When Santa Fe High School senior Arin Dineen, 17, went to a peace conference at Monte del Sol Charter School, she received a free T-shirt. She was proud of the fact that she went to the conference hosted by the United World College and wanted people to know about it, but the free shirt she got just wasn't fashionable.

"We all got T-shirts at the end, but they were all just really huge and white with a boring image on it," Arin said with a laugh. "I thought, 'I want to say that I went to this conference, but I'm never going to wear this shirt.' "

The unwearable T-shirt was just one of the things that sparked the idea of helping to raise consciousness about social issues.

"It was just really inspiring all the activism that people were doing," Dineen said as she sat in the DeVargas Center Starbucks, sipping a green-tea frappuccino with a few of her friends.

At the conference, she purchased a book about an organization called Free the Children.

"(The book) gave all these statistics about child labor worldwide and how widespread it is," Arin said. "I never realized that before, so I thought, 'I really need to do something about this and spread awareness about it.' "

She was tired of the usual picket-sign protests and fundraising bake sales. She wanted to do something different.

"I wanted to come up with something that would combine my interests in art and fashion with activism," Arin said. "I decided I wanted to start a shirt company."

With several of her artistic friends, she founded Awearness, T-shirt company that helps spread awareness about different social issues while raising money for Free the Children.

"It's spelled Awearness because it's wearable," Arin said. "All of the designs are meant to spread awareness about the different issues that the members care about." The shirts address issues such as global warming, human trafficking, recycling and child-rights abuses.

She pointed to another shirt, which was green and had a picture that appears to be a bowl of popcorn. Upon closer inspection, one can see it's not popcorn, but small peace signs and hearts. Underneath the bowl it reads, "Feast on peace and share your food."

The shirt was designed by 18-year-old Corey Mandel, who has been drawing all his life.

"It is important to work on becoming peaceful in your day-to-day life because I feel that's where we have the biggest effect," Corey said about his T-shirt design. The shirt "means enjoy life and gain as much from it as you can and take all the peace and love that you feel in the world and spread it."


Arin Dineen and her two business partners, Corey Mandel and Elizabeth Fulreader, were all decked out in their original designs last Tuesday evening during a meeting at Starbucks. Arin's green zip-up sweat shirt had a picture of a sewing machine with a little pair of handcuffs chained to it.

"This one is about child labor," Arin explained as she pointed to the sweat shirt. "A lot of kids in third-world countries will actually be handcuffed to the sewing machines so they can't run away."

Dineen was inspired to help the organization Free the Children after she read a book about the work that they do.

The organization was founded in Canada by Craig Kielburger in 1995 when he was just 12. It was founded to help end child labor and get children out of the abusive conditions under which they were forced to work in by providing them with educational opportunities.

According to the Free the Children Web site, Kielburger was reading the comics page of his local paper when he stumbled upon an article about a young boy from Pakistan who was forced to work in a carpet factory. The boy, who worked 12-hour days, six days a week, finally escaped — only to be murdered so he wouldn't tell anybody about his work conditions.

"They're working like 16-hour days for less than a dollar a day," Arin said about other children.

Awearness has raised more than $2,000 for Free the Children, and because the organization was grateful for the donations, they provided Arin with an all-expense paid trip to Toronto to attend the organization's conference, which started Saturday.

"We've been sending all this money, and they wanted to know what we were doing to raise the money, and we send them information and pictures of the shirts, and they really were interested in what we were doing," Arin said. She is planning to sell the T-shirts at the conference. "I'm really hoping we get other people interested so they can start Awearness in other parts of the world."


The group is looking for help from the community in all sorts of ways.

"We're still in the process of getting everything up and running," Arin said. "We're about as grassroots as you can get."

In addition to buying the shirts, they are always looking for people to become members.

"If you're passionate about an issue and you can come up with an image for it, then it doesn't matter what it's representing as long as it's something you really feel people need to know about," Arin said.

"Anyone who is passionate, send us an image," Corey said.

They are hoping to get nonprofit status but are unsure how to go about doing so. Volunteers who know how to apply for nonprofit status are encouraged to get involved.

Eventually, they'd like to put up a Web site, but need members who have the skills to do that. Also, they are looking for anybody willing to donate blank T-shirts or silk-screen materials. They said they'd like to find an place where they can purchase organic, USA-made T-shirts in the future.

The group sells T-shirts whenever and wherever they can. The next sale will be at 7 p.m. Jan. 23 at Warehouse 21, during a concert by Dead Rebellion.

To purchase a shirt or volunteer, call Arin at 310-4852 or e-mail her at arindineen@gmail.com. Cash and checks are accepted. T-shirts are $12 and sweatshirts are $15.

"I really, really like this group," Arin said about Awearness. "We're having a lot of fun with this while being activists."