stitching a new future: empowering women through creativity & sustainability
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Welcome to today's episode of the Growing Up podcast, where we dive into the heart of community, sustainability and impairment. In this inspiring conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with Nora Fahey, the dynamic manager of the Roscommon Women's Network. Nora is also the driving force behind Cycle Up Textiles, which I had the honour of visiting

a few weeks ago in Roscommon. It's a remarkable social enterprise that transforms the way we think about waste and women's work. Circle Up Texas is a powerful initiative where women take scrap fabric and discarded garments or materials that would otherwise end up in landfill and repurpose them into beautiful, one-of-a-kind bags and gifts. I have one of the bags myself and I've been wearing it every day since. It's such high quality and you can see the work that went into it. It's the best quality bag that I've ever been given. It

It's like very, it feels high end and luxurious. And I got to visit the workshop where it's made in as well. So I felt more connected to it. But this project does more than just reduce waste. It's also creating a pathway to sustainable employment for the women by providing them a training in upcycling and basic sewing skills. The initiative is supported by the EU Just Transition Funds.

So ensuring that the project keeps moving forward, women receive the training they need and that people stay employed in meaningful, fulfilling work. In this episode, Nora shares her journey, the story behind Cycle Up Textiles and how she and her team are creating both environmental and social change. If you're looking for inspiration on how small actions can lead to big transformations, definitely keep on listening. First, you just want to tell me what Cycle Up is.

Fieke Love Textiles is a circular economy social enterprise based in Athlea, County Roscollan and it is was initiated about five years ago by ten women working in a charity shop and

A charity shop was raised funds for Roscommon Women's Network and I am the manager of Roscommon Women's Network. Can you tell me about the charity shop that was set up? Because I know from the Zoom call I had the backstory, but I thought it was really interesting on how they procured all the equipment needed and what gave them the idea. Well, Roscommon Women's Network is a community development project. We were established in 2007 and 2008. I think we were one of the last community projects that got funding under what was known as Community Development Programme.

But then in 2008, with the economic downturn, we just got the funding for three years for a manager and a staff member. And by December 2008, all the funding was cut. Over the next three-year period, the funded community development programme was cut over 40%, which meant most of us were unsustainable. Fortunately for us,

We were based in Castlereagh. We had a resource centre and a training centre set up at that stage. We had been struggling to survive, but some of the women who had been using our services, when they heard, especially with the 40% cut, that it wasn't really, we probably wouldn't survive.

There was a building across the road from the office, which again, a developer had developed, but couldn't get any tenants for. They approached the developer and said, could we please have it for a pop-up shop? Give us the key. He was very good. He gave him the key. No heat, no light, no electricity, no nothing. They went around the country, was common, basically. They borrowed vans. They got partners, husbands, sisters, brothers to go and collect black bags of clothes that they'd asked...

They put out a call for her around the country and they were absolutely astounded, as we were, the two or three staff at the time, at the response they got. So literally, they asked people to leave black bags of clothes. It was like that cash for clobber you'd often see at the GAA or schools, but we had it countywide. And that was the big thing at the end. We kind of really had underestimated the response, so we literally had to get transport in to bring. And initially, they went through the bags in our back meeting room

And they'd said, this is it, we're going to get, we're going to sell these. And I was thinking, how are we going to do this? And they were going, I have a friend whose shop just closed down. So they've got loads of hangers and they've got loads of, you know, rails and everything in their backyard. And they wanted to get rid of them. And the community were brilliant. I mean, everybody, literally people who just lost their own business and closed their own small shops, came out to help us and gave us the rails, gave us the hangers.

And all these women were women who were struggling, you know, had struggles. That's why they were coming to us, Common Women's Network. So these 10 women, some of them, their kids had come into care. Some of them had, you know, mental health problems. Some of them were in recovery from addiction and mental health. Our relationships had broken down. It just was a very vulnerable time in their life. That's why they were linked in with us in the first place. And this gave them, they really felt that in the three or four years they'd been working with us, Common Women's Network, that they had, they wanted to give something back because it had really supported them.

