Inés is from Mexico and she lived there until one day her uncle —who lived in LA with her aunt at the time— got into a horrible car accident. He was the sole source of income and Inés’ aunt was left with no other option than urge someone from her family come urgently and help. So Inés did. She uprooted everything she knew and left her family and friends. She risked her life to travel to a country she did not know to live on the margins of society and work very hard for little pay, just to help her family survive through a bad patch.
But this is not a story about Inés. This is about thousands of women refugees and immigrants just like her coming to the United States because they have been driven to abandon their home countries in search of a better future. The details change but the themes remain the same. They also have all experienced tremendous hardship. They have all abandoned their homes, families, and the people they love to come here. They have not had the luxury of gaining a good education – most of them do not even have a high school degree or even a GED. They live in such frugal conditions that planning for the future is impossible. And yet, you’d be hard pressed to meet more hopeful women and mothers.
I have heard the stories of their plights repeatedly. These women are at an impasse because without a basic education such as a GED, it’s difficult to get work.
This is why we created Vavavida, to find real solutions to the problems underprivileged women face. Inés is the reason that we exist. But last year, we weren’t helping women like Inés. You see, Vavavida is an ethical fashion e-tailer of beautiful jewelry and accessories that was focused on empowering women’s economic future abroad. We retailed products made by co-ops of artisans in developing countries following the fair trade principles.
Fair trade is quickly becoming the quality standard with commodities like chocolate, coffee, tea and bananas, but it often overlooks workers in first world countries like the United States.
In 2015, we resolved to bring fair trade opportunities to underprivileged women and refugees like Inés here in our home base of San Diego, California. Vavavida partnered with Jennifer Housman, a jewelry designer and a volunteer with PCI to create an artisan co-op of refugees here in the United States. This co-op will give them an opportunity to work from home in conditions where they can work as little or as much as they can any given day and be rewarded with a fair pay for their work. This way, they are empowered to take charge of their own future and do not have to give up money or family time by putting their kids in daycare.
We teach women like Inés to design and make jewelry inspired by the artistic traditions and designs of the regions where they come from. This was our 2015 resolution and we are proud to see the pilot program become a reality. In 2016 we resolve to continue to invest in these women and this program.
What do you resolve for 2016? Please share in the comments section below.
Antoine Didienne is the co-founder of Vavavida, a line of ethically made fashion jewelry items that give back.
Thanapara, a small village on the borders of Bangladesh surrounded by mango tress and the Ganga river, is a place at the very end of the world. Probably no one would expect that a well-known organization, Thanapara Swallows, which cooperates with many foreign partners has a base here and employs dozens of local women in its garment workshop.
The organization Thanapara Swallows produces cotton clothes for prestigious brands such as People Tree from UK and the Fair Trade Company from Japan, as well as for my small e-shop TukTuki. All the products are made according to the rules of fair trade – with respect for the producers and the environment. When I visited Thanapara, the organization was just in the middle of the accreditation process. The workers were marking emergency exits, concreting the floor and improving other details required by the accreditors. In November 2013 Thanapara Swallows got the official World Fair Trade Organization mark, which declares that the production process is running in accordance to the ten fair trade principles.
When I saw what is happening behind a high wall at the end of the village for the first time, I thought it must be a miracle. The whole production process is completely by hand and the technologies reminded me museum exhibits. Wooden looms, smouldering fires under the pots with dyes, pedal sewing machines – the women from Thanapara Swallows are able to make the highest-quality products using these tools.
The crazy manufacturing process reminds me very much of the market in the nearest city, Sardah. Dozens of workers in colourful saris carry thread, cloth and products from one place to the other, spreading the fabrics on the roof to dry them and carrying the wood while their colleagues are just sleeping after lunch or breastfeeding children. The women from the Thanapara village comprise the vast majority of the workers.
The organization Thanapara Swallows is the biggest employer in the area and the only opportunity for the women from surrounding district to get a paid job. About two hundreds of them are employed in the workshop and about one hundred work at home. Dozens of experts are also employed in the development project which is run from the profits of production. The nursery and elementary school are just two of the projects contributing to local community development. Thanks to these projects, the women working in the workshop can be close to their children, come to breastfeed them during the lunch break and take them home from school.
