Thank you for your interest in TENGERUES – Authentic African Wrap Pants

Please take the time to watch our video explaining the purpose of our organization.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m98Gyz6rSY


We are honoured that you have chosen to support our Cooperative and experience ‘Fashion With Conscience’. TENGERUES are made in Tanzania, East Africa, in a village surrounding Arusha, where an estimated 10% of the tested population is HIV positive.



At the TENGERUES Cooperative, we strive to meet two goals:

1. To provide sustainable and fair income to uneducated women.

2. To fund the tailoring program where female AIDS orphans have access to education and training skills? Women hired as the seamstresses in our cooperative are graduates of an NGO called WAMATA. They were unable to complete education due to the strains of caring for family members affected by HIV/AIDS. During their time at WAMATA, they learned how to sew and basic English literacy skills.


The TENGERUES organization provides these women an opportunity use their skills to earn fair income for their families. We at the TENGERUES Cooperative believe in doing our part to help reach the Millennium Development Goals- particularly Goal #2 - Universal Primary Education, - that by the year 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.


A portion from the proceeds from this sale will help fund the tailoring school that will service adolescence whose parents are affected with HIV/AIDS.

Product Samples: The beautiful fabric used to make TENGERUES is called Kitenge and produced and manufactured in Tanzania. Kitenge is 100% cotton, and fade resistant. There are hundreds of colours and designs to choose from..


Care:
TENGERUES should be washed separately in cold water and dried at a low temperature. Ironing is recommended.


Committment to Our Planet:

To help reduce our carbon footprint, the TENGERUES Cooperative has chosen to use only recyclable materials for marketing, packaging and promotion. Please help us on our mission to keep our Earth clean and healthy for future generations.

TENGERUES- The Cooperative

Fashion With Conscience

A model wearing TENGERUES

The idea to bring life to TENGERUES- African Wrap Pants, has not been forgotten. Over the past year I have been working hard to make contacts, learn the basics of sewing, small business creation, marketing and freight forwarding. All in all, this year has been a definite learning curve.
I have decided that Tengerues Wrap Pants will take on the form of a cooperative out of the Tengeru Market. I hope to work closely with Alex and Silvano to hire a team of graduates from WAMATA (all teenaged AIDS orphans), to produce the pants. This process will begin once we have a bulk order. Part of the funds generated from the sale of the pants will go towards a community project we will establish to support primary education within the village. It should be noted that 10% of the citizens of the village of Tengeru have tested positive for HIV.
Pease e-mail me directly annie.bondy@sympatico.ca with ideas, suggestions or interest.


The idea for Tengeru Wrap Pants came from a pair of Asian wrap pants we bought in Tanzania in the summer of '06. The tailors there were able to replicate them using authentic Tanzanian fabric called Kitenge. They are wonderfully flattering to all figures, shapes and sizes. They are comfortable and can either be dressed up, or worn casually. The picture below shows Silvano, the head tailor of TENGERUES, hard at work in the Tengeru Market. You may read more about him in the blog entries below. I have also included a picture of how the fabrics (kitenges) are sold in the market.

Samples from the 'TENGERUES ' wrap pants collection~