And so we just, the board of Roscombe Women's Network are also voluntary, it's 10 women on a voluntary board. And the two or three staff, we just said, OK, go for it. And we supported them to do it, but they did the work. So in August 2000, and I think it was 11 or 12, no heat, no light, lovely sunny weather, thank God. They literally filled these rails and they made, I think it was almost 8,000 euro in one month.

And then they came and they said, can we keep it open in Christmas? And then we thought, well, we need heat and light. We can't have people in here. And we had the insurance was going to increase and everything. Anyway, the board of us come and we said, made the decision that, OK, put in place what it needs to be put in, like the heat, the light and all that. And some processes and systems that we'll keep it open in December. And look, it's still there and going strong. And we've had a few challenges, you know, in terms of

rent and all that we've had to move premises and all that but it's great and it's not the same it's still completely run by volunteers it provides us the Roscommon Women's Network with sustainable funding and we were able to stay open as a community development project like a few others in the country but most of them closed but we were no longer dependent on 100% funding for the government we're now maybe 60-40 or maybe 50-50 at this stage so

The women changed. Those women went on. Some of them are still linked in with us, but some, you know, went on and come back for a cup of coffee every now and then. But those 10 women, we never forget them. You know, even when we opened this place here, the leader of those 10 women really, Jane, we brought her back. She walks full time now and does the stores. She came back and she spoke and she was very emotional that she couldn't believe that their idea and what they had started in the shop had kind of evolved into this. But then a few years later,

2018, some of the women, new women who were volunteering in the shop, started asking questions about...

What's happening to all the stuff we don't sell? Because all they saw was a man or woman in a van turning up once a month. And they had learned what sells and what doesn't sell. So all the volunteers, then again, all new bunch of women, all mostly service users too. Because it's great for us to have the charity shop now because not only, it doesn't just raise money, it's a way of women to connect with other women. So when women present to us and maybe are having a difficult time in their life,

One of the things they're missing is social connection because they may have, whenever the problem had been for them or the struggle they had, they can lose connection with people or maybe they've been estranged from family. You know, that happens a lot with issues like addiction and maybe mental health and don't feel they have that support. So we found what the shock was.

is that, you know, one of the first things I would say to some woman when she'd come in and present to us is, would you like to meet the girls in the shop? They're a lovely bunch of women. A lot of them have been through very similar struggles as yourself. Would you like to do an hour or two on a Wednesday morning if you're free? And then I'm going to say yes.

And then I'd start an hour or two and before you know it, in a few weeks or a few months, they're coming in and telling me what the shop needs. And, you know, it really builds their confidence. So it's a, first and foremost, before a fundraiser now, it's a real platform for women to connect with each other and to make friends. And to add in, an awful lot of the women who started with us volunteering, after about a year, we'd support them to go on a community employment scheme or a two scheme. And then a lot of them are now in employment. Some of them are in employment here.

So in 2018, sorry, I went off on a tangent again there. I apologize for that. But in 2018, the volunteers were there again several years. They started asking the question about what's happening to these clothes that don't sell. Now, the interesting fact for me about this was

As I said, so most of these women had so many struggles. We had organised, because part of our role is, to bring out educators from the Roscommon County Council and from other organisations working on the environment. So we would do our best. We would have a lot of volunteers, a lot of trainees. We would contact organisations and say, look, we have 20 or 30 people here and we can get more. Would you come out and do a talk for a day or half a day on the environment or on these, you know, relevant particular issues that just education weighs awareness on. And we've done that.

And it's very difficult sometimes to get people to come, get the people we work with to attend that. Because a lot of them have said to me, look, we've enough struggles in our life. The environment is the very, very bottom. It's not, it hasn't even made my list, you know, because I've enough to be getting on with. And I started, I really understood that then. And that's why it was so amazing for me that all of a sudden, because I worked in a charity shop and saw this man in a van coming, taking all this clobber, as it was called, that they had put into bags.

it became relevant to them, you know? Yeah. Especially, a couple of them had watched, I think the timing was everything, a couple of them had watched, I can't remember what it was, but it was... The True Cost, was that it? That could have been it, there was a documentary. Netflix. Yes, that was it, it must have been that, it was about 2018, and that, then there were, and I think between that and

And coming into the shop and thinking, are these clothes that we're packing in a black bag and we forget about? Are they ending up on the side of some river in India or some third world country and causing a problem there? Are we part of this problem? And that really made it so relevant. But then started coming to me saying, no, we want to find out more about this.