There is a coil of thread at the beginning of the whole process. It is because cotton threads are the only product which is bought. The rest of the production is entirely carried out by hand in the Thanapara workshop. First of all the threads are dyed. The dyes are made in two big pots by a trial and error method. I had to laugh when I first saw the manager standing in front of the computer with a piece of cloth comparing its colour with the colour on the monitor. It was less humorous for me to look at the workers dying the threads in boiling water using two huge bamboo sticks, hanging them on every single free space to dry them and making bobbins. You need only a gorgeous wheel and two skilful workers to prepare the warp for a loom.
Weaving is said to be the most difficult and most glamorous work here. Pushing the treadle, binding the threads, counting the sequences is done enormously quickly and can be managed only by the most experienced workers.
The biggest room is used for sewing and embroidering. The women use mechanical pedal sewing machines, only three of them are electrical. On one hand the pedal machines are slower and get stuck from time to time. On the other hand you can keep sewing even if the electricity doesn’t work, which happens quite often here. The “Iron Man” is a penultimate link in the production chain. The worker of this poetical position does simply…ironing. At the very end of the production there is the oldest employee of Thanapara Swallows. The respected old woman is responsible for the quality control and no piece of cloth can be packed without her agreement.
Each product of Thanapara Swallows passed through the hands of dozens of men and women. It is unbelievable how cheaply the goods can be produced and sold. The reason is the very low level of salaries – the minimum wage in the garment industry is 5300 Bangladeshi Taka, about 50 Euros. The workers in Thanapara Swallows workshop are paid according to their productivity. The most skilful can earn more than two minimum wages a month. The money is enough to live on, buy school supplies for children and maybe even to save something. The organization also administers a fund helping the employees in case of illness or inability to work. It is the community way of management which transfers a garment factory into the fair trade workshop. All workers can decide about important aspects of the organization and everybody can also benefit from the organization’s earnings and services. Even if the working conditions and standards are incomparable to our perception of “decent labour” the situation is getting better and better. This is thanks to the dialogue of the management and employees, as well as thanks to the independent controls of World Fair Trade Organization and other partners.
We don’t know the true cost of the things we buy. The fashion industry supply chain is fractured and producers have become faceless. This is costing lives. Not just the mass loss of life we hear about when another disaster hits a garment factory, but the lives of individual artisans and garment workers who cannot support themselves in their own community and undertake perilous journeys in search of a better life.
Hundreds of thousands of migrant garment workers are employed throughout the fashion and textiles suppy chain, many of whom live in constant fear as they are working illegally. “They took us to the airport and left us there for three days. We couldn’t travel, because we didn’t have tickets. Armed gunmen, who we were told were from the armed forces, threatened us. We feared we would be shot if we continued to protest. We were then rounded up in a camp” reported a garment factory worker in Mauritius to the Clean Clothes Campaign.
Legal migration can be a spur for development, but in many cases, particularly when people move illegally, migrants face harassment and violence and often increased poverty. The fashion industry has the potential to generate sustainable livelihoods for artisans and garment workers around the world wherever they live, but this can only be done through fully traceable and transparent supply chains, backed up with regular monitoring.
The current lack of transparency in fashion supply chains makes it virtually impossible for consumers to know who made their clothes and accessories. Without knowing #whomademyclothes, how can we know in what conditions they were made?
At Pachacuti, we believe fashion needs to rediscover a traceable narrative. We have worked for three years as a pilot on the EU Geo Fair Trade project which has brought an unprecedented level of traceability to our supply chain. The project aims to provide visible accountability of sustainable provenance, both for raw materials as well as production processes.
This level of traceability data is far from easy to collect – it cannot be achieved by a few clicks on the computer – but it is essential to guarantee that our supply chain is as transparent as we can possibly make it. Despite the remoteness and inaccessibility of the region of Azuay where our Panama hats are woven, we traced the production of our hats back to the GPS co-ordinates of 154 of our weavers’ houses – not easy data to collect when only 45% of homes were accessible by road, located high in the Andes.
