« March 2006 |
Main
| May 2006 »
April 25, 2006
Garment factory workers in Bangladesh ask you to put pressure on fashion retailers to improve their working conditions and wages - NOT to stop buying their products.
I was introduced to Amirul Haque Amin of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) 6 years ago, in my capacity as the founder and director Global Village, People Tree's sister NGO organisation (which based is Japan). Since then we have been giving NGWF financial support and working together to campaign for the rights of garment factory workers in Bangladesh.
I remember this time last year being stood up by Amin - who is never late for a meeting. Unable to get through to him, I knew something was up.
Spectrum Factory illegally constructed 30km from Dhaka had collapsed killing 64 people and injuring 74. The factory was making orders for Inditex, the owner of Zara and other brands. Amin had been called out in the middle of the night when the disaster struck - people were still being pulled out of the rubble when he arrived. The NGWF organised to take the factory management to court and to fight for workers outstanding wages and severance pay.
Zara set up a fund for £35,000 to provide some compensation to workers' families and the injured, "a very small price to pay for life", but this is more than other brands have done, many of which have not yet given a penny.
People Tree immediately sent over US$2,000 additional funds and launched the People Tree and Global Village 'Fair Trade NOW' wrist band in Japan, to help fund NGWF campaigns for safer factories and garment workers' rights.
But there is still a great deal of work to do; textile factory tragedies happen all too frequently in Bangladesh.
It's official, I'm one of the 50 Happiest People in Britain!
. . . according to The Independent. They call it an antidote to the Sunday Times' Rich List.
I seem to be in good company, with Camilla Parker-Bowles at No 1 Happiest, and Keira Knightley and Rolf Harris. According to the Independent, "Happiness is an elusive state of being" and "There's endless research on what makes us happy: a good sex life, a happy marriage, a network of loyal friends, a tight-knit family, a good laugh [ . . . ] a sense of achievement . . ." My husband's going to be insufferable if he reads the first two.
Oddly, though, I don't recognize anyone on the Happy List experts panel, so how my name could have popped up is rather a mystery. Still, for an ardent and often stern activist, I daresay I do smile a lot. The charming Lord Richard Layard, who wrote a fabulous book 'Happiness: Lessons from a New Science' last year - I met him on a bus - was genuinely confounded at how I could possibly be happy despite working 14-16 hours a day, 6 1/2 days a week, and still love my job after 17 years.
Who ever you are out there - thanks for the acknowledgement. My mum will have to stop worrying about me, now that's it's official that I'm one of the Happiest People in Britain!
April 18, 2006
People Tree Shop - 8 Years Old today!
Today we cracked open the champagne at 10 in the morning, to celebrate the anniversary of our first shop in Tokyo, together with People Tree's regular customers. It's a shame you couldn't have been with us.
The idea of a shop came about after huge media coverage of Japan's first Fair Trade and organic chocolate bar, back when People Tree's only office was in the front room of my home, and people were queuing at the front door to buy chocolate for Valentine's Day. If there was that much interest in buying Fair Trade, surely we had to have a shop, thought I, naively. At that time there were 17 people working all hours in my home, and we'd run out of space to run talks and seminars, so this huge shop in Jiyugaoka (which means Freedom Hill) was perfect. Today, the shop stocks Fair Trade fashion and accessories, Fair Trade foods, interiors and gifts from 70 groups around the world. It is quite a success story in a competitive city, where it seems that a shop nearby closes down every six months. None of this would have been possible without the really dedicated shop manager, Mari, and her team, and faithful customers who are constantly bringing friends, telling us what they think, and thinking of innovative ways to promote Fair Trade. Today there was even a womens' choir, all wearing the same Fair Trade outfits on stage.
Last summer we opened a prototype 'franchise' store in the up-market shopping district of Tokyo, and we are hoping to open more like it, including one in London. So if there is anyone out there who is interested in starting a People Tree franchise shop in London, we'd love to talk to you!
April 12, 2006
Fair Trade Fashion v Sustainability
The only natural resource we have in plentiful supply are people's hands.
