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Fashion Re-, the plan of Caritas for another life with clothes

Fashion Re-, the plan of Caritas for another life with clothes

Hundreds of sacks with between 275 and 300 kilos of clothes each are stacked on one side of the warehouse of the company Re-initiar located in Tomelloso; in the background, some more sacks wait in a corner to be weighed and marked before Have a forklift lift them to the right place. The garments collected by Cáritas Diocesana throughout the province since the end of last March are waiting in this building located on the Argamasilla de Alba road for shipment to the factories where the material will be reviewed and classified. A part will go to cover the needs of the people served by Cáritas, other garments will be put on sale in Fashion re- stores and others will be discarded for immediate use, but will be recycled to obtain new products.

The coordinator of the Employment program at Cáritas Diocesana, Maria del Carmen Ruiz, explains in a conversation with La Tribuna, that the Re-initiar Alternativa Solidaria project is an insertion company promoted by Cáritas.

"We are dedicated to textile reuse and recycling," says Ruiz, who details that throughout the province there are "114 clothing collection containers, in 23 locations," in addition to another ten collection points in different Cáritas. In Ciudad Real capital, 74 of these containers have been installed. The garments arrive from all the parishes and from the parish and inter-parish Cáritas throughout the province.

Moda Re-, the Cáritas plan for another life with clothes - Photo: Rueda Villaverde The collected material is bagged and sent from this warehouse to some of the plants that are part of this project, located in Barcelona, ​​Bilbao and Valencia, although The pandemic has meant that until now this part of the work has not been possible. The project includes in its conception the opening of stores that make use of the Moda re brand, although it is expected that it will be opened in Ciudad Real shortly.

Through this signature it is possible to "offer people in a situation of social exclusion a process to return to work within an insertion company and then an opportunity to join the labor market." These people are subject to "technical support, training", so that they acquire the skills and competencies necessary for the work they are going to perform.

Also involved in this process are the drivers who collect the clothes and are also the ones who unload them and put them in the sacks. The production technician, Virginia Arribas, is the one who organizes the routes "that go through all the towns". In the same way, the process to create stores in which these clothes will be distributed will also generate social employment. "It was scheduled for the end of the year, but due to COVID we have not been able to open the store," says Ruiz.

For her part, Arribas acknowledges that the ship is currently close to the maximum of its storage capacity, due to the time that material has not been sent to the treatment plants. In that sense, she hopes that in a short time the plants will receive material again.

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