But it doesn’t stop there. Not content with tracing our Panama hats back to where they were woven, we then traced the straw back to the communities on the coast of Ecuador in Guayas province where it is processed. Next, a bumpy hour by truck from the nearest paved road, we mapped the GPS coordinates of each plot of land in the coastal cloud forest where the straw is harvested on community-owned plantations. The community has been working hard to protect their area of land and to increase sustainability and biodiversity in the area. They are now seeing a lot more toucans, armadillos and monkeys in the plantation.
Once established, the carludovica palmata plant can be cropped monthly for 100 years – surely one of the most sustainable sources of raw material imaginable. The plants also help to a prevent erosion and improve air quality. Our straw is gathered by 32 harvesters who form the Love and Peace Association – maybe a rather incongruous name for men who spend most of their lives wielding a machete! The straw harvesters are keen to point out:“We are producting oxygen for the world”
Our research for the Geo Fair Trade project took three years, including a 6 month period in Ecuador and four other field trips in order to collect social, economic and environmental indicators and track our Panama hats to their source. Our weavers are delighted that this research data helps correct a historical misnomer and Pachacuti’s panama hats can now be tracked back to their country of origin – Ecuador!
But geographic traceability is just one element of creating a transparent supply chain. Transparency also implies openness, honesty, communication and accountability. Regular, ongoing monitoring of the supply chain to measure both the social and environmental impact is essential if we are to claim that our products are truly sustainable.
In 2012 UNESCO declared that the art of weaving a Panama hat in Ecuador would be added to their list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible Cultural Heritage is a term used for knowledge, traditions and rituals which permeate the everyday life of a community, passed down through generations and forming an intrinsic part of their identity and culture.
However, the historic exploitation of weavers by middlemen means that this timeless skill is under threat as young people are searching for alternatives. This has led to the small, rural community where we work in Ecuador having one of the highest levels of migration in the country, with 60% of children having at least one parent living overseas. The destruction of family and community life has led to high rates of alcoholism, double the national rate of youth suicides and teen pregnancies are the norm.
We have heard so many desperately sad stories of people, including the children of our weavers, who are paying coyotes, human traffickers, to take them on the dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico, across the border to the United States. One of our weavers has a 15 year old daughter who walked most of the way from Ecuador to Mexico before paying a coyote to cross the remote, desert border. In the village where we work, almost the entire younger generation has migrated and women outnumber men by 7 to 1. In interviews conducted with our weavers, most of them had children living overseas and several of them did not even know in which country their children lived. Many emigrants will work for years to pay back the traffickers, often returning penniless to their own country.
Unlike the journey taken by most Panama Hats in the world, which pass through the hands of around seven different intermediaries (known as ‘perros’ or dogs due to their unscrupulous purchasing practices) Pachacuti works directly with our artisans in every step of the process, weaving, dyeing, blocking, finishing, to ensure that as much of the final value as possible remains in their hands.
Our work on the EU Geo Fair Trade project involved the collection of 68 social, economic and environmental indicators which enabled us to measure our Fair Trade impact, tracking progress over a three year period. We also piloted the WFTO Sustainable Fair Trade Management System and Fair Trade Guarantee System. Prices are monitored through interviews with a sample group of weavers to ascertain a local living wage. The price is also measured against the government’s cañasta básica vital, the monthly market price of meeting basic needs for a family of 4 and we ensure that the prices we pay are rising at a higher rate of inflation. We provide ongoing training and investment, not just in design development and skills, but in self-esteem, human relations, building a nursery, costing of products and overheads and health and safety.
Since 1992, we have worked to preserve and encourage traditional hat weaving skills in Ecuador but, despite our efforts, hat weaving is still in steep decline in the wider community and the average age of our weavers is 58. As well as working to ensure this way of life is viable for future generations, last year we provided a substantial interest-free loan to help establish a new organisation to work specifically with younger weavers.
The art of creating Panama Hats is woven into the fabric of daily life in rural Ecuador: women weave on the bus, walking to market, on their way to the fields. For the women who weave Pachacuti Panama hats, weaving is more than an art, more than a skill, it is a way of life and represents the cultural heritage of an entire community. Will the art of panama hat weaving die out as young people abandon traditional, rural ways of life and migrate to the city, or emigrate in pursuit of the American dream? Or can Panama hat weaving provide a sustainable form of income to enable women to remain within their rural communities, keeping families together, and passing on their culture and traditions. Pachacuti is working to prove that the a better Panama hat industry is possible.
