Our History

My name is Gorus, and I am the founder of Moenavi Clothing LLC.  The genesis of Moenavi, taking about 30 years, is very interesting,  and I thought I would share some of the highlights of this story with you.

I think the initial seed was sown back when I was attending graduate school at Princeton University.  After attending Princeton, on a full NIH biology  scholarship for two years, I became completely disillusioned with both academia and science.  I decided to escape the University for a bit to clear my head, so I decided to take a little adventure by  hitchhiking to Washington, DC.  When I first arrived in DC, I was mesmerized by the monumentality of the city.  It was both impressive and inspiring.  It was a statement of a country that felt it could do anything.  Power and might were displayed everywhere. 

I spent the day doing the usual things of visiting the museums and seeing all the buildings and monuments.  It was summer, and since I had no money, I figured I would just sleep on the grass near the Washington Monument.  When night came, an entirely different world emerged.  The suits disappeared.  People, both men and women, not plainly visible during the day, now took center stage who started going through the trash containers, removing each bit of trash carefully so as not to overlook any food which might be there.  Having been raised in a nice white, middle-class setting, homelessness was never something I witnessed first-hand.  But now here it was, and I could not ignore it.  As the night wore on, I slept little.  Instead, I walked around observing more and more what my mind could not come to terms with.  All the homeless clichés were manifest, from people covered with newspaper "blankets" sleeping on park benches, to near naked men wandering aimlessly down some alley.  The police who passed by them did nothing, for there were too many of these nameless and forgotten folks to deal with.  So the night crept on, and I began to understand that something was seriously amiss.  My mind always came back to the same thought of how could this exist amidst the splendor of the capital of the richest country in the world?  I think what really grabbed me was not necessarily that homelessness existed, for I knew that the were people who were homeless, but the harsh magnitude of the problem.  That night, the question also nagged wanting to know  what I was going to do to mitigate the situation of these people  I had no answer.

In the morning, I figured I'd go and brush my teeth and wash up a bit at one of the restrooms on the mall.  To my surprise, I had to wait in line, a long line,  because all the homeless folks had gotten there first.  Some went through elaborate washing rituals, taking as much time as they needed since they had no appointments they would be late for.  Eventually I had my go at the sink and water, after which I stepped out into the warm summer morning.  I sat on the grass next to a man sitting next to two huge bags of what looked like items you would find at a low-end garage sale -- lots of questionable clothes, a broken umbrella, plastic bags, empty cans.  He spoke not a word, but I could tell he had had -- and would have -- no breakfast that day.  I knew I had an orange in my backpack, the only food I had that was supposed to suffice for my trip back to Princeton that day.  Although I was a bit hungry, I was otherwise well-fed, so  I asked the man if he would like the orange.  He smiled.  I handed it to him.  He beamed.  I walked away and hitched back to New Jersey and entered the ivy covered cut-stone Gothic dormitory.  That evening, as I ate in the graduate dining hall, I was stung by the view of the privileged few eating their fill and sipping wine seated beneath an enormous stained glass window.  My mind kept flashing back to scenes from the night of my DC adventure.  Like a slap, the enormous hypocrisy never left me. 

Gears, very small, at that time, were set in motion, but my direct involvement with the homeless was still far a field. The time was not right. 

I did leave Princeton soon thereafter, and I bounced from one unsuitable career to another, finally settling on mountaineering.  Yes, I was an avid climber of rock, ice, and big mountains for many years.  It was a very precarious lifestyle for all its adventure.   I mostly lived out of my truck, washing dishes at restaurants in the evening to earn money for food, gas, and my next climbing trip.  Thus, although I chose it, I was in fact homeless. One of my climbing trips took me to the French Alps.  The climbing, of course, was superb, but I did take a bad fall and dislocated my shoulder.  That trip was over for me.  I decided to fly back home, and one of the people at the campground where I was staying offered to drive me to the airport in Geneva, but he could only do it the day before my flight was scheduled to leave.  It sounded like a deal to me, since the train takes 5 hours with several connections to make, and I would have had to lug all my climbing gear around with only one good arm.  I decided to take the car ride and just spend the night in the Geneva airport and fly out the next day.  It sounded like a perfect plan.

