TREANA Peake first set foot on the dry, cracked earth of Penlang, South Sudan during troubled times.
The landlocked village was parched, the locals were forced to roam for water, and territorial clashes frequently erupted in the process.
"Then we brought them water," says Peake, founder of the Obakki Foundation, which focuses on drilling water wells and providing education in Africa. "And when I went back to visit, it was a thriving agricultural community."
When she returned to Penlang, Peake brought along art supplies - something many rural South Sudanese had never seen before. The moment she set out a roll of paper and paints, the villagers excitedly grabbed brushes and started to express visually how access to clean water had changed their lives, Peake recalls.
"After they were done, after the entire page was full and exploding with colour, they jumped up and started to do this celebration dance around it."
That moment sticks out for Peake as a reminder to stop and celebrate accomplishments. And her foundation has had plenty of reasons to celebrate. The non-profit, which is the philanthropic offshoot of Peake's Obakki Designs fashion brand, has drilled more than 400 water wells and built 12 schools in South Sudan and Cameroon. Their current focus is building water wells for the nomadic people of the cattle camps in the far-reaching corners of South Sudan.
"It's one of the world's last pastoralist, animist societies. It's just a wonderful, beautiful, mysterious place," Peake says. "All of these camps are coming together and they're fighting to death over scarcity of resources, over a lack of water."
The foundation has launched a pilot project in one of the United Nations-identified hot zones where they are drilling wells and livestock watering stations in hopes of breaking the cycle of conflict.
"All of our campaigns now are surrounding the preservation of this historical tribe because if they don't stop fighting then the government needs to disband them," Peake explains.
To help raise money for the humanitarian venture (each well costs $10,000), Peake designed the Preserved in Time clothing collection, inspired by colours and images of South Sudan. Many pieces feature Peake's own photographs of the nomadic cattle camps layered on top of historical photos from the 1920s to demonstrate how little things have changed.
"It's been this traditional society forever and to them there's no reason to change. There's beauty in the simplicity and there's strength in their tradition."
Peake has been involved in humanitarian work since high school and at 18 went on her very first service trip to Romania where she brought aid to orphanages. Originally from small-town Alberta, she now lives in West Vancouver with her husband, guitarist Ryan Peake of Nickelback, and their two children.
The self-taught fashion designer once had a bricks-and-mortar boutique in Gastown, but now sells her Obakki apparel almost exclusively online.
"People were really starting to pay attention to the fashion that I was designing and Obakki itself grew a brand name in a very short period of time," she says. But the hype surrounding her fashion label quickly began to trump any attention her overseas projects were receiving.
"I started to get a bit frustrated with that just because my passion, and what drives me, really, is the philanthropic work that I'm doing."
Then came a pivotal moment when she realized she could merge her two interests and, in doing so, give fashion a greater purpose.
"Why don't I put my talents, or my craft, together with my passion and just tell these stories in a more creative way?" she thought. So, she started using her brand as a platform to raise money and awareness and established the Obakki Foundation in 2009. She says Obakki Designs absorbs any administrative costs, from business cards to travel expenses, so that all public donations and 100 per cent net profits generated from Obakki product sales go directly to the foundation's humanitarian projects.
"We're a small organization but we're really effective," Peake says. "Because we maximize our money, we're able to have a lot of results."
To date, the foundation has raised close to $2.5 million for initiatives focused on providing education and clean water in South Sudan and Cameroon.