Fashion Revolution aims to raise awareness of the effect of our purchasing decisions on the livelihoods of garment and accessories producers and their communities. We believe that transparency is the first step in transforming the industry and is a way to bring wider recognition to the many skilled artisans within the fashion supply chain. This, in turn, will help ensure their work is properly valued and justly remunerated in the future.
If you want to help build more open and connected fashion supply chains, take a selfie and contact the brand on social media to ask #whomademyclothes?
There is a before and after Rana Plaza. We have all heard stories about sweatshops and yet we in the developed world are so far removed from them, it is hard for us to grasp the impact of working in these facilities. The news about the collapse of a building across the world where almost 1,200 people died is treated as news just like an earthquake or a tsunami. But unlike natural disasters, these catastrophes are man made. They happen because of greed, desperation, a lack of moral compass and a willingness to ignore others and their well-being.
Although Zara was not involved in this atrocity, they are synonymous with fast fashion. Armancio Ortega, inspired by newfound freedoms of democracy in 1974, created an affordable apparel label for the frugal Spaniard of the region of Galicia. When Ortega created Zara, the poor region of Galicia thrived with his success. The production was local and employed co-ops and other local sewing companies. Over time, his strategy to offer very affordable fashion using the latest trends on an almost zero in-store inventory model paid off, but forced him to move production to under-developed countries. These business decisions made sense when only looking at the bottom line, however moving production abroad helped create a vacuum of oversight and accountability with their subcontractors.
Now, a couple decades later, the fast fashion industry is facing a backlash. Rana Plaza was hardly the first time that fast-fashion brands such as The Gap or Zara made headlines for their sweatshops, but it feels as though the world is finally ready for a change. For the first time, there could be real financial consequences for fast-fashion companies. People are now craving something different: quality, accountability and connection. People care more about the story behind the products they buy and are more educated about them than ever before.
However, we cannot wait for the big players of the fashion industry to change on their own. We are responsible for creating the change we want to see in mass-market fashion labels. This is why campaigns like “Who Made My Clothes?” are so important. If consumers are more aware of how and who makes their clothes, they will make more educated choices.
But change is coming, in a pure battle of David against Goliath. This is evidenced in the rise of the fashion social enterprises. Vavavida, Zady, Prana, Toms shoes, Warby Parker glasses, and a slew of others all stemmed from fashion entrepreneurs wanting to shake up the industry. These companies are seeking a true connection between what they make, how they are made and how customers experience their products.
Fair Trade will help usher in a new standard of how we treat the people we do business with and change the relationship we have with the products we buy. Being ethical starts at the very base of this new business model. In the best of cases, Fair Trade can be (and should be) the lowest echelon on the ethical production ladder of how to create, sell and market ethical fashion.
But is fair trade enough?
Fair Trade is not the answer to every problem, but it can be part of the solution. Fair Trade is only the beginning and yet we are a long way from making fair trade a standard in every household in America. The awareness of Fair Trade and what it means is still very low. Apart from coffee and chocolate connoisseurs, fair trade is virtually unknown in the US market. We need to raise awareness so that things can start changing for the better.
Full Circle Economics©
This is why when we created Vavavida we wanted to start with Fair Trade as a first step in the right direction and then close the loop. We created what became our operating model of Full Circle Economics©. We source our products from disadvantaged artisan cooperatives from around the world that adhere to the Fair Trade principles, we sell the items at a fair price and —thanks to our non-profit partner Project Concern International— we then use part of the revenues earned from the sales of those goods to re-invest into the communities we source our products from. Since our products are almost entirely made for women and by women, we chose to close the loop by investing in female economic empowerment programs that exist as close as possible to the co-ops we buy from.
From what we know at Vavavida of the effects of Fair Trade on the communities we partner with, it is evident that Fair Trade works. The main co-operative we source our products from has seen its wages rise by 800% ever since they started operating under the Fair Trade principles. The community has also seen a reduction of the impact their work has on the environment and because of Fair Trade, their kids remain in school much longer. But we need to do more. Women are the most affected by poverty but are also the likeliest to pull a community together out of poverty. Therefore, we need to invest in programs that focus on children’s education, female empowerment and women-led village savings program to help a community pull itself out of poverty and create a more sustainable local economy. Fashion done right can save the world.
