Rotary Ambassador Scholar Creates Opportunity in India

Hannah Warren visited India as a Rotary Scholar, and used her experience to launch a Fair Trade business dedicated to helping the women of India in the fashion industry earn a living wage.
 
July 30, 2012 - PRLog -- Hannah Warren, Rotary Ambassador Scholar, spoke to the combined Minnesota Rotary Clubs of Plymouth, Eden Prairie, Hopkins and Fridley at their recent meeting held at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.  Hannah has demonstrated Gandhi’s message by “doing something” and making a difference with the scholarship that she received.

Having travelled and lived in India as part of the Ambassador program in 2005, she formed Jhoole, a non-profit company designed to enable women to earn a living wage, and be able to afford and wear the beautiful clothes made by their hands everyday in the fashion industry of India, in a small town four hours from Bhopal.

As Hannah told her story, the packed room sat in rapt attention, hanging on her every word.  You could hear a pin drop when she quoted from her colleague in India following the death of a child “I have seen so many children die that I can’t cry anymore”.

Since the Rotary Scholarship program was launched in 1949, as many as 1000 young adults have been sent out into the world in a given year with the goal of promoting world peace and understanding.

Following Hannah’s 2005 visit, she formed her Fair Trade business, originally hiring 25 weavers, and over 250 since inception.  As a non-profit, 20% of the funds earned go back to the local community and the rest gets reinvested in the business and paid as wages to the women.  Some of the funds have been used to build a computer lab with 10 computers equipped to teach the often illiterate and undereducated workers to read and write in Hindi, as well as educate teachers that can continue the educational process into the future.

Hannah unveiled for the Rotarians her vision of a new factory, living quarters and educational center for the Jhoole women in this town in India, and the local Minnesota Rotarians responded immediately with personal donations and contributing through the purchase of goods made at the Jhoole operation.

You can learn more about the work of Hannah and her organization at www.jhoole.org.

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Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide who provide humanitarian service and help to build goodwill and peace in the world. There are 1.2 million Rotarians in 33,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and territories living by the Rotary motto, “Service Above Self.” For more information about Rotary International and GSE, go to http://www.rotary.org/.

Plymouth Rotary Club members meet for a luncheon meeting each Thursday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center located on Campus Drive in Plymouth. Visit the Club website at http://rotaryplymouth.org/ for more information.


As described in their website (www.jhoole.org):

“Jhoole is an eco fashion “social enterprise”, a non-profit business designed to benefit (rather than exploit) people living in poverty. Those stuck at the bottom of the textile supply chain often live in conditions akin to modern day slavery. Jhoole believes in the power of social enterprise to battle these injustices in direct, tangible ways. Their goal is to alleviate poverty as much as possible by giving good living wages and profit shares to the artisans and field laborers who create our products as well as investing in social initiatives that benefit their entire community.

Fair trade and environmentally conscious production are the future of the fashion industry and Jhoole is one of the organizations that is seeing to it!

Jhoole respects the resourcefulness of women who work hard to support their families while dealing with the instability of the unorganized sector. They provide weavers and seamstresses with training to increase and diversify their traditional skills. They help them to gain market access, offer them a good living wage, steady employment, health insurance and crèche facilities. They help them to develop eco-friendly products that incorporate natural, organic and recycled materials.

They also support female field workers (mazdur) who come from scheduled caste and tribal communities by providing them with alternative work opportunities. Fair trade cotton initiatives tend to focus on fair deals for farmers; however, the most vulnerable individuals involved in cotton harvesting are not the land-owning farmers, but the field workers who regularly deal with dangerous pesticides and the toll of hard, physical labor in return for minimal seasonal wages.

Women reliant on these meager earnings to support their families throughout the year are forced to live hand-to mouth; they are so vulnerable that they often continue to work even while in the last months of pregnancy. By providing these women with alternative work in textile production (sewing, embroidery, weaving, block-printing, etc.) they can help them to more than double their income. They also invest in their children’s’ education and their families’ health care. Ultimately, this type of permanent and stable work contributes to the eradication of child labor. Field laborers find it almost impossible to stick to the no child labor laws, because they simply cannot afford to lose the extra income their children’s work generates.

There are currently over 1 million child laborers in the State of Madhya Pradesh where Jhoole is based. Our aim is to break the cycle of chronic poverty by employing mothers so that they can send their children to school generating a chain reaction that can ultimately transform entire communities”
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Tags:Rotary, Fair Trade Business, Fashion, World Peace
Industry:Fashion, Non-profit
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