^ The motto of most Americans. We don’t have to wait, so why should we? With easy, cheap fashion at our fingertips, larger companies know that they have to keep up, but in doing so they often leave a trail of destruction in their path. With so many recent tragedies in eastern countries, there’s an abundance of informational articles and stories floating around. If you aren’t that familiar with the topic, none of the articles are as approachable as this one-minute video from Online MBA, which contains a concise summary of the impact of “fast fashion.”
Ethical Fashion Blog
Wondering how to transition your favorite Mata pieces into fall?
Let me show you how I do it!
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Let me show you how I do it!
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It’s one of the few times that we can all tap into our inner child, dress up, and eat lots of candy. And who doesn’t love candy? But recently I learned that much of the chocolate handed out to children on Halloween is produced using child labor. (For more information, click here.) Let’s ensure that all children have a truly happy Halloween by supporting fair trade chocolate producers and avoiding chocolate that uses child labor.
Mata Traders does it once again. Their color inspiration for this season was heavily deco-inspired. They are calling it ‘Romantic Folk Style’. The prints are modern and architectural, but the colors are soft and cozy – a great juxtaposition. Each piece is injected with romance, each color combination is down-right pretty. They beg to be layered up and worn on crisp fall days, or adorned with jewels and donned to a fancy party. Mata’s Fall 2012 collection leaves you wanting more!
One of the most amazing summer opportunities for American teachers is Teach With Africa. This non-profit organization places experienced educators in underserved schools in South Africa to both teach and learn. The org works closely with local partners to support academic programs, sustainability efforts, and social entrepreneurship initiatives.
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About 1 in 8 people in the world lives in a slum. By mid-century, with the population at more than 9 billion, the ratio would be 1 in 3, assuming poverty and migration to cities continue at their current rates. (Source: LA Times)
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After graduating college in 2010, midwestern girl Kat Vallera knew what she wanted to do – see the world – and she signed up to teach music at a Thai kindergarden. Her carefully arranged plan didn’t go as expected when the school turned out to be a nightmare. The teachers were completely strict to the point of being abusive. “I watched helplessly as my Thai teacher took every ounce of fun and creativity out of music and replaced it with some kind of cut and dry exact science that these five-year-old children were expected to perfect, or else face punishment,” Kat says.
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Hillary Clinton is thought of as a heroine to many women, but who are her heroines? One of them is Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India and one of the world’s most remarkable pioneers and entrepreneurial forces in grassroots development. Now over a million members strong, Bhatt formed SEWA in 1972 as a trade union for poor Indian women who make a living by selling vegetables, recycling trash, hand-rolling cigarettes and working in other marginal occupations.
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India has more child laborers than any other country in the world (somewhere between 12 to 45 million between the ages of 5 and 14), and trafficking or kidnapping is often part of the equation (32,000 children were reported missing in 2011). Rather than improving the situation, India’s growing middle class has only exacerbated the problem with the demand for domestic workers (1 household in 20 employs an under-age servant).
Today is World Day Against Child Labor. India has more child laborers than any other country in the world (somewhere between 12 to 45 million between the ages of 5 and 14), and trafficking or kidnapping is often part of the equation (32,000 children were reported missing in 2011).
Yes, it did.
On Monday, Chicago Fair Trade is screening the documentary, Bananas!*, the story of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers suing Dole Food in a ground-breaking legal battle for the use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility.
Our Charity of the Month for June is the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, aka CAASE. Their work includes prevention, policy reform, community engagement, and legal services, and their efforts have made an impact on the culture, institutions, and individuals that perpetrate, profit from, or support sexual exploitation (including sexual assault and the commercial sex trade).
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I’ve long been an admirer of Human Rights Watch. In fact, when I went to grad school and studied trans-national advocacy, I considered them my dream job. Now here I am, advocating fair trade with Mata Traders, so you could say my dream came true!
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