Recycling as a tool for creating sustainable fashion and promoting the economic empowerment of women in the Euro-Mediterranean region

As part of a regional project between three Euro-Mediterranean countries that includes Egypt, Italy and Slovenia, a group of female breadwinners in Egypt benefited from a training program to increase their capacity to recycle local resources for use in the fashion industry and thus implement economic interventions that can improve the economic situation of these families.

The “Recycle in Fashion – RinF” project had completed the “Recycling Skills for Sustainable Fashion” training program in Egypt. The training program enhanced the capacity of 15 female heads of household in Cairo to design, implement and produce sustainable fashion using affordable local resources.

Based on its belief that economic development is one of the most important methods for empowering marginalized groups in society, especially considering the deteriorating economic conditions resulting from the outbreak of Covid-19 disease

Gozoor designed a capacity building program to facilitate the target groups’ access to the remaining fabrics and other materials that can be recycled and used in the manufacture of sustainable fashion, with the aim of providing innovative opportunities for the economic empowerment for women in these families.

The training program included 10 training sessions and produced a collection of 13 pieces using recycled materials, where the training program was implemented by the famous Egyptian traditional costume designer Reem Shaheen, who designed and implemented the training program through which a set of traditional and modern costumes were produced, to be presented during a Euro-Mediterranean fashion show in Palermo, Italy, in July 2021.

The training program is one of the “Recycle in Fashion-RinF” project’s key activities that is being implemented between October 2020 and July 2021 in partnership with ComeUnaMarea ONLUS (Italy) and the Centre for Design Research (Slovenia), with the generous support of the Euro-Mediterranean Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures.