Atelier Merci expands PPE production to aid hospitals

June 17, 2020 - Romania

Atelier Merci, a Romania-based social business, has announced that it is producing 4000 protective suits for hospitals in partnership with tailors and tailoring workshops in Bucharest. Local production of protective equipment and prevention through adequate protective equipment are two important lessons that Romanian society has learned from the Covid-19.
 
Inspired by these two recent lessons, in the next six months the Romanian Merci Charity Boutique association is carrying out the project “Building the local production capacity of medical equipment: protective medical suits for medical staff, produced in Romania”. The aim of the project is to build local capacity for the production of protective suits by a cluster of tailors and tailoring workshops based in Bucharest to support the prevention of Covid-19 in hospitals with Covid-19 patients. The suits produced through this project will be offered free of charge to hospitals, at a later stage of the project.
 
“In 2016, we opened a social business under the umbrella of the NGO Merci Charity Boutique, a tailoring workshop we named Atelier Merci where we produce clothing for women and children, from natural and organic fabrics and donate 100 per cent of the profit to the mobile healthcare project for children,” association's representatives said in a press release. 
 
We understand and know the medical sector and we have experience in clothing production. That is why, at the outbreak of the Covid-19 medical crisis, we decided that we must adapt our social mission to support the medical crisis. Thus, through our social workshop and together with collaborators, we will support Romanian hospitals with Covid-19 cases and oncology departments, in preventing the contamination of medical staff by wearing protective overalls".
 
In the six months of the project, the team aims to produce up to 4,000 protective suits with the support of 8-10 tailors and tailoring workshops based in Bucharest.