An East Belfast not-for-profit has launched a clothing line with the aim of generating funds to invest in the community.
The Phoenix Education Centre has created 'Resurge', a clothing line with a social message around empowerment, as a way of getting investment in their projects.
"We're a non-profit and the big thing for me was being sustainable, in terms of not being reliant on government grants and funding and that was one of the principles I wanted to adhere to when we set out," said CEO and founder Emma Shaw.
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"We had batted a few ideas around, we do have a supporter option on our website where people can send money each month if they want to.
"But I wanted to do something that was more physical in a sense and talking about mental health, empowerment, opportunities for women, I'm always very conscious I have a responsibility as a member of the community here.
"I studied in America for a few years and they had social enterprises doing similar things, so that triggered the idea and we started to think about what that would look like for us."
Emma said the next aspect was deciding what to put on the clothing line, with 10 options launched so far since Monday.
"We weren't sure if people would want to wear our logo, especially if they didn't know who we were, so we came up with 40 designs that are very much centred around getting the message out there with slogans," she added.
"The first 10 we have are very much about empowerment and female empowerment.
"It was just putting it into a design to go on a t-shirt and sweater, then researching and looking at the costs, we don't get grants for that and taking a business loan would sort of defeat the purpose.
"So we've kind of just muddled on ourselves and we print on an on-demand basis, I and the one other employee we have have learned the skills to develop a website etc to get it up and running."
The goal is to ensure that the organisation is self-sustaining and that all profits go into helping the local community.
"We only launched on Monday so there are orders coming in but we don't have a big social media presence, so we're trying to get the word out," Emma said.
"The profits raised from the clothes go back into the education and training services.
"We provide a youth hub where young people post-primary can come from 3-5pm, get one-to-one help in terms of CV writing, interview skills and we also go out into the community and deliver training around drugs awareness, community and personal development courses and active citizenship courses.
"Basically, whatever the community identifies as a need, we want to work towards that.
"We talk about profit with a purpose and we have that social message behind the clothing - the profit isn't going into some shareholder's pocket somewhere, it's being invested back into the community.
"Down the line, we'd love to be able to offer scholarships for young people going off to university or Further Education colleges - we only opened our doors last September, so we're taking baby steps right now but down the line, that's something we'd love to be able to do."
You can check out the Resurge clothing line here.
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