Berlin
Berlin
YOOW - Fashion & Design
YOOW - Fashion & Design
The creations made from African fabrics by our dressmaker Helga Mond were popular for years. YOOW Mode & Design (also for children) is an independent label!
Sewing took place four days per week in the "Schneiderei des Werkhauses Anti-Rost". Helga Mond taught young women the craft and designed with Kambura Tekasala, a designer from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fabrics came from Sierra Leone and were kindly donated by a furniture store in Berlin.
Sewing machines, bicycles and wheelchairs for Sierra Leone
Sewing machines, bicycles and wheelchairs for Sierra Leone
Gerhard (Teddy) Dewitz was the head of our workshop "From old to new". When his employer filed for bankruptcy and he lost his job, he got involved with YOOW. Federal President Horst Köhler took the refurbished YOOW sewing machines to Sierra Leone on his first trip to Africa.
All over Berlin, sewing machines, bicycles, wheelchairs and walkers were collected, dismantled, the individual parts cleaned, damaged parts replaced and then reassembled.
A container was packed and sent to our partner project MADAM in Sierra Leone. Some machines also went to Ethiopia.
Help for Start-Ups
Help for Start-Ups
Philipp Schaube and Felix Wehinger got to know each other after their high school graduation in Belfast as community service workers for the organization "Tools for Solidarity". They brought the idea of collecting old (and good!) tools, processing them and giving them to people in need with them from Ireland.
Graduates in Sierra Leone were given the opportunity to gain a foothold in their industry with a YOOW toolkit. Young people in Germany were made aware of the unfair distribution of resources in other parts of the world.
Four Years of Refugee Aid in Berlin
Four Years of Refugee Aid in Berlin
When the Ebola epidemic in 2015 had broken the bridges to Sierra, we designed PC courses in Berlin for unaccompanied young people who came to us as refugees. YOOW taught the young people basic PC skills in accommodation facilities in Spandau, Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg and Mariendorf. They learned how to use an office program to prepare applications for an apartment or vocational training. For children there was a playful introduction to programming with Scratch.