A journalist recently asked me how sustainable Fair Trade fashion really is. "Shouldn't we be buying clothing made locally?"
Of course some of us make our own clothes. I even have a few friends who handweave the fabrics too - although they wear jeans and organic cotton t-shirts whilst they do this. Others recycle their clothes or buy from second hand and charity shops, or in Japan - from 'flea markets' (which is not a disparaging term in Japan).
Still, for those of us who can't make our own clothes or do want to buy something new now and again, Fair Trade fashion is as green as it gets. And here's why:
First much of Fair Trade fashion is made with organic cotton reducing the burden of millions of tons of chemical fertiliser and pesticide on the land, sea, and air, and of course the pollution caused by manufacturing them in the first place.
The fabrics and other raw materials used to make Fair Trade clothes are not synthetic. Most synthetic fabrics are petroleum based, and even if they are not, it still takes lots of energy to produce them - usually generated from fossil fuels.
And handlooms release no CO2.
Yesterday I met up with two fellow social entrepreneurs, Iftekhar and Maqsood (founders of Water Concern in Bangladesh) to talk about a Fair Trade fashion project.
"The handloom is free of carbon emissions as they are completely hand powered. That is not the only reason we started working with ten handweaving Fair Trade groups, of course. The groups provide work for over three hundred people and an income that is often double what they would earn doing other work locally."
A weaver can handweave 8-10 metres per day. A power loom here can weave 25-30 metres per day providing work for only one person for every three machines. The energy consumption of one power loom is the equivalent to twenty vacuum cleaners sucking all day. That's 20 x 3 power looms = 60 vacuum cleaners' worth of energy to provide one job - a lot of carbon emissions and global warming for one job!
"My view on economic policy is Gandhian, but new models of sustainability need to be developed. Fair Trade fashion offers an alternative."
"Ah... but what about production capacity?" says the journalist.
With ten million handweavers living on starvation wages in Bangladesh and India, there is ample production capacity. We just need the will to work in the villages and arrange the distribution channels so the villagers can sell what they produce.
I'm working to help People Tree's handweaving partners to be the first to trade carbon emissions through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Handweavers deserve to benefit from low environmental impact of their production methods, so they can scale up their activities and help others break out of poverty.
Photo: Shafiqul Alam/Oboyob
April 10, 2006
'Hello' from under a mosquito net in Saidpur, Bangladesh
'Hello' from under a mosquito net in a rather dirty little hotel room. I've never slept on such holey sheets, but at least the bed is clean!
I've forgotten my alarm clock, but I shouldn't have worried, as at 5:30 am I woke to chanting from the mosque. On my first visit to Bangladesh fifteen years ago, I remember being freaked out by it, but now I love the way it unfolds into the peace of dawn and birdsong.
I'm here with the design and producer support team from Japan and UK. We come every 6 months. A team of seven of us meet with over forty producer groups, run quality workshops in the villages and in Dhaka, and check production samples. My job is to coordinate the activities, facilitate the workshops and also network with local NGOs and trade union partners to promote Fair Trade, help develop a local culture of corporate social responsibility, and build initiatives on sustainability.
-
Saidpur is the home of Action Bag, one of People Tree's key partners. Action Bag was set up after the war of independence with Pakistan in 1971. Muslim refugees caught up in the violence at the time of in Indian Independence in 1947 had flooded into Bangladesh having had to leave everything they had behind. Twenty-five years later, when Bangladesh gained its independence from Pakistan, the Urdu-speaking Bihari refugees, found themselves identified with the Urdu-speaking Pakistani elite and many were displaced for a second time to Saidpur.
Ghashuddin, Action Bag's Manager, was a boy at that time, his mother had died when he was just eight and his father, who was already of poor health, found the stress of the move too much and died shortly after arriving here. This was the time of widespread starvation in Bangladesh. (Suraiya, a designer friend of mine, remembers she walked over dead corpses and dying people to get to their relations house in search of food.)
Now sixteen years old, Ghashuddin had to find a way to feed is his younger brother and sister. He found a job distributing food as part of a famine relief programme for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). “It was so the lucky break I needed. I could earn enough to look after my family and I had the satisfaction of feeding two thousand children every day with a corn cereal and milk powder.”
