Change the World with One Assist!

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This is Tokyo, one of the world's hubs for fashion-conscious youth and brand consumers. A place where local Japanese athletes and non-athletes alike are always on the hunt for what's next in sportswear designs, styles, colors, patterns, etc. That, in combination with a complete lack of available options for donating or recycling their re-usable/out-of-season clothing means large quantities of sportswear are unnecessarily going to waste on a regular basis. And with no end in sight, until now! We, at Hope 81, are all athletes and sports enthusiasts ourselves, so we couldn't imagine letting this endless cycle of wastefulness go on any longer.

Finally, in the spring of 2008, we started up our own Hope 81 Sportswear Donation campaign to make better use of Tokyo's sportswear fashion overflow and stop wasting our Earth’s diminishing resources. By rallying Tokyo's local community of youth athletes, professional athletes, sporting goods stores, artists, designers, private sponsors and other supporters, we found there were plenty of people ready and willing to take action. With that willingness, in our first year of the campaign we received hundreds of sportswear items for donation to Papua New Guinea schoolchildren.