Introducing Three Enterprises Rising To The Challenge Of Creating Their Legacy With Reebok

Introducing Three Enterprises Rising To The Challenge Of Creating Their Legacy With Reebok
We asked our audience to nominate people who they believe are striving to create a legacy with a creative venture or business idea. Three amazing projects made the shortlist, which means they will have the chance to pitch their ideas to GUAP and Reebok. Meet our three finalists, one of whom will win a grant to realise their ideas as well as mentorship.

Rebecca & Rachita: Sisterhood

Meet the dynamic duo behind the design-led social enterprise actively pushing gender equality and creative education for the next generation. Rebecca & Rachita run school programs working with girls aged 13-17 on creative social action projects that tackle real life issues such as body image, online safety and street harassment.

Photography: Shenell Kennedy

Aiming to improve the visibility of young girls who might usually go unnoticed as well as equip them with creative skills, with the funding from Reebok and GUAP Sisterhood hope to co-create and publish a book created by the young girls they work with, enabling them to write their own legacy by telling their own stories.

Rebecca and Rachita told GUAP ‘Sisterhood is where all self-identifying girls can design their place in the world’. Through Sisterhood School, which delivers creative social action programmes for young girls age 13-17 to build confidence and self-esteem, Rebecca and Rachita say ‘we have seen girls create everything from campaigns, documentaries and digital products’.

Sisterhood School offers 12-15 week programmes, in schools and after school clubs, where participants identify issues that impact them from body image, street harassment, online safety to gender inequality and create a solution to launch in the real world.

Their programmes are 100% girl-led and provide hands-on, practical tools and creative skills to drive girls to be the creators, leaders and change-makers in their own lives and communities.

Iman: Clean Sheets

Iman believes that anything you do should consider the effect it will have on everyone involved in the process for the better. The great thing about new fashion start-ups is the ability to engage in ethical practices and be thoroughly sustainable from the word go.

With the straightforward brand name Clean Sheets, Iman’s idea is a people first and eco-friendly sourced womenswear line hoping to make it cool to be seen in the same outfit over and over again. As well as putting transparency at the heart of clean sheets, so you’re able to make informed decisions.

Set Design: Maureen Kargbo | Assistant: Hannah Bamgbala

Iman tells GUAP ‘Clean Sheets will have clean receipts’ as they will never show a piece from the brand without showing how it has been made ‘I potentially want to have a tag in each piece with a QR code that takes you to details of the ethics and sustainability of the piece’.

Using various catchy phrases to encapsulate her brand such as ‘Clean Sheets is for clean freaks’ Iman says ‘Sustainable fashion can feel very over-serious and tedious to people who are new to the movement, so Clean Sheets will make it fun and easy, bringing all the ideas to a non-judgemental platform’. Iman plans to expand the platform by working with writers and creatives to discuss how to live better lives ‘sharing music, art and expressing ourselves in dressing better and living better’.

Iman aims to learn from the current ethical initiatives Reebok is involved in working with which along with funding will help her to launch her brand.

Lizzy: KTA

KTA is a female-owned Skate Streetwear Company created by Lizzy to forge a voice for POC and LGBTQI+ communities through skating which Lizzy says is conventionally tailored to white communities.

Styling: Tope Adesina | Assistant: Paida

Lizzy hopes to cater skating to POC and LGBTQI+ communities with the funding from Reebok by highlighting skaters through clothes and a range of multi-media that will create opportunities for creatives as well as tapping into a culture, Lizzy believes Reebok are yet to explore.