Check out our discounted holiday sale items! Instead of one Black Friday sale, we’re sharing all of our “last chance” sale items. Each of these sale towels, napkins, stockings and purses has been made by refugee women in Charlotte, North Carolina as part of our vocational training program. Any purchase – even these sale items …
What I love is handing a refugee woman her first paycheck from Persona Grata Goods. The surprise of receiving a check and then the pleased smile as a seamstress realizes that she can earn money! Because we work out of a class environment, many women sign up for class just to learn and then are …
We get this question all the time: “Where does the money go if I buy your [insert product name here]? This is a great question, and we appreciate that our customers are thoughtful enough to care about what exactly their money is being used for. So here’s an answer Paying the Seamstress We pay upfront. …
Recently we’ve received several large shipments of organic cotton fabrics. If you’ve followed our brand for awhile, you know sustainability is part of what we’re all about. We use reclaimed and remnant upholstery fabrics for our bags and design around what is on hand. That’s why our double-zippered Ramble Mini Carpet Bags are smallish. We …
By combining the social enterprise philosophy with the non-profit school environment, we decided to take a fresh look at our sewing training program for refugee women in Charlotte.
Production class has been in full swing this fall! Fatima, Mahvash and Fairbe are all still sewing with us, and we’ve been focused on expanding and refining job skills. This includes learning sewing related vocabulary, fabric pattern names (like polka dot and stripe), and reviewing colors. We’ve also had two new seamstresses join our Tuesday …
Why sewing classes? Why are we spending so much time and energy to create a new vocational sewing program? The answer is much bigger then just learning some sewing skills and earning a sewing machine. COMMUNITY MATTERS Ecclesiastes 4:1 “Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears …
We’ve been a bit quiet over the last month or two because of some big changes taking place. On June 1st, our director officially became the director of Make Welcome Refugee Sewing School (makewelcome.org) in east Charlotte. We’ve been using that studio space, and the sewing school is a part of the larger Project 658 …
Mothers are so important! In fact, that’s a big reason for our sewing program – to support and encourage refugee moms who have given up more then most of us can imagine in order to keep their children safe. Sewing and conversation provides a place of community, support and income earning so that these sweet …
Matching, matching, matching. What goes together? What doesn’t? With at least a thousand squares of upholstery samples, the design studio can look pretty crazy sometimes as we work to take disparate colors, textures and fabric styles and create a cohesive whole. But that’s a bit what the future of sustainable sewn goods production & design …