So we're very lucky at the time, Susan Dimsey, who was the Education Officer and was Common Councilor on the Environment, she came out, gave them a talk and she actually said to me, that's the most engaging punch I've been with. She said, they really, really are interested. And she said to me, and I think you're right, I think it's because they feel they're contributing and they don't want to, they want to actually do something about it.

Even though she was trying to say to them, you're not contributing. You're already supporting the community to reuse because it's a second-hand shop. But they still didn't like the fact. So they started saying, well, what can we do to reduce the amount of textiles that we are sending off to this man in the club of N who may be exporting them to these horrible countries? They didn't want to do that. So...

Susan and a couple of other... I got on to a couple of other people. We organised a bus. And the thing is, what once a year we try and do something for the volunteers anyway, something nice like a day out. And we had...

thought about and were in discussions with Minister Dennis Docton. He was the minister at the time, Dennis Docton, he's now a deputy here in Roscommon. He was the minister at the time. We had been on to him about maybe organising a bus to go to the Dold. You know, that's also an educational thing for a lot of these women because they might never have had the opportunity before. So we're already talking about that. So anyway, Susan told us from Roscommon County Council, told us about the Rediscovery Centre. I hadn't heard about it

before. I hate to admit that, but I'm surprised I hadn't, but I hadn't. And she told us what they were doing. And she said, they're the only other ones I know that are doing something like textile upcycling that you women are interested in. So we sent it to the women and they jumped. They forgot about the jobs. That wasn't interesting. They just wanted to go to the Rediscovery Centre. So 26 women and myself went on a bus on the 9th of February, 2018.

And the truth is, they were changed women on the way home. They literally bombarded me. And I remember very well, they were in awe. They saw the paint being upcycled. They saw the bikes being upcycled. But of course, the textiles was most relevant to them. They saw it happening. They saw the lovely clothes they wore. We were very, very lucky on the day too, because Sarah Miller herself was the CEO of the Rediscovery Centre and gave us the tour, which was

A great privilege. So I connected with her. She saw how interested they were. One of the women at the end, another Jane, Jane Hayward, who put up her hand and asked a question and said, if we wanted to do this in Roscommon, how can we do it? And Sarah's answer was, measure the problem. And that was all they needed. So on the way home on the bus,

They asked, how will we do that? And they said, weigh, weigh what's coming in. Make sure you can measure, you know, how much is going to clobber, how much we're selling. And honest to God, on the way home, on the bus, Jane and a few of the other ones kept coming up to the top of the bus with Dundee literally on their phone going, there's an industrial windscope. That's what she said to buy. Can we buy that?

And of course, I'm saying we can't just buy stuff off Dundee. You know, I know even with the funds raised to the shop, we have to go through our purchasing system. And they didn't understand that's all they didn't want to do. They just wanted to buy that. They literally wanted me to go on Dundee, buy them that wainscale and it would arrive the next day or whatever and start weighing. That's how keen they were. And that's the gospel and truth.

I thought, oh my God, what have we done here? Because anyway, that's how it started. 9th of February 2018, they were completely and utterly motivated, riled up after their visit to Rediscover Centre and they wanted to do something. So I started thinking, well, how can we support them? And they were so keen and motivated. And no, most of them didn't know how to sew. One or two of them could sew.

Jane and another girl were interested in the environment anyway. They were starting to get a real interest in it and it was really upsetting them because so there was a mixture of abilities, a mixture of but the one thing they all had in common that kind of really mobilised them and connected them with we want to do something. So there wasn't much funding in 2018 for anything to do with textile upcycling. To be honest anywhere I went looking for funding I couldn't seem to articulate it well enough to people that this was like

an environmental response. This was upcycling, you know, to reduce waste textiles. Every time I tried to explain it, people saw it as...

