Our Story – CDUK

Why

Through volunteering my time to help run the social enterprise Bambooka (selling Bamboo sunglasses and donating the profits to charity) I discovered the ethical fashion space which is aiming to be an alternative to what the bigger brands are doing. With the fashion industry being the second biggest contributor to modern-day slavery (Global Slavery Index 2018) it’s having a devastating effect on the lives of the people making our clothes. It’s also creating a toxic environment with the pollution from the factories leading to debilitating health issues for children and newborn babies in the communities that surround the factories. After learning this I started making changes with my personal fashion choices relying on buying second-hand but when looking to buy new from sustainable and ethical brands I found they were either too expensive or too niche for my taste which is what CDUK aims to solve.

What

While working on CDUK I was walking through College Green in Bristol, a place for sharing ideas, protesting injustices and chilling with friends, a hand-written sign was left on the bench that read “98 people are sleeping on the streets tonight that seems like a solvable problem” and I completely agreed. Every time, but especially around the wintertime, my heart breaks for the people shivering on the streets always wishing I could do something more to support them. Believing business should be about more than just making money CDUK will not just be another ethical brand as we will use our resources to contribute to solving homelessness in our community. We are establishing a programme with the longterm hope to train and employ 98 people from the homeless community to make affordable sustainable clothing.

How to help

We’ve started work on establishing the programme with partners in Bristol which we will announce once it’s been finalised. In the meantime, we have sourced t-shirts from projects we believe align with our project and will be using the money generated to help fund the training programme. It’s hard to say what percentage of each sale will go towards the training programme but it will be as much as needed because the goal of the project is to help with getting 98 people off the street and back on their feet.

With your support, we can move faster so if you believe in what we are doing please purchase our products, share our story and together we can make a real difference to the lives of those who have found themselves homeless.

Let's help the homeless community together