2012 Charity of the Year: ABAN

By Kristen Stone

Eco-fashion and women’s empowerment are the core mission elements of Redress Raleigh’s 2012 charity:  ABAN (A Ban Against Neglect). ABAN produces fashionable up-cycled tote bags, cosmetic bags, wallets, and other products using the discarded plastic bags that litter the streets of Ghana’s capital city, Accra. 

Accra residents drink their water from small plastic “sachet” bags that easily can be purchased along any street in Ghana for one penny.  People tear open the bags, drink the water, and then drop the bags onto the street.  Accra is a city of three million people, but there are no trash cans.  Each person drinks four to five bags of water a day.  The resulting plastic trash has been an environmental disaster.  Sixty tons of plastic trash are dumped on the streets of Accra every day. Over 30,000 homeless children sleep on those streets every night.  Approximately half of those children are young adolescent mothers and their babies.

ABAN is a two-year apprenticeship program that gives young mothers the opportunity to get out of poverty. Twenty girls live and work on a compound in the outskirts of Accra. Here they sew sanitized water sachets into beautiful up-cycled products during the morning and attend English, math, business and life skills education in the evenings. The girls learn how to manage the money they make from the products they produce. After two years they graduate with new skills, a small amount of capital to start a business, and a brighter future for themselves and their children. The girls dreams range from becoming hairdressers or returning to school to becoming a wedding decorator or opening a juice shop.  ABAN is a unique program that helps get young mothers off the streets while simultaneously taking care of the waste problems in the capital city.

Like the organization itself, ABAN also has a unique beginning. Co-founders Callie Brauel and Rebecca Brandt met in Accra when they were studying abroad. Both Callie and Rebecca volunteered between classes with an organization that taught homeless children school lessons during the day. It was during their time volunteering that they saw two major problems afflicting Accra, poverty and waste.  With help from local student Emmanuel Quarmyne, Callie and Rebecca set out to fight these issues.

“Harriet was the first girl that we ever worked with.  She slept on the street and worked on the street but would try and come to the day refuge that Callie and I volunteered at, a few days a week.  She was tough, understandably very jaded but...incredibly determined to become a seamstress,” said Brandt. “ If all this helped one girl, it would be totally worth it.”

ABAN recently came out with a new product line, featuring products enhanced by gorgeous batik fabrics made by the apprentices.  ABAN also is introducing its new line of Ghanaian bead bracelets, which feature traditional beads as well as colorful paper beads made by the ABAN apprentices.

The success ABAN has seen has only just begun. The first group of girls will graduate this July and according to Brandt, “move on to stable, productive lifestyles where their children attend school rather than sell on the street. We will see more girls and their babies off the street, equipped to care for themselves.” Brandt is confident that in the near future ABAN will expand to other regions of Ghana and even other countries. Keep watching ABAN, the organization has its sights set high and has no intention of looking back.                  

ABAN’s products have just hit stores in the Triangle area and will be, of course, available at Redress Raleigh on April 20-21.