We were thrilled to be chosen to host our new friend Johannes Arthur, a Fellow from Ghana participating in the Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. The Washington Fellowship is the new flagship program of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). President Obama launched YALI in 2010 to support young African leaders as they spur growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, and enhance peace and security across Africa.
Johannes served as the Creative and Projects Coordinator with a non-governmental organization RECNOWA, an innovative social enterprise that trained and employed street youth from disadvantaged communities in Ghana to clear their streets of plastic and other materials, and then collaborated with Ghanaian artisans to up-cycle the waste into handmade furniture, clothing, handbags, and home décor. He has trained over 20 school classrooms and artisan groups in the creative reuse and recycling of materials considered as “waste” (here he is with our Steppingstone Scholars Interns, Ben and Sarena!)
Johannes will be October’s featured artist here at The Resource Exchange, and we will be featuring some of his designs in our in-store gallery throughout the month.
During his stay with us, we introduced him to some of our region’s reuse and recycling organizations, including:
A tour of our strategic partner Revolution Recovery’s recycling facility, so that he could learn more about what it’s like to build a truly amazing recycling company from the ground up…
…and then a visit with the wonderful design team of TerraCycle Inc. (Tiffany Threadgould and Lori Anselm) who regularly come to us for unique salvaged scenery to add to the fantastic upcycled decor at their headquarters is Trenton, NJ (say, there’s that Empire State Building Scenery we saved from Annie at The Walnut Street Theatre!)
We also took him to Waste Management’s Forge Facility for an eye-opening overview of what actually happens to all of the materials we put in our curbside blue bins…
Long term, he hopes to develop the largest reuse/recycling facility in Ghana, including progr
ams for local artists. To see more of his work, stop by for First Friday October 3rd from 5:00-8:00pm, visit us anytime during our store hours throughout October, or visit our reCreate Artist page here.
