In an age when "green" has transcended the bounds of color, many people now choose services and products solely based on their eco-friendly implications. Edun LIVE on Campus, a socially conscious T-shirt distribution company, paired this knowledge with social justice issues in order to create a student group rooted in conscious consumerism.
Edun LIVE on Campus (ELOC) shirts are created, manufactured and packaged in sub-Saharan Africa, providing jobs and economic stability to the region.
These sustainable shirts found their way to Tufts when junior Tisch Scholar Sarah Ullman first heard about the organization at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in New Orleans in March during a session on poverty alleviation.
"One of the panelists — aside from President Bacow, actually — was Jackie Roberts, who is the President of Edun LIVE on Campus at their headquarters in Ohio," Ullman said. "She's in charge of expansion to new campuses, and she was speaking on social entrepreneurship — about how students, through their purchasing power, can make a difference."
Ullman was struck by Roberts' words, but before bringing the group to the campus level, the Tufts junior decided to see how ELOC could play a part in her personal life.
"I thought, I'm in the Greek system, I'm involved in a lot of different things, and when I went home this past spring … I realized that I had a zillion different shirts — from events like Spring Fling, Homecoming, NQR, etc. — [which in turn] made me realize [ELOC] is a great opportunity to harness the power of the college market and really put it towards something constructive," she said.
From there, Ullman decided to start a chapter of ELOC at Tufts, hoping to inculcate the group and its cause into life on and off campus.
"The structure of [ELOC at Tufts] is a student-run business that's housed under the Tisch College," Ullman said. "We're not housed under another campus group, but ideally we'd like to partner with other student organizations, and we have been doing that."
In addition to providing all of the orientation shirts for the Class of 2012, Ullman claimed that a wide range of groups have displayed interest in using ELOC's products.
"Currently, we have a couple of exciting partnerships, both with student groups on campus, as well as off campus," she said. "We've also been speaking with a lot of the offices around campus, and they have showed a lot of interest."
On-campus projects, like the orientation T-shirts, have also incorporated the community outside Tufts.
"We partner with a local community organization located in Somerville, called PNM Designs, which is under Centro Presente," she said. "They provide local at-risk youth with jobs, job training and leadership opportunities. They screen-print all of our shirts, so this makes [ELOC at Tufts] not only good for communities elsewhere in the world but also for our local community, too."
Although every step of the manufacturing process is fully accounted for in ELOC at Tufts' designs, the group members do not believe their work is done.
"In terms of goals, we are really looking to get our team established," Ullman said. "Right now we're looking for a vice president of finance, a sales team, and we're especially looking for graphic designers interested in working with us."
In addition to seeking individuals interested in becoming part of the ELOC team, Ullman stressed the desire for interested groups, both on and off campus, to partner with ELOC.
"Our whole goal is to move shirts — we want to move as many shirts as much as we possibly can, and we're looking at doing that in a variety of different ways," she said. "And what's especially cool about our mission being simply to move shirts and cover our cost so that we can continue to operate [is that] we can donate the profit of the shirts to another organization. If a charitable group wanted to have a fundraiser with us, we could give the profits directly to the organization."
In the next couple of years, Ullman hopes to spread awareness about ELOC and bring a whole new element to the idea of functional fashion.
"People say, ‘you are what you eat,' but in another way, ‘you are what you wear,' as well," she said. "How you represent yourself to the world says a lot about what you believe and who you are — that was kind of the motivating power behind my belief that this could make a difference."
