I am very happy and proud to meet our winners of the Merck Foundation More Than a Mother Fashion Awards 2020 and welcome them to our newly established ‘Fashion with Purpose’ community. I am impressed with their designs that deliver strong and influential messages to empower infertile women and say ‘No to Infertility Stigma’, via sensitizing our communities.
The young African designers of these awards and previous awards have contributed to our cause by developing extraordinary creative designs that deliver strong and influential messages to empower infertile women and say ‘No to Infertility Stigma’.
As a part of the awards, Merck Foundation has provided the winners with one year of access to an online educational training program called “MasterClass” which is an immersive online experience and self-paced learning course that can be accessed anywhere with the Internet and offers online courses in many areas such as the art of designing, fashion, photography, lifestyle, discovering your inner voice and many other areas of Media, Film making and storytelling, etc.
My vision is to develop a community of young African Fashion Designers to catalyze a movement, that reaches and extends far beyond just fashion, and creates a culture shift and be the voice of the voiceless in their communities
I would like to encourage other designers to raise awareness and sensitize communities about sensitive social and cultural issues such as; girls’ education, Gender-Based Violence, and infertility stigma by participating in Merck Foundation Fashion Awards “More Than a Mother” 2021 and Merck Foundation “Make Your Own Mask” Fashion Awards 2021 awards launched for the year 2021.
Looking forward to receiving many more entries from the African Fashion Designer community.
Kind regards,
Senator Dr. Rash Kelej
CEO of Merck Foundation
President of Merck Foundation More Than a Mother
The Awards announced are:
1. Merck Foundation Fashion Awards “More Than a Mother” 2021: All African Fashion Students and Designers are invited to create and share designs to deliver strong and influential messages to raise awareness about Infertility Prevention, Breaking Infertility stigma, and/or Empowering Girls and Women through Education.
Submission deadline: 30th October 2021. Click here to view more details.
2. Merck Foundation “Make Your Own Mask” Fashion Awards 2021: All African Fashion Designers and Students are invited to create and share designs of masks and other clothing items that carry messages to encourage people to wear masks to show they care and at the same time make it creative and fun!
Submission deadline: 30th October 2021. Click here to view more details.
List of Award Winners of Merck Foundation More Than A Mother FASHION Awards 2020:
Winners from Ghana in partnership with H.E. REBECCA AKUFO-ADDO, The First Lady of Ghana and Ambassador of Merck Foundation More Than a Mother.
GHANA
- Leticia Ashie Owusu
- Gifty Amonu Essel
- Kizito Ronald Jr
- Placid Leke
- Anuja Bharti
- Paul Akrofie
- Desmond Nhyira Amankonah
Winners from Namibia in partnership with H.E. MONICA GEINGOS, The First Lady of Namibia and Ambassador of Merck Foundation More Than a Mother.
NAMIBIA
- Linrico Humphries
- Stephany-Lee Schmidt (Libi)
- Aina Shigwedha
- Hope Gowera
- Joel Musasa
- Eugenia Benard
- Paulton Luciano Witbooi
Winners from Zambia in partnership with H.E. ESTHER LUNGU, The First Former Lady of Zambia and Ambassador of Merck Foundation More Than a Mother.
ZAMBIA
- Nelly Banda
- Ruth Chimbala
- Cecilia Njobvu
- Linda Ngwira
- Naomi Soko
- Gibstar Makangila
- Kasonde Makangila