So I arrived at the Geneva airport, found a chair, and took naps and read until about 10 PM.  Not so bad, I thought.  The morning would soon be here.  The next thing I knew, I was told, by a stern looking man dressed in military garb carrying an automatic rifle, that I had to leave the airport.  Apparently, it closes between 10 PM and 6 AM.  My mind panicked for a bit.  What was I supposed to do?  Although it was summer, it was cold outside and I did not have very warm clothing on.  The airport was some distance from hotels, and besides I could neither afford a taxi ride to a hotel, let alone the cost of a room.  I had little choice but to spend the night on the streets.  I reasoned that it would not be so bad.  After all, it would be for only 8 hours, and I had spent many frigid hours bivouacked on mountains, so I could probably handle this.  I left the warmth, comfort, and security of the airport, and I began to walk the streets of Geneva near the airport.

To make a long story brief, it was not a pleasant night.  In fact it was extremely uncomfortable.  Time dragged like never before.  It was cold.  I shivered if I did not keep moving, so sleep was out of the question.  My dislocated arm, in a sling, ached from the cold.  There were no shops or restaurants that I could have gone into to warm up a bit.  Nothing but the glare of yellow sodium street lamps and furtive glances from the very few people who drove by.  I felt more alone than I ever had on a big mountain.  From all the shivering and walking, I grew very hungry, but I had no food, and there was no place to purchase any.  This was a long night, a cold night, a desolate night, and one that would stay engraved in my memory forever.  The only bright spot that night was the knowledge that in a few hours I would be able to re-enter the airport, get something to eat, and fly back home.  It was misery, but only a temporary one.  

During this homeless night in Geneva, I recalled my Washington DC experience, and my mind reeled at the thought of having to go through this night after night, which is exactly the plight of the chronic homeless.  It would be a life of pure desperation.  

I did finally board the plane, and returned home, with a bum arm and a mind full of lasting images and impressions, but not of mountains and adventurous exploits climbing them, but of that one night in Geneva.

Still, the time was not yet ripe for me to take any action.  I did, however, view homelessness through a more compassionate filter, for I had tasted their misery.

After my shoulder healed, I was off climbing again.  I visited several third world countries, such as Nepal and Ecuador, and witnessed the rampant poverty which these people endured.  The homeless in these countries were more visible -- panhandling beggars and cripples were everywhere.  And here I was, myself quite poor, spending large sums of money to bolster my ego by doing something that is, for all purposes, rather silly and totally unnecessary.  I felt myself to be a bit of an embarrassment to humanity.  I could not help wonder how the money I spent on my trips could have been better used; not to eliminate poverty or homelessness -- an impossible task -- but to directly help a handful of such people.

Still, no commitment to the homeless.

I finally gave up climbing, figuring that I had done it long enough and that the odds of success and survival were beginning to turn against me.

Through a series of events, I became a weaver.  I fell completely in love with it, to the point where I now own and operate Sage Weaving LLC, which is an independent contractor weaving for designers across the country.  During this time, I learned a bit about garment construction, and I learned to sew.

Finally, all these past experiences together with present circumstances coalesced and solidified, urging me to become directly involved in helping homeless people.  The many seeds had sprouted, grown, and now their fruits were ready to harvest.

One winter, about three years ago, business was slow, and for some reason, all of my past brushes with homelessness gathered within and conspired in such a way that I was impelled to sew up some hats out of fleece fabric, which I then donated to a homeless shelter.  There was really no conscious decision to do this; it was something that I had to do.  I could not ignore it. 

That winter, using money out of my own pocket, I bought fleece and sewed hundreds of hats, mittens, and neck warmers which I donated.  The following winter I repeated this, enlisting, this time, volunteers to help with the sewing.  I was able to increase the number of donated pieces by many hundreds.

It became clear to me, through feedback from the shelters, that the need for warm clothing was far greater that I had imagined.  I thought that if I sent a hundred pieces to a shelter that that supply would last a few weeks.  In fact, they were distributed and gone within hours.  I knew that although my efforts were noble, they were not sufficient.  I would have to vastly expand the scale of my operation if I were to have a more meaningful impact.

Thus, Moenavi Clothing LLC was conceived and now breathes.