Oh, she wants to spend your money to teach a few women how to sew. I just couldn't seem to get, and I was getting upset in my second, like, it really wasn't in people's consciousness, in my opinion here then. So I found it very difficult to get funding. And all I wanted was to do a pilot, set up a kind of a training, a bit like they had in the Rediscovery Centre. Now, the Rediscovery Centre were a great help. They just opened their academy at the time.

Time is good. And their academy was to support projects like ourselves, to learn from them, to share their knowledge with us and their learning. But anyway, one night Googling at home, you know, for funding that might support this, I came across Patagonia. Long story short, they gave us about 10,000 euros. Did an application form literally in an hour, sent it off.

I was delighted a month later when they said, great, we like the project, go for it. So that was it. And then because we had that, we went back to the Department of Environment and Communications at the time, spoke to the then minister and knocked on his door two or three times and said, look, go on and get it. This is what we're trying to do. And so they matched the funding with the County Council. So it was only €20,000.

But the best thing was the Rediscovery Centre came on board behind us. St. Angeles College in UIG, they loved it because St. Angeles College in Sligo train home economics teachers and it was just becoming on their curriculum at the time. They evaluated it for us and we got buy-in from really key players and we built our stakeholder base and all of a sudden people started getting interested. The pilot was a huge success and in the back of the pilot

We got funding from the Environment Protection Agency to implement what the pilot had, which was this cycle of textiles. The idea, the gym of the idea was there. The nugget was there. The women had gained more women. COVID happened, but they met in the car park, socially distanced every day, a car park outside our office. You know, there was no cars in it.

I have pictures of them meeting and me standing at the door. And honest to God, I was so busy sometimes. I was saying, would you go away and take it easy? Just rest for a while. You know, this is a lockdown. But they didn't. The timing was right. They really had got the momentum and they didn't want the momentum to go. So we had to really be innovative on how we supported that. So they all took home a sewing machine.

and they continued and they kept making masks and bringing them in to me and I'm going up cycle masks so they were washing all this material good material and they were bringing it in they were

cutting it up they were ironing it at home and they were sending me pictures of it and I'm saying but you know masks haven't been agreed yet we're not saying this is you know the health policy but they had about 300 made by the time the government caught up with them because they kept saying as mothers we want our families to be wearing masks so literally they were under my desk they were bringing them in leaving them at the door and then when it became the government policy that people should wear masks they

they took those, they kept making them and they delivered them to organisations in the community all over our country, West Calman, walking with vulnerable people like, you know, care homes and that type of stuff in schools. And they got lovely thank you notes and they got donations from people, you know, for thanking. And they were ahead of the game and they felt great about that. So they kept saying, it's going to happen or it's going to happen. They're definitely going to get, you know, kids in, so we're going to have to wear masks. So they were right. So that really gave momentum because they got great...

you know the community really got behind them then and thought god these are a great bunch of women and also because they were all upcycled and it wasn't you know you know there was a problem with PPE at the time coming in from China and everywhere else and people were thinking god this is this is really good that captured the imagination of a lot of um

of people. Then we applied for the EPA funding and we had all that. And the women, a lot of them, did not have smartphones or laptops. And we're thinking, if we want to keep this going through COVID and we can meet together, we need to have that collective Zoom experience.

I remember one girl, I really had to convince her daughter's delight because her daughter was in England and she said she would not, her mother refused to buy a smartphone. She thought that everyone was listening to us. She was a little bit, you know, that it was, there was some conspiracy in that. And, but to keep in with the rest of the group, she had to go on WhatsApp and she had to, and she did. And she reluctantly went out and bought it. And I used to have to send the other WhatsApps in the evening about a meeting. And then I have to remember to send Margaret WhatsApps.

I text because she had the old phone and I kept saying, once or twice I forgot. And so I said, you have to get it. And reluctantly she got it and now she's using it all the time. And she then...

