Introducing... CAT!

CAT is an abbreviation for Craft and Teach. The title speaks it all, it is basically what we do: Creating Crafts and Teaching. This group was created for CEI project. CEI is an annual conference that stands for Caretakers of Environment International. At the beginning, we were planning to create a group to provide education for children living in slums but we realized that our school had that kind of project already. We decided to create something “new”, something that our school haven’t got. After an hour of discussions (in skype) CAT was born. CAT is the combination of both ideas, teaching and create bags that made out of plastic, which is eco-friendly. The Aim for our project is to reduce the waste, specifically plastics (dangerous type of plastic HDPE). And teach the society in the slum area to recycle, since they live in slums area. The society will know on how to process the trash and we, reduce the amount of waste, even though it’s very little, it’s still making an impact to the environment. 

Mission: to reduce plastic waste in out community by recycling it into bags, cases and other goods. Funds will be used to help illiterate children in the slums area to learn reading, writing, health, basic life skills and to learn to categorized garbage.

Vision We envision the day when we do not see plastic waste that can be recycled floating around in our community. Where children are given opportunities to enrich their skills.

This project focuses on the issues of Education and Environment. Both issues are important in Indonesia. It is connected to UN Millenium Development Goals number: 2. Achieve Universal Primary Education and number 7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability.  

We asked the help from Ms. Sam, to made an appointment with the tailor. Since Ms. Sam did a similar job like us, - creating and selling recycled plastic bags - last last year. She’s our teacher supervisor. This tailor used to worked for Ms. Sam to create the bags, so he’s an expert in it. We went to the tailor twice. It turns out that it is more difficult than we thought, but not impossible. The firs thing to do before creating and sewing the bag is to collect the plastics, we’ve done it. We collected around 50 Caprisonne plastics from the students and the school cafetaria. Next, is to wash, dry and cut the plastics. We didn’t cut the plastics into different pattern, we decide to start on something simple first, which is the original shape of the packaging. Finally, after cleaning and cutting the plastics we’re ready to sew the plastics. People from the group brought sewing machines voluntarily. We tried to sew the Caprisonne plastics, the result was extremely untidy, very very messy. But, it’s trial and error, it’s part of the process. The process to create the a bag is quite complicated, it took around one and a half hours to sew neatly one medium sized bag, for the tailor. It definitely took us much more time to create a bag.   

This project is divided into two groups. 

The Social group: This group will work mostly on teaching and approaching the society and teaching them. We haven’t approach the society, we will soon. As soon as we find the right society to approach on. Our first plan was approaching the society near the slum area, the children life in life full of poverty there, they don’t go to school. Approaching the society near the slum could be beneficial for us and them. We’re planning to teach the society there to categorized the garbage. This society s located nearby the school, approximately five minutes from our school, near the traditional marker. 

AND, 

The Environment (Crafts) group: The craft’s group jobs is to create a bag out of plastics, not just any plastic. We recycled the most dangerous plastic that’s called High density polyethylene (HDPE), it took 1000 of years for those kind of plastics to decompose. That kind of plastic is used to place shampoos, detergents, liquid soap etc. Our project is similar to the XS’s project, which also create a bag from plastics. None of us are experts in creating and sewing the bag. So firstly we asked an expert to teach us how to create the bag. (The tailor, who worked for Ms. Sam) And we tried it ourselves.  

This project haven’t been associated or collaborating with any other projects or organizations, yet. That is our future plan. But it is for sure that we’re going to collaborate with the society to create the bags (and other goods). Later on we are going to sell the bags, and some of the money goes to the social group, it will be used to buy materials and resources for the children who lived in slums area. For the future, we will also teach and involve the children to create “recycled bags from plastic” with us. We will also put special bins to around the school for the plastics. We have a lot of future plans but we started off small. 

CAT is a new project. It has been running for only two months, we’ve been facing some challenges. Such as getting together and and conducting a meeting. We had difficulties to divide the responsibilities in the group, we had difficulties on creating the bag, not much of us is skillfull in sewing. But eventually, with our diligency, we created our first caprisone recycled bag. This project will be ongoing, as soon as we divide the responsibilities and the foundation of the project is strong. We’re planning to expand our project wider. Currently we have 7 members from grade 9. Nathalie, Alia, Chika, Cynthia, Veny, Elena, Christy and myself. But we’re glad to accept any new members, especially if you’re passionate in sewing or designing!

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