Our Ethos is to:
• Value people; our team and our customers, and treat them fairly.
• Value resources; we reduce waste, recycle wherever possible and care for our environment by being
frugal in the way we work.
• Be creative; yet practical in our innovations.
The History of Cycle of Good
Cycle of Good is a trading initiative raising funds for our parent charity
Krizevac Project (1115608) you can read all about
Krizevac Project here
In brief…
Cycle of Good is our initiative to join a wonderful hub of social enterprises created by our charity over the past fifteen years. The enterprises in Chilomoni Township, Malawi, employ over 500 people who have trained and worked to create businesses that fund a vital children’s centre. The centre provides early years care and family support to around 2000 vulnerable children at any one time. It’s a quiet revolution of skills building and economic growth in a country with no welfare state: if you don’t earn, you don’t eat.
What’s even better is that many of the enterprises are part of a circular economy; reusing unwanted or waste products from the UK and turning them into profit. We’ve shipped thousands of books, bikes, computers and sewing machines, which are refurbished, used for training or sold to create a surplus that funds international standard childcare and the building of new schools.
Back in 2010 we were gifted nearly 20,000 bicycles from Royal Mail. We chose to refurbish a limited edition of 5000 bikes in our UK warehouse; they are sold as Elephant Bikes, and each one sold pays for another bike to be sent to Malawi. This project has now come to an end but we still send donated bikes being gifted by Halfords and so far we’ve shipped well over 40,000 rescued bicycles to Malawi.
In 2018 the enterprise started making gifts from recycled materials, designed in The Potteries and made in Malawi by our COG tailors, this enterprise came to an end in 2024.
Over the years, the most popular enterprise by far has been the tailoring school. Over 4000 local women (and the occasional man!) have completed a diploma training course and graduated with a donated sewing machine at the end.
Doing our bit to save the planet
Cycle of Good builds on all of this amazing work to make something even more wonderful. Our latest adventure is to offer 'Charity Cards' which allows you to purchase a bike, sewing machine, meals for a child etc... in the Township of Chilomoni.
✔ Our Malawian buildings are made from soil
eco-blocks and are all powered by the sun
✔ We work with the Chilomoni forestry
service to plant trees on our local mountain
✔ All the off-cuts from our COG enterprise, that included bicycle inner-tubes, lorry curtain and coffee sack were made into soft furniture for use by local schools
✔ We ship by sea in shared container space
✔ We recycle all our waste materials in the UK
COG Tailors 2021
Our Campus
TEAM UK
We’re based in a former pottery warehouse in Stoke on Trent which we rescued from dilapidation in 2017; it’s here that we collect all the donated resources needed for Malawi. It’s also where we transform 1000s of former postal delivery bikes into Elephant Bikes and got creative with Cycle of Good product design. You’ll mostly find us in scruffy jeans loading a 40’ shipping container before its life-transforming trip to Africa.
In keeping with our passion to save the planet, everything is pretty basic; we all put on jumpers before we’ll put the heating on and you’ll often find one of the volunteers fixing up an old tool instead of rushing out to buy a new one. We are helped by many volunteers who generously give their time in return for a plastic-free cup of tea in a donated old mug, very occasionally there’s some homemade cake to go with it too!