Fairtrade Fortnight, day 3: Where are we?
You may know that our team of tailors, our our social enterprise activities and educational facilities are situated in Malawi, Africa but we’d like to give you a little more insight about the areas where we operate.
We’re located in a township called Chilomoni in the south east of Africa. It has a beautiful lush landscape surrounded by mountains and is around 200KM from the southern tip of Lake Malawi. It has a sub-tropical climate, which is relatively dry and strongly seasonal. The warm-wet season stretches from November to April, during which 95% of the annual precipitation takes place.
Formerly a British colony, Malawi has never been at war or even suffered huge environmental catastrophes but still over 80% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 1 in ten children die before they reach their fifth birthday.
Cycle of Good was established to support a great need for jobs in Malawi to provide the opportunity for self sufficiency as opposed to cash donations, which are not shared fairly. There is no state support in Malawi and if you don’t work, you don’t eat.
Over the last 10 years, our focus has been to enable Malawians to become self supporting and sustainable for the future. As their economy and politics are so fragile, we utilise our healthy economy here in the UK to provide a route to raising funds to continue our directly managed work in the region of Chilomoni.
Facilities are built to last with the help of UK architects and engineers, including schools, a children’s centre, social enterprises under the name of Beehive, including book, bike shops, tailoring and IT training and manufacturing facilities.
Just look at us now!
The Beehive Campus, Chilomoni
Meanwhile, 12,000KM away in Stoke on Trent, we house our tailored stock, despatch Cycle of Good orders, load containers full of equipment for Malawi and so much more! Not to mention that we are home to the Elephant Bike, former Royal Mail postal bikes, upcycled into beautifully finished and styled Elephant Bikes. For everyone you buy, we send one to Malawi.
We’re on the situated on the site of a former Victorian pottery works which long since became redundant until we moved into the premises 4 years ago and recycled it into a creative and productive hub again!
Frames ready for powder coating at our Stoke site
We hope you enjoyed our mini-tour of Cycle of Good, look forward to posting our next installment!
Cycle of Good team.
