Unity Forward! Building the Community Momentum for Transformation

Dear supporter, subscriber, friend, ally, community member or enquiring mind,

Greetings from Accra!

This year started as a disaster with a fire in Kantamanto Market that left two people dead, thousands of people distraught and the majority of the place that we love destroyed. We have been busy building stronger physical and social infrastructure to fight against future fires and we have seen the Kantamanto community grow more united than ever before. 

We’ve detailed the who, what, where, when, why and how of this effort in our report “Unity Forward!” which is accessible through our website here. 

Over 1600 people and organizations answered our call for financial support after the market fire, for which we are tremendously grateful. While we did not meet our fundraising goal, we were able to pull from our other programming to offer critical support at an unparalleled scale.

In total we have moved roughly USD 3 million into Kantamanto Market as part of our fire relief effort over the last 12 months alongside countless hours from our team of more than 100 people across full-time and part time roles. We’ve worked alongside market members throughout the relief process to offer everything from our office spaces and laptops to advanced urban design and media production. 

Through these efforts and your support, we sent direct financial transfers of GHS 2500 to 9237 individuals (including five known duplicates), provided healthcare support for hundreds of people, purchased the lumber to rebuild Kantamanto Market, installed up-to-code, safer electrical wiring across 6913 market stalls, helped registered three market associations alongside three cooperatives, organized the first-ever market-wide security and first response service, and completed the first ever market-wide census of more than 26,000 people working to make Kantamanto Market the global hub of textile reuse and remanufacturing that it is.

There remains a long way yet to go to ensure the systems we have built with community members, market leaders and government agencies are integrated and maintained across both policy frameworks and daily market operations.

Outside of the fire relief efforts, we have grown our beach cleanup capacity and installed some of Accra’s first community operated waste catchment barriers and ecosystem bio-restorers in the waterway behind Kantamanto and June Four Markets that feeds directly into the Korle Lagoon. We’ve deployed our own truck for the Kanta Keepers Waste Collection program that is now operating as a cooperative and beginning to sort material discarded as waste for revalorization and additional processing with the support of the near-infrared scanners we have setup in our (seemingly ever-expanding) Material Transformation and Technology Lab (MTTL). 

The team at MTTL even built the PA system for the flagship Obroni Wawu October (OWO) event out of recycled textile waste using our Cassaboard methodology. It sounded as sweet as it looked!

We have been making noise around the world from OWO in Accra’s Rawlings Park to a delegation in London’s Houses of Parliament, where we led a group of market members from Kantamanto to share their realities with policy makers and exporters from the single largest source of secondhand clothing entering Ghana. 

Despite starting the year with a major setback, we’ve also seen major breakthroughs, and we are grateful that you’ve been a part of that in some way. Help us keep it going by donating here to our general operations, and if you’re in Accra or on social media, don’t be a stranger! Follow along on IG @theorispresent to see about our series of in-person events, from beach cleanups to clothing swaps, and to learn to Speak Volumes in order to help shift a global industry! 

Go Forth!
-Liz, Branson & The Or Foundation team