Designer, You Sheng at work.
In the current pandemic period, Malaysia Official Designers Association (MODA) has been spearheading the raising of funds and fabricating the PPE items that are desperately needed for our front-liners at government hospitals and clinics nationwide who are handling the Covid -19 response and relief duties.
This initiative is partnered with FashionValet and IMARET who have been instrumental in the online fundraising platform set-up and the distribution of the PPE items to the high-risk KKM facilities since this initiative started on April 1, 2020.
Over 40 fashion designers, fashion brands and private companies have volunteered to be involved in the production of the PPE gowns, head and shoe covers. And the numbers keep growing as more designers, companies, and volunteers are still joining this task force to help out. They currently have about 200+ seamstresses and tailors volunteering to sew and are on stand-by for the cut-fabric to be disseminated to them.
Due to the high demand, cutting the material in bulk for sewing requires special cutting equipment, as we currently do not have enough cutting machines to match the demand, so we are on the look-out and calling for help from garment factories to volunteer to cut the large volume of material for us.
The reason for reaching out to larger operations is that one person with the cut-fabrics can produce approximately 10-15 pieces of sets (consisting of isolation gown, head cover and boot cover). Although MODA have the volunteered resources but delivering and picking-up from these individual homes is a logistical challenge that makes it slower for us to deliver the finished goods to KKM and IMARET in a timely manner.
“We are fortunate to have one designer who has a medium-sized operation with 5 workers and a cutting-machine for larger quantities was able to produce 300 – 500 PPE gowns, 300 head and shoe covers in a day. We, together with FashionValet and IMARET have discussed and agreed to take this path to help produce more PPE items efficiently in a shorter period,” said President of MODA, Melinda Looi.
“We have raised funds in excess of RM400,000 via our fundraising activities, however, we are currently only producing at below 50% of our capacity due to the lack of reasonably priced non-woven materials in the market. Also the prices of these materials are very volatile, what makes our planning more difficult. Given our current estimates we are targeting to be able to sew a total of over 50,000 isolation gowns plus other PPE items for our front liners in the over the next 2-4 weeks.,” added Melinda.
Since started, they have produced and donated over 5000 isolation gowns, 5,000 pieces of shoe cover, 800 pieces of boots cover, 1200 pieces of head cover, 80,000 latex gloves, 4,000 face masks, and 1060 face shields.
To donate, visit www.kitafund.com.
