Nachrichten - Öko-faire Kleidung

1. BOYS DAY at FEMNET about Fair Clothing

This year, FEMNET took part in Boys Day for the first time. An exciting experience for us as a women's organization as well as for two boys (Joshua, 13, and Ingmar, 14 years old) from two Bonn schools. The organizers of the Girls and Boys Day had chosen the date perfectly: On the occasion of the anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, FEMNET organised the ‘RanaPlaza Payup Now’ protest campaign, a great opportunity for students to experience campaign work up close.

At first, however, with the active support of our intern Larissa, there was a program specially developed for Boys Day, which was to give the students an insight into the thematic priorities of the association. Later, they were able to put the newly gained knowledge directly into practice.

The course of the day was as follows:

  • Welcome and get to know each other (presentation of FEMNET and FairSchnitt/examination of previous knowledge)
  • Information film "Where our clothes come from"
  • Research on ‘What is fair clothing, why should it be fair and what should I look for when buying clothes?’
  • Creation of a questionnaire on the topic of fair clothing for the survey in shops in Bonn
  • City tour – questionnaire interviews with H&M Man, Snipes, Sportarena, Esprit, New Yorker, Hollister, Rednip, (Kisstheinuit)
  • small evaluation of the surveys

Report by Larissa:

After everyone had become a little warm with each other, the initial reluctance subsided and a quite handsome questionnaire was developed together. The research helped on websites such as FairSchnitt.org, ci-romero.de, bmz.de or siegelklareit.de.

The tour of the clothing shops in the city centre was – as expected – very different. Esprit and H&M each did not want to provide any information about the working conditions in the production of the clothes and referred us to their PR department. No one wanted to say anything about H&M's Conscious Collection.

The employees of Snipes and the manager of Hollister had us interviewed, but had no background information at all on the origin and compliance with social standards in the production of the clothes and more or less advised us or told us their hopes. The survey in the sports arena was similar, but at least some products with ecological seals could be shown to us.

At New Yorker, we were able to talk to an apprentice who is currently doing a dual degree as a store manager there and was surprisingly well informed.

An eco-fair new discovery in Bonn's city centre is the owner-managed shop Rednip. The two brothers print their own motifs themselves with ecological, GOTS-certified dyes on eco-fair textiles (FWF and GOTS seals).

To see what great eco-fair labels there are, we went to the end of the Kiss the Inuit clothing store, where we no longer conducted an interview, but let ourselves be told about the concept.

It was an exhausting but exciting day that ended with the Rana Plaza protest campaign as a highlight.

The future Boys Days should definitely be designed so actively again. In my opinion, this is the best way to bring the concerns of FEMNET closer to young people and possibly even to employ them sustainably.

(Larissa, May 2015)

Category: Öko-faire Kleidung