Made By DWC

Photo: Katie Bain

 "I’m not just selling clothes here. I’m impacting my community, empowering women,
 and building women’s confidence on a daily basis.” - Breonna Bell, Lead Store Associate & Trainer

Earlier this month, Katie Bain of Racked.com came by MADE by DWC Resale Boutique and interviewed staff and participants. In this piece, MADE by DWC staff, Andy Motz, Breonna Bell, and DWC participant Brenda show how donating clothing is more than economically beneficial: it can be life-changing. Read the full article here.

Last week, MADE by DWC (MADE), the Downtown Women’s Center’s (DWC) social enterprise program, teamed up with The Little Market to participate in a commercial shoot for the CNN Airport Network!

The commercial will focus on retail trends in fair trade shopping and highlight several fair trade products across Los Angeles. Penney, Monique, and Dana, all MADE program participants, will be among the featured artists, hard at work on MADE’s hand-poured soaps.

The feature will showcase the soap MADE produces for The Little Market, one of MADE’s primary wholesale partners since 2014. The retailer sells the all-natural soaps in a variety of scents, and has been working with MADE staff to develop a new scent, to be released later this year. 

A CNN reporter and cameraman, plus two Little Market representatives visited us at MADE to get the inside scoop on how our soaps are created and visually capture each step of the soap making process. Penney showed us how to melt down and mix the ingredients and shared her secrets for pouring liquid soap into soap molds without creating bubbles.

Later, Dana and Monique provided a flawless demonstration of how to wrap the finished product in The Little Market’s packaging.

“I have great attention to detail,” Dana explained. “That helps me package the soaps in a way that looks nice.”

Penney, Monique, and Dana also shared how they became involved with MADE. As women with lived homelessness experience, each has her unique reasons for participating in the social enterprise workforce development program, and all are working toward different goals. Penney enjoys honing her artistic skills and hopes to sell her own products one day, while Dana is working toward an accounting degree and wants to work as a tax preparer.

For Monique, it’s about helping other women who may be going through something similar to what she went through.

“MADE by DWC is an experience I will treasure as long as I am here on this earth,” she shared recently. “I can make something to change someone’s life, as well as mine.”

We were thrilled to have this opportunity to showcase the work these incredible women do every day. The commercial will air later this spring on airport TVs around the country and will be featured on both CNN.com and YouTube.  Be sure to check our website and Facebook pages @DWCWeb and @MADEbyDWChandMADE for updates!

To check out MADE by DWC soaps and browse other handmade products, visit our online store here. 

Original post via www.downtownwomenscenter.org