All content on our blog is editorially independent unless it has been written by a member of the Fashion Revolution team.
In 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City to demand shorter working hours, better pay and voting rights. This was the beginning of a movement from which International Women’s Day was born. Decades later, in 2011, the United Nations marked the 11th of October as the first International Day of the Girl Child, highlighting the continuing challenges which young girls still face in communities across the globe; especially in relation to accessing education, being safe from violence and exploitation. Within the fashion industry, the pressure to meet the demands of conventional fast fashion companies is enormous. To stay competitive, manufacturing factories keep their overheads low by paying low wages for workers. Child labourers can be paid even less and are an attractive proposition for employers. Parents are forced to send their children, including young girls to work in conditions which are unsafe in order to create enough income to sustain the family.
As a Fair Trade company, People Tree works with many social businesses who not only create decent employment and pay fair wages, but who also invest in their local community. For example, by funding schools, medical support and awareness raising on the rights of women and girls. We support communities in India, Bangladesh and Nepal who empower girls by giving them access to education and vocational training. By focusing on empowerment of women through dignified and artisanal work, we help keep handicraft traditions alive, as well as offer opportunities to help strengthen these communities and continue to support their learning and development. Equal opportunities are reflected throughout People Tree’s supply chain, where 56% of leadership roles are held by women.
In rural Bangladesh, girls are often not given opportunities to go to school, instead they are encouraged to stay at home to help around the house and to get married very young. People Tree works with Swallows, an NGO set up to empower the poor and underprivileged population, especially women, in the village of Thanapara. Swallows runs a handicrafts program which makes beautiful hand woven and hand embroidered garments. This business helps to fund Swallows’ development work in the local area, and the empowerment of girls and women is central to their work.
Mrs Gini Ali, Assistant Director at Swallows, feels that discrimination and lack of opportunity for women in Bangladesh are the biggest barriers to improving living conditions there. She says:
“The Fair Trade principles applied by People Tree have created economic stability for Swallows, allowing it to become an independent organisation, this has led to the empowerment of the women of Thanapara.”
Swallows funds schools and awareness raising to ensure that girls have the same chance to study as boys. They raise awareness amongst parents, sharing the importance of education for young girls and its benefits for the family and the community. As well as sharing the importance of education, Swallows raises awareness around the issue of child marriage and the negative impacts this can have. Swallows provides free training opportunities for young women and also sponsor young women to study part time whilst the work part time making Fair Trade clothing. As well as this they offer legal support to local women who are victims of domestic violence and raise awareness locally on the issue.
In Nepal, People Tree partners with Kumbeshwar Technical School (KTS). Originally set up as a vocational training centre, KTS has now developed into a Fair Trade business creating beautiful hand knitted products. Established in 1983 with the goal of breaking societal barriers created by Nepal’s caste system, KTS was set up to help Pode people, the so-called ‘untouchable’ caste in Nepal. Those born into the Pode caste are expected to clean the sewers and streets of the areas inhabited by higher castes for no more than scraps of leftover food. The discrimination which keeps these people out of other forms of work even affects children, who may drop out of primary school because they are unable to fit in. Until recently, Pode children did not go to school at all.
KTS now offers employment to 2,273 women who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. On top of this, the profits from Fair Trade helps fund vocational training; a school; a day care centre for over 250 children from low income families and an orphanage.
Both KTS and Swallows are both ‘Guaranteed Fair Trade Organisations’ by the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO). This recognises that the whole of the company is 100% dedicated to Fair Trade and ensures that all the groups adhere to the WFTO’s 10 Fair Trade Principles. Key to these 10 principles is Principle Six: ‘Commitment to Non Discrimination, Gender Equity and Women’s Economic Empowerment’. At People Tree we believe that Fair Trade business is a key driver in the empowerment of women and girls worldwide.
For more information about how People Tree supports women and girls, please contact us for a copy of our Social Review and read about People Tree’s latest Campaign Against Child Labour in our digital edition of the Eco-Edit: http://www.peopletree.co.uk/eco-edit
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