Why youth4ecofashion?

I am Ayush Sankaran, an enthusiastic 9th grader who has always been concerned about the environment and wanting to make a change to the world by doing my bit to help achieve the UNSDGs. One of the topics I am very passionate about is how fast fashion is leaving its impact on the world. One the one hand, I saw my mother and grand mother always speaking about clothes as being durables and how we should buy minimally, on the other, I saw my peers in schools and communities buy clothes and accessories as and when they like.

I wanted to dig deep into this topic and an opportunity presented itself when a global forum for teens called "Buddies without borders" announced discussions on the topic "Fast fashion to eco fashion". I applied and was one of 4 participants from India to get selected to participate in the forum.

The forum was a great opportunity to dig deeper into the topic of fast fashion and learn how we as teens can make a change by bringing behaviour changes to youngsters in our schools and community. I got to mingle with a like minded teens across the globe and get perspectives from across different countries which was an eye-opener for me. I was part of a three member team who had to research the topic, present our ideas in the form of a presentation and executive summary document to global leaders in the field. Our hard work paid off, and our team won the Best paper from judges and the people choice award and I won the top 5 award and was nominated for the pioneer award as well. You can read our outcome report here.

Next, I wanted to translate my learnings into action and hence I used the thrift club in my school to share my learnings with my peers. We have done activities through the year like donation drives, upcycling clothes, educate students on circular fashion, garment lifecycle etc, and are looking at many more in the coming year as well.

I wanted to share my learnings from the forum and thrift club activities with the world, so I started this website named youth4ecofashion, where you can find all the details you need to start your own thrift club in your school or community with like-minded friends. I plan to continue adding more activities, educational quizzes/games to the site which would be an apt way to engage youth to understand the nuances of fast-fashion. I have also started the process of forming a community of like-minded students doing similar work in Norway, New Zealand, Japan, US etc through my connects from teen global forum. I plan to do a lot more in this topic to raise awareness, and am excited to click off my blog series as well.

I strongly believe that as a community we can achieve much more than as an individual!