Spring Break
Clothing for a cause
Margaret Canty
Issue date: 6/27/07 Section: News
Refugees now depend on international donors to survive, providing them with food aid. However, according to Human Rights Watch, targeted attacks and deterioration in security has made aid distribution nearly impossible, resulting in mass starvation.
Ending the violence is a fight on more than one front, and Knaff and Robichaux decided to take action in January.
"I had known about the genocide in Darfur for a while, but always thought that one person couldn't really do anything, but then Rachel said, 'Why can't we?'" said Knaff, a pre physical therapy and sports medicine major. "We decided that even if we just gave knowledge to 20 or more people, they would spread that around, and that'd be enough."
So the t-shirt making began. Originally planning on designing the logo themselves, Robichaux and Knaff wanted to include a bird, to represent freedom and deliberation from oppression, and a tree as a symbol of Africa.
But what they got was even better, the two said.
Noah Cremisino, a graphic artist and owner of Lab Seven, a screen print shop in Denver, offered help after hearing about the group from a mutual friend. Cremisino says he felt inspired to help when he visited Darfur in 2003.
"When I visited Sudan, it was very unstable, and people were afraid to settle because they could be uprooted at anytime," Cremisino said. "No one was planting crops, the livestock were emaciated, and no one was really able to work. It is definitely a humanitarian issue."
Seeing the children try to attend school, held in a bombed building with no windows, old books and dirt floors for seating, Cremisino says he felt a call to help the people there struggling for survival.
What he wanted to came up with was a logo that combined Robichaux and Knaff's original ideas with a unique, edgy design that would appeal to students, capture the "distressed feel" of the nation and perhaps spark interest in their purpose.
And that's exactly what the shirts did. Before they had even received their first shipment of the sweatshop-free apparel, they had already sold out.
Ending the violence is a fight on more than one front, and Knaff and Robichaux decided to take action in January.
"I had known about the genocide in Darfur for a while, but always thought that one person couldn't really do anything, but then Rachel said, 'Why can't we?'" said Knaff, a pre physical therapy and sports medicine major. "We decided that even if we just gave knowledge to 20 or more people, they would spread that around, and that'd be enough."
So the t-shirt making began. Originally planning on designing the logo themselves, Robichaux and Knaff wanted to include a bird, to represent freedom and deliberation from oppression, and a tree as a symbol of Africa.
But what they got was even better, the two said.
Noah Cremisino, a graphic artist and owner of Lab Seven, a screen print shop in Denver, offered help after hearing about the group from a mutual friend. Cremisino says he felt inspired to help when he visited Darfur in 2003.
"When I visited Sudan, it was very unstable, and people were afraid to settle because they could be uprooted at anytime," Cremisino said. "No one was planting crops, the livestock were emaciated, and no one was really able to work. It is definitely a humanitarian issue."
Seeing the children try to attend school, held in a bombed building with no windows, old books and dirt floors for seating, Cremisino says he felt a call to help the people there struggling for survival.
What he wanted to came up with was a logo that combined Robichaux and Knaff's original ideas with a unique, edgy design that would appeal to students, capture the "distressed feel" of the nation and perhaps spark interest in their purpose.
And that's exactly what the shirts did. Before they had even received their first shipment of the sweatshop-free apparel, they had already sold out.
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