We gave them all a laptop. The REACH fund through the GRE2B was brilliant at the time too. That was a COVID fund to support people working with maybe people who are in remote communities or disadvantaged communities to give them access through a laptop. So we got a laptop through that fund and we gave all the women a laptop and we taught them all how to use Zoom. And six of the ten women

We also got funding through the Department of Social Protection. Because one thing we realised in the training, there was no tutors. The only tutor we had had to come in by Zoom from Dublin. We had loads of women who could teach you how to sew. We had some other people who were very interested in the environment and kind of taught themselves how to upcycle. We thought there's nobody qualified to do this apart from a lovely girl above in the Rediscovery Centre. So we got a tutor who could teach them how to sew and how to cut out patterns and all that. And the girl from...

discovery center joined the training because they had these 10 women had to do training eight week training basic course she joined by zoom and taught them and then covid happened so then we had to do the intermediate training for all these 10 women mostly by zoom too so they were all at home on zoom they were on their laptops and on their sewing machines and then they've come then

You know, they came in every Friday and they met, you know, with social distancing and all that. So it was difficult, but they did it and they did it very, very well. And then they were trained. But they then wanted... One of the gaps that was discovered, obviously, was the lack of qualified trainers in this textile upcycling area. So six of the ten women who got funding, they did a Zoom training.

train the trainer QQI level 6. Now that's amazing because none of those six women had anything more than what you would equate to as QQI level 3. So they went from a QQI level 3, which is probably junior church, you know, level, to QQI level 6 to become qualified trainers. And now three of them are employed here delivering textile upcycling training to all the new women that come in. And they were of the 10 women that started out in 2018. Two of them do workshops and

Two of them are employed here. You will have met them in there. They're employed now as product creators. Three of them are tutors. And the other four, three of the other five come in to volunteer. Very bit older. So that's it. Then we got the funding through the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the project. COVID was still on. That was difficult, but we did it.

Then there was coming, because we were able to, through that project, we were able to show that the output was there, the interest was there. We were sure we were going to create employment. And when we had the focus groups with the women who were trying to do

working out what the deliverables would be if we're really going to be serious about this and we're going to make this a proper bona fide sustainable social enterprise we got all the women back that were involved we focused groups with them and it boiled down to two things because we kept saying what do you want this is your project you own this you've made this happen we're supporting you to make it happen so the focus groups the women came up with two things they wanted to create they wanted to do something about textile waste

And through that, they wanted to create flexible employment opportunities for women like themselves in a rural context. That was their words. That's how we distilled it down to their words. And they've made, they've achieved that. They're reducing textile waste and they have created employment for themselves and other women. And it's flexible and it's part-time. And some of them are working from home, some of them work from Castlery on a Friday and the majority of them are here in that league.

And now we just, then we got them, we were very, very lucky. Our ultimate aim was to get the Community Services Programme funding through the Department of Community Development and Rural Development. So we got that last December. We were delighted. That was a tough application.

It had been closed to new applicants for about four years. It was under review because of COVID. So there was a huge, huge amount of applicants. I think it was 197. I think only 14 were successful at the end. And we were one of those 14. So that was a sigh of relief because that gives us a contribution towards wages for a manager.

for Cycle Up Social Enterprise and for four part-time product creators. We haven't filled the manager's post yet, but we have filled three of the product creators' posts. And we're recruiting for the manager and the product creator at the moment. We've also, of course, been, we got some funding through the community or the Circular Economy Innovation Grant

in 2016 sorry 2023 um so we've got bits of funding from everywhere and that has been that funding through the circular economy accumulation grant has been brilliant too that was through the department of environment because it enabled us to employ a business development manager jennifer you've met her here today and then a production team leader because it's okay having the um

you know, having the other funding for the manager and the product creators. But we realised, we've been doing this now literally with no funding, well, bits of funding here and there for the last three years. We realised that key roles here was a business about the manager, somebody to go out and

sell it what we're doing and because what we realize too is customer perception around upcycled textiles you know it's not there yet you know the perception is well why isn't it cheaper because you're not buying material or you know is it okay to use something that was used before there's a lot of education around that so we thought that's very important because they're new markets really you know a lot of people haven't bought into the idea that role we'd realize is very important

but no one seems to be funding that role. A production team leader. So you've got four product creators in there who are employed, three now. And we've also got a community employment scheme, which is for trainee product creators and volunteers. Someone needs to manage that. Someone who knows about quality, someone who knows about products, someone who knows about design. So that CIHS fund enabled us to recruit Alanna, who's our product production team leader, and Jennifer, who's our business development manager.

