The OR Foundation's other educational endeavors have focused on helping younger age groups redefine their relationships with their own clothing and study their closets and wearer habits. From 2011 to 2016 the foundation developed and ran a year-long interdisciplinary curriculum, called These Things Take Time, for K-12 students to explore colonization and globalization through the lens of the fashion industry. The curriculum provided instruction on how to “read objects” in order to more broadly “read the world” – a mission inspired by Paulo Freire’s decolonizing pedagogy.

Other programs have encouraged students to collaborate with Ghanaian seamstresses and tailors in recycling their used garments into other purposeful items, such as backpacks, that are then priced based on students' own valorization matrixes and sold to benefit various organizations of their choice. To engage with the realities of local thrift stores and the donation system, students have also been tasked with transforming unwearable donated garments into new clothing items. Through this process, they simultaneously learn to sew, dye, and construct clothing with intention, while also thoughtfully considering the dominant narrative surrounding clothing poverty. Co-founder, Liz Ricketts, has participated in Slow Factory's Open Education program, among many others, to make the OR Foundation's research and findings more publicly accessible.

Additionally, the OR Foundation fosters sustainable, marketing-free designer-to-consumer relationships through its Collectofus 2.0 initiative, a peer-based object-exchange curriculum by which emerging designers can receive micro-grants to make bespoke garments for strangers. The project encourages garment co-construction as a means of relationship building, education, and financial literacy. The original Collectofus program (2011-2016) engaged students in the tangible experience of making and receiving clothing items from their peers abroad, allowing for them to compare this method of connection to the dominant model of trade. The program has also produced student-led design justice projects to create dye gardens, redesign school apparel, and build solar charging stations.

The foundation drives systems-level policy frameworks and investments through their research and institutional advocacy efforts. In their multimedia research project, Dead White Man's Clothes, an in depth analysis of Accra, Ghana's Kantamanto secondhand clothing market reveals the environmental, social, and economic impacts of secondhand clothing on Ghanaian society, as well as the market's circular ingenuity and creativity. The project has culminated in a platform to support community organizing.

The OR Foundation's efforts coalesce to disrupt common notions of globalized trade, drawing upon the receptiveness and adaptability of young people globally as they learn to regard fashion as being worthy of intellectual inquiry, while also growing their own fashion identities.

The OR Foundation's Sustainable Fashion Initiative has resulted in a 70% reduction in waste produced by the University of Cincinnati's fashion design program and actively helps local businesses to reduce their own waste. The Collectofus program has engaged over 20 partner institutions and 1,500+ students, while their These Things Take Time interdisciplinary curriculum for K-12 students has been incorporated into over 20 educational institutions across the USA, Ghana, and South Africa. The foundation's research has also been utilized to inform both individual actions and policy frameworks.

Featured image of the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana is from Eco-Age

Photo Credit: Nana Kwadwo Agyei Addo, Accra Studios