While most of us in the United States were focused on Hurricane Isaac here on the Western Hemisphere, there was a deadly typhoon, Typhoon Haikui, that was pummeling Asia. While Isaac didn’t come close to the devastation many predicted, the opposite is true of what Haikui did to the Philippines. Over 90% of Manila was affected by flooding, with some areas submerged under 10 feet of water. Over 8,000 homes were destroyed with another 6,700 damaged.
We’ve talked about Threadless before–it’s a community-based design company with over 2 milion community members. One of the members from the Philippines reached out to the community and asked that a shirt be created to help recovery efforts in the Philippines.
Threadless released the following shirt design, called Bayanihan, a Filipino word that represents a community coming together as a family to help the greater good:
The design is a green design on a black shirt, designed by Filipino artists Feane and DiMarucot. It features flowers, plants, and animals local to the Philippines. Here’s a description from the artists:
In the design, the Philippine eagle represents dignity, the tamaraw represents strength, the dwarf pygmy goby represents humility, and the sampaguita flower represents goodwill. Below these roll the waves that represent the bodies of water that suffuse and surround our tropical archipelago. Above is a luminous night sky, unobscured by air pollution. The entire design references our national flag– a triangle with a star at each point, and a circle that symbolizes both the life-giving sun and our nation’s status as the Pearl of the Orient.
Threadless will be donation 100% of the net proceeds from sales of the $19.50 shirt to Architecture for Humanity’s Philippines Floods Response Program, with a goal of raising at least $100,000 for a disaster resiliency and reconstruction program as well as providing skills and training to local communities to help them be prepared for future flooding.