But we only had them for a year. And, oh God, they've been key, really, to the success of this. We also have Martina, who was with me. You've met Martina. When we applied for the Patagonia funding to do the pilot, we employed Martina part-time to run the pilot. And then Martina was a project manager through the Environmental Protection Agency fund. So Martina has been with us and she's stayed alive with us for the last five years. I mean, literally...

coming up to her contract needed renewing, like literally holding on by her fingernails, hoping that a funding application will be done. She's been funded through Rethink Ireland, the Ireland Funds, Patagonia, Environmental Protection Agency, and now

Her role as a Progression and Skills Coordinator, Jennifer's role as Business Development Manager and Alanna's role as a Production Team Leader have been sustained through the EU Just Transition Fund. And that was a real concern to us. If we could not have sustained those roles for another year, year and a bit,

We were really worried about if the project could develop, you know, and be able, because with the CSP funding, you get a contribution towards salaries. But if you can't make at least a profit of 30 to 40 grand a year,

to contribute, to sustain those roles, the contribution to salaries is no good because you have to make money to be able to, you know, employ the people, keep the people in employment, keep the rent, keep the heat, keep the light, keep everything down. So in order to make that profit and that income, we need the three roles that have now been funded by the EJS Transition Fund. So we were absolutely, it was like the real icing on the cake for us that was because we really can breathe now and go,

we have what we need now. We can really make this work. And how has it developed now since you've gotten that funding from the EU? Well, we've been able to, Alana, our production team leader in the production team, her contract was up at the beginning of September. So we've now renewed her contract up to the 31st of March, 2006. And, yeah,

Jennifer's contract would have been, through the original funding, she was due to be leaving next week. So now, thankfully, she's agreed she's going to stay with us through the transition funding. We'll be able to pay her wages. And Martina, who has been with us from day one and whose knowledge of the women and knowledge of the project is so important to the success of the organisation, the sustainability of it.

She was our training coordinator, now her title under the UDRIS transition fund is Progression and Innovation Skills Leader. And she'll be with us until March and hopefully beyond that, March 2026. And the whole idea is that we will be able to now, with those three jobs, we'll be able to redevelop this, develop the training site, like that department will be Martina's, the business development side is Jennifer's and Alana will make sure

high quality continues and that we'll be able to train more women so that we can produce more volume of goods, maybe a more diverse range of tote bags or gifts, but also that the quality is extremely important. So that's what the You Just Transition Funds means, that we can sustain this project and develop it further and make a profit. And where can people find the products that are produced from CycleUp?

We have an online shop, cycleup.ie, and all our products are on there. We do, again, a lot of our work is, as I said, we have Jennifer now and we have all the staff involved, but a lot of it is still based on volunteers. There's a lot of work to do. So every week we upload new products as the team make them. And it's very...

So cycleup.ie is where people can find us. We also have, as you might have seen here downstairs, a little shop here in Etlí in the Riverside Centre. It's a beautiful centre surrounded by a lovely river, the Suck River. And it's an old building.

that was vacant for quite a while. We're renting it now for a nominal rent off the County Council. They've been very, very supportive of us. We've got, we've applied for every grant possible, the Community Centres grant. We have got so many different grants to make it more energy efficient. We've put in loads of energy efficient lighting and

We've really painted it, we've done it up, so it looks a lot better than it did when we moved in. So that's another great thing about this project. We are, you know, this is an old building. It's a heritage building and we love being here. It's very apt. Yeah, so I suppose it's important to remember that it's a social enterprise too. So we're not a sweatshop churning out, you know,

gifts and sometimes we get phone calls from people saying this is lovely we love the idea of Maiden Must Come and are you know made for upcycling could we have 2000 we're going to send them off to diaspora and it's sometimes it's very difficult to get people like no now we're supporting women who may have been unemployed for a long time we're upskilling them we're supporting them to get back into the community and this is something they love doing because they're creative but we take our time you know and we we meet women where they're at and

And that means the first thing is building the confines. You know, maybe working for a while in the charity shop. Maybe thinking, actually, this is something I could do. Maybe I will do the basic sewing course. We had women from all walks of life. Some of the women who started to get involved in this project and started taking off and wanted to learn and thought it was a great idea were women who'd worked for Wrangler, you know, worked as seamstresses for big organizations and companies.

