Innovation

Daravi’s innovation embodies principal purpose: "Make to Give".

By manufacturing design products, Daravi gives job opportunities to and empowers women from the communities in their local instead of automating the production processes and ensuring a higher profitability in their supply chain.

The company focuses on products capable of being manufactured in scale, that can be made from a combination of different discarded materials and that can be made by hand with inexperienced labour force. By doing so, they provide working opportunities to inexpert seamstresses.

To maximize their impact, Daravi designed a production model that is scalable and replicable in other locations. The model uses discarded materials they obtain from the area and provides work to the local community. Through this, they generate added value in the supply chain process, where the products per se include the triple impact.

Even though Daravi opened its first plant in the Southern Tigre district in 2017, its mission is to expand the model to new or existing factories in other locations.

Inspiration

Lorena and Rocío, the founders of Daravi, are working to design projects with social, environmental and economic impact.

Mobilized by the work they had been doing they travelled to India’s heart in 2016. On that journey they visited the Asia's biggest slum, Dharavi, were garbage was converted into new objects and many times used as currency and trade. In this place, located in the center of Mumbai, they saw many entrepreneurial enterprises where local people recycled plastics that had been thrown away, and resold it.

This led them to imagine a initiative in Argentina, and that is how Daravi was born. A triple impact plant, sustainably producing goods in in a way that can be replicated in other parts of Argentina and the world. They thought of another model, a bigger one, for which they chose the slogan slogan "Make to Give".

Nowadays in Daravi, they sell their production to PAPA, a locally designer Studio and other clients, including B2B.

Overall impact

Lorena and Rocío, owners of Daravi, decided to locate their plant in Southern Tigre, an area of low-lying houses, fallows, workshops and storehouses, which had its period of splendor linked to the Delta industries, and is currently almost forgotten and underutilized.

Tigre is a city of social contrast. On one hand, it experienced a huge real estate bloom with the construction of big urban developments like Nordelta, but it is listed in the lowest positions regarding sewers and potable water coverage in the Buenos Aires suburbs. It also has a large number of slum areas like Villa el Garrote and Nueva Esperanza, where most of the women working in Daravi live. The greatest challenge in both public and private sector, is to bring closer social and economic complexity presented by these two realities.

Villa el Garrote, emerged 50 years ago and it currently accommodates almost 4,000 inhabitants. At Villa Garrote the living conditions are very precarious.

Daravi, and other projects located in the area, contribute to improve the living conditions of the community. It started operating in February 2017.

Business benefit

Daravi inaugurated its plant is February 2017.

Daravi is starting to transform the whole community's economy. Their objective is to solve social and environmental issues with a self-financing enterprise. They distinguish themselves from the companies that operate under the current economic paradigm wherein companies maximize profits at the expense of workers and the environment. Daravi's philosophy is a triple impact project that prioritises sustainable development, measuring its performance not only by economic standards but also by social and environmental results.

Lorena and Rocío's objective is to insert themselves at the pyramid’s base, since they permit vulnerable women to get decent employment. For this year (fist year of operations) the goal is to generate 80,000 products. For every 10,000 products on per month, the company sustains work for 10 women and 2 coordinators.

At the same time, they promote empowerment, self-employment and capabilities development in the impacted communities. Daravi also seeks to ensure that their seamstresses are able to establish themselves with their own entrepreneurial micro-enterprises, taking advantage of the knowledge they glean from their time at the company.

Futhermore, the Daravi factory generates economic development in the local community not only through employment, but also because the factory location permits the reactivation of a degraded sector at the Southern Tigre district.

Daravi´s customers choose to purchase original design products, that at the same time, generate a positive impact and facilitate community regeneration. Their customers are local sustainable designers such as PAPA´s and other B2B corporate customers that seek sustainable products and provide their discarded materials to be revalued. An example of this is a gastronomic chain with 5 restaurants that hands over their table cloths and napkins, with which Daravi makes decoration objects for the gastronomic chain venues.

Social and environmental benefit

Daravi is defined as a triple factory model. From the environmental point of view, the company uses raw material it uses waste discarded from other industries, seeking from the creation of its products the maximum possible optimization in the use of non-recycled inputs and minimizing negative externalities.

The social and environmental commitments of Daravi involve all members of the company, who are invited to actively solve those environmental and social problems in the community.

Raw materials they use include the waste discarded from textile industries: mainly buttons of any size and color, and cuts from the mass production of textile garments. This allows them to sustain the manufacture of a particular product over time, a fundamental aspect of their business strategy. The discards are selected and then pre-treated, before entering the production line. Monthly, they recycle 150 kg of buttons and make 3000 textile products that are approximately 30% comprised of waste material.

As for the productive energy matrix, they generate low carbon emissions due to their focus on manual labor.

From the social point of view, they work with the communities in the area with a focus on women, empowering, training and giving them possibilities to have decent and flexible job opportunities. They have a model of inclusive economic growth, directly impacting the sustainable development of the community through the generation of work.

Interview

Rocío Gonzalez and Lorena Nuñez, Co-founders of Daravi