MCC realised they needed a long term solution to poverty in Bangladesh and create real jobs in the area. So they set up Action Bag, training fifty women so that they could earn a living, and break away from their dependence on aid. Ghashuddin was asked to run it. The first orders came from GEPA, a German Fair Trade organization. These were the world's first environmentally friendly bags! Once it was financially self sufficient, like other MCC enterprises, Action Bag was given its independence from MCC.
People Tree started working with Action Bag ten years ago and helped to give advice on product development. The partnership has also pioneered initiatives using hand woven fabrics and other environmentally friendly fabrics.
Josna
This morning I'm going for breakfast at the home of one of the producers. Josna, now in her forties, has been working at Action Bag for ten years. Abandoned by her husband, she has rebuilt her life with amazing courage and determination. She has even had to battling through the courts, when people wanted to swindle the land her house stands on.
'Action Bag gave me advice and loans of 1,500 taka for this. Without their help I would have lost all I have.'
When I ask her about the difference Fair Trade makes, her smile widens.
'I could earn only 50% of what I earn at Action Bag and I would have to get a job as a housemaid. There is no other work in this area. I am treated with great respect and work at home which suits me.'
She has helped put her nieces through school and says being able to treat them to things now and again gives her the greatest happiness. In addition, she has rebuilt the roof on her house using from her share of the Action Bag profits - which are equal to five months' salary!!
The breakfast she has made is delicious: potato curry and roti. I could eat breakfast like this all day!
April 05, 2006
Can you help promote World Fair Trade Day, Saturday May 13th?
This week has been really busy, putting the pieces together for World Fair Trade Day, before I leave for Bangladesh and India. It's 2a.m. And I'm still not packed!
I initiated World Fair Trade Day, which started in 2002 and is endorsed by IFAT, the International Fair Trade Association, with 300 members in 65 countries. World Fair Trade Day was built on the World Shops Day, which was celebrated by over 2000 shops around Europe working through NEWS! (Network of European World Shops)
Befor setting up in the UK, I started People Tree in Japan, (which is where I am writing from now). We we quickly became front-runners of the Fair Trade movement there and now People Tree Japan now sells to 500 shops around the country.
We started to work with NEWS!, taking their promotional materials and publishing them in Japanese. When we found that there were Fair Trade organisations celebrating in a smaller way in the States, I felt absolutely sure we needed a day to celebrate the global Fair Trade movement, and that IFAT should be at the centre of this, as the leading authority of Fair Trade.
The exciting thing about World Fair Trade Day, which is celebrated on the second Saturday of May, is that it is celebrated throughout the world, and has unique perspective for majority world countries, where the awareness of Fair Trade is still low. Events include gatherings of hundreds of artisans around the Taj Mahal, organised by Tara Projects, to rhythmic dance gatherings in Zimbabwe organised by Dezign Inc, and peaceful groups meeting in the vast plains of the Sierra in Peru organised by Minka. There are also sexy fair trade fashion shows held in Tokyo and London, fair trade coffee mornings and demonstrations held around European parliaments and events held in Fair Trade shops throughout the world.
The movement of Fair Trade, at the same time as showcasing another form of trade that puts marginalised people first, is also spearheading new thinking in economic equity, sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, and ethical compliance. On World Fair Trade Day, and often throughout the month of May, shops and the media help to bring new customers to Fair Trade promoting product sales which in turn promotes livelihoods for small-scale producers. IFAT's Fair Trade members use World Fair Trade Day to celebrate and communicate its vision, to the larger community, and showcase itself as the Gold Standard for equitable trade, social justice and sustainability.
We have just rejuvenated the World Fair Trade Day site. Take a look and find out more. You can see what has happened in previous years too..
If you would like to run an event to celebrate World Fair Trade Day on May 13th, no matter how small, it's a wonderful opportunity to run a Fair Trade fashion show, or arrange a Fair Trade brunch with friends, or arrange for some materials and catalogues to be sent, to pass around your office.