And we, the interesting fact we learned was, and other women who literally came in, did a bit of volunteering in the shop, noticed this was happening and thought, God, maybe this would be for me. Maybe I cut up skill. And the women who hadn't worked for a long time, as I said, you know, had their own struggles going on. They gradually, you know. So we had a combination of women coming from different walks of life and different skills. And what we found is, if you were training young and thin women, and you've got two women who walk in going, I don't know why I have to do this basic training. I know how to sew all this.

But then they learn very quickly, oh my God, I have to do this basic training because I have to unlearn a lot of what I know. And that was... And one woman particularly really struggled with it. I mean, she's brilliant now and she's here with us. But she used to get so frustrated. She'd go, I just...

wanting to go into the fabric shop in Roscommon and buy two yards of material. She was saying this to me while she was trying to deconstruct a pair of jeans. She said, this is so frustrating when you've been always doing it the other way. So, but the women who had never worked in this area, never really sewn, they just...

took it for, you know, when they were training, going, well, this is what we have to do. So, you know, the unlearning was hard for some of the women. I found that very interesting. And it was very hard for them or frustrating for them. Whereas some of the other women started off, they go, there's a pair of jeans, this is how you deconstruct it. There's a shirt, this is how you construct it. This is how you clean it. This is how you iron it. This is how you fold it. You put it away and there it is. And as you see in that production room now, that's what everything is. They're all the different colours. It's all been deconstructed.

But the great thing is now we're not just, we started out just using products or waste textiles from the charity shop or one charity shop that didn't sell. But as this project has taken off over the last five years, now we have SofaSource, a company based in Roscommon.

who are self-sophists but they give us loads of their sample books you know the sample books you see when you go in to choose your sofa I never thought about that before but where do they go when the fashion changes they go into a skip he told us so now we get them and we're delighted we get so the girls get so excited when these boxes of they're going through them for colour and there's big and they're small the curtain shop in Roscommon um

Carol McGavin she's been with us from day one when she heard about this she thought do you want some of the in the rolls you know she makes so she rang us up and said I hear you're doing this this is June Colbert and she said no we make curtains and people come in and we've got in the rolls and we can't do anything with them and they go into a script do you want them absolutely delighted we took them so we kept having to find space for these businesses who were giving us

end of rolls, end of, you know, curtains that didn't sell or that were out of fashion. She'd give us them, we'd rip them apart and we'd make something else out of them. Or I must say the first thing we do is if Caramel or the curtain shop gave us curtains, the first thing we always do is try and reuse. So we'd put them up in the charity shop and mostly they'd be good quality curtains they would sell. But if it was something that was some kind of out of this world, you know, colour that mightn't, you know, and it wouldn't sell and was there a long time, then we will

we will upcycle it. But we will always try and sell everything first and we'll give it a good shot of that. And of course, the learning is also too that, and I didn't know this, you cannot upcycle a Penny's T-shirt. I hate to say that, but it's just not durable. You can't do it. Why would you go to the bother of upcycling material that's poor, that'll probably tear in a month? That's just, that defies the whole reason. And I had to learn that. So one of the first things the women learn in the first basic training is how to identify fabrics properly.

that are upcyclable, you know, that are sustainable. Because if you get a T-shirt, they can use it for filling or they now are getting, they're shredding stuff like that and maybe using it for other things. They try and reuse everything if it doesn't sell rather than sending it off somewhere. But you can't upcycle anything.

Well, you can, but it isn't durable upcycled fabric that is going to disintegrate in a year's time. It's not worth it. So identifying fabrics that we want to upcycle to have the quality is the first learning. And that's difficult for some people. And what kind of fabrics are durable for upcycling? Well, any fabric that's good quality, really. I don't know because I haven't done the course. I hate to say that.

