Lamine (Montero / Top Manta representative)

Because here, they called us Tap Manta as a way of putting us down.

And we chose the very same name used to look down on us to give it worth.

So far, everything we wanted to do and that we want to do, it's not the same for us people from here.

They go and do it, and that's it.

It's very difficult because social racism continues.

The obstacles remain, and we are seen as foreigners.

It was the people chased on the streets who got their arms broken, who were fined, who were sent to prison.

These people risked their lives and decided to participate in this situation.

It was a terrible, frightening situation, wasn't it?

And at that very moment, we started manufacturing gowns and masks.

We were able to manufacture more than 14,000 items during the lockdown.

We distributed that to hospitals, nursing homes, and also private individuals free of charge.

This allowed us to buy more clothes, to buy screen printing machines and start to print our garments.

The media was looking for us to do stories and asked us to do reports.

And they were no small media.

It was the BBC, Al Jazeera, many large media organizations, even media from Portugal, Italy.

Because everything we do, everything we have achieved, all the successes we've achieved, it's not just because of our work.

Behind our work, there are many conscious people who have shared their privilege with us, who share our pain, the situation in which we lived in, so that we're able to work and change things.

We want the young people who arrive here, or people born here, those who go to school, to college, to have a black role model, an example from their community, where they can get help overcoming the obstacles they encounter here, the social racism they suffer.

Racism that comes from teachers, from the school principals who always tell them that this is not their place and that they're not going to live their lives here, that has to stop.