BornAgain! Funding our projects from within ... will it work?

Our eco label ... "BornAgain!" ... of old tyres (Line1)

You may all know by now that I have spent the past 5 to 6 months trying to raise funds for a Biogas plant for a little village in the Upper West Region, called Tuori. If you don't know about it yet (*giving you a strange look*), then click here and have a gander: Energy for Tuori (and all the others)!

Well, being a busy person who does many other things, and the NGO being a self-funded one, you can imagine how difficult it's been  keeping the momentum going in the face of the general suspicions and financial hardships of most Ghanaians ... N O T  G O O D. 
Haha. Okay, so now I can laugh about it. 
But only because I spent the last 2 months of the past 6 months of the fundraiser building up a careful structure for internal funding for the NGO's projects, so we don't have to keep worrying y'all with our beggar's aluminium cup ... yeah, the noisy one. And no, I don't sing and roll my eyes when  go begging.


Aaaannnnd, after weeks of thinking and careful planning, I came up with "Born Again!", an entity within the NGO which recycles and re-uses old and 'wasted' stuff, and makes them trendy-useful and affordable for people.
We then market it like every other usual service/product, sell it at competitive prices, and put ALL the profits after expenditure into the NGO's projects!
To start with, I looked at the huge numbers of tyres all over the city (and the country), and how difficult it is to find uses for them after car-owners discard them ... and I came up against two 'walls'.


I had decided previously to have them stripped and shredded, the strips to use in addition to wood and metal, or by itself ... for furniture. But soon after gathering a number of tyres, and purchasing some from vulcanisers (if you want it, they sell it ... cus they figure if you have a use for it, thing got value! Sigh ... I love my peoples), my shredder expert told me that there are 2 types of tyres: the wire-mesh (more common) and the nylon thread. The nylon thread is what CAN be stripped, NOT the wire-mesh.


Oh Lord. So I went back into town to get the nylon thread types. Then whilst he went to work shredding em up for my wood/metal combinations and the eco-friendly footwear line,  sat down with my sketch pad to design things that can use the wire-mesh tyres whole .... WHOLE, I say.


I came up eventually with 2 trendy designs : one for a seating facility, and one for a funky, eye-catching table design (which has a lot of oomph!).
So over the next 12 weeks, we will launch our first 3 eco-products for raising funds for our projects (very very crucial projects): an eco-seat made out of whole wire-mesh tyre .... an eco-table with wood-glass-rope combination also made out of whole wre-mesh tyre ... and 2 or 3 footwear designs made out of nylon-thread tyre with fabric-rope combination.


We hope (and intend) it to sell well to you, my supportive peoples on here, and your social circles and business associates ... as well as the general public not just in Ghana, but internationally. We hope to make good sales not only because our clients will want to support a good cause, but also because these eco-friendly products REALLY DO make your mouth drool, and make you feel real proud to own them. 
We guarantee you, they WILL BE quality, all through and through.


To show you how, follow this link to see some of our first few pictures of the TYRED.UP! an eco-seat under the BornAgain! label. Click The TyreSeater - BornAgain!
Give me all the feedback you want to ... but more practically, give me all the orders you can make! Haha! 


.... oh, and a Merry Christmas in advance. Make the rest of 2011 count. ;)


Golda.


P.S: the link also opens up other albums for you on trips and work done so far, so feel free to browse through all the albums and pictures.
And if you want to keep updates or follow discussions, join us on Facebook by just clicking here. :)