I haven't done the course. Maybe I should. But all I know is that's one of the things that is taught. And it's good. I suppose a lot of the women would kind of nearly automatically know that, especially the older ones. You know, they've been buying for family all their life. They kind of instinctively now know how to recognize something that

that's going to last, that's good quality. And some of the women wouldn't. They'd be asking, well, why is she throwing that over there? And then they learn from each other too and that's an awful lot of peer learning. It's very intergenerational here. I mean, we have Lauren who actually wanted to be here today to meet you and she follows you. She's 23. She volunteers on a charity shop. She's been with us since she was about 18. And then we have women in their 80s.

And when you see that working together, the intergenerational work is fantastic. It inspires me to watch it because that's what they learn from each other. What they, you know, that kind of even that how you recognize quality, you know. And but they also learn it professionally. But learning, peer learning is extremely important here.

Because people are coming in with different skills. What is one thing that you'd want, say, for all the places that you applied for funding and maybe were rejected? What's something that you'd really want them to know? I'd like them to know and to come out and see because it's very hard. I mean, how do I say this? It's changing people's lives before it's even impacting the environment. And that's what I mean. I'm in awe and I feel privileged to be part of this because

You walk into that production room and I see Maria, for example, she's in there today. She started out volunteering in West Colman Women's Network. Her mother was linked in with West Colman Women's Network. She had been through a tough time and she's very happy to speak about it so she won't mind me, you know, alluding to her story here today. She's now, she's got two sons, she's had her own. She's been part of this project from day one.

and her mother has been. She was a carer for her mother. She was a lone parent with two kids. She's upskilled. She's one of the tutors I spoke about. She went on that QQI Level 6 train-the-trainer. She now works part-time here three days a week as a product creator and she's busy at least two or three nights a week going around the region.

doing workshops or raising awareness on environmental protection and textile upcycling and also delivering eight weeks courses and getting paid to do that. Her life is, she tells the story very well herself, has gone 360 degrees and changed and she stuck with it. And she would have been someone at the beginning who probably would have said,

wouldn't have had very much faith in government policy and process and probably would have been somebody who would have been like, that's never going to happen, you know, that's not going to happen. And who would have been, that would have been her mindset and probably in her families and other people here too. And I can't show that to a funder. They have to come out and talk to these people themselves because I've seen that transformation happen.

from someone who would have said to me, you shouldn't have to go to all this hassle to apply for that funding. They wouldn't have the understanding. And they'd also have a very negative view of probably been in a social welfare trap for years, maybe for generations and had that mindset. They have gone completely 360 degrees. Their kids are going to benefit from that mindset change, in my opinion. It's going to have an generational impact.

to the well-being and I think, you know, of families and the community as a whole. So that's only one example, but there's multiple. You change one life or you support that person to implement their own idea. So you're not enforcing. We didn't come at them and go, hi girls, this would be a good idea. You know, maybe we should do this. I don't think we'd have had the buy-in. I don't think we'd have been able to survive through COVID, through no funding, through literally holding on by our fingernails.

If it wasn't those 10 women that were driving it. I keep referring back to the original 10. Now that's 50, 60 because it's been growing and building momentum all the time. It's the ownership. If you get into disadvantaged communities, I even hate that term, but communities, instead of looking at the disadvantage and the weaknesses and trying to give them a handout, if you could maybe assess it in terms of the strengths

And come from there. That's why I'd say to funders, come from where the strengths are, come from where the interest is. And bottom up, bottom up is always the only way. And I think that's what the Community Development Programme, which was annihilated in the economic downturn, and we and some other projects held on again because of the women we were serving. They really believed in it, so they fundraised for us. And

I think that community development programme was great because it was community projects like us based in the community, really based at the grassroots in disadvantaged communities and we had that local knowledge and bringing together of the people themselves and letting them come up with the ideas and supporting them to come up with the ideas and come up with their strengths and that's missing. I think there's a real void there. I think we need to go back, get back to that. That's what I would say. That's

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