It was our pleasure to welcome Christine and Elise from WFTO to the Jacobs Well unit this week. We were able to show them around the unit, introduce them to the whole team and spend more time working on the new WFTO Guarantee System paperwork together. The conference here in Bangalore earlier in the week had made a huge difference in helping us understand the new systems and processes, but this time spent one-on-one with the team was fantastic. The members of the WFTO here in South India are so varied in their work - handicraft producers, edible goods companies, production units like ourselves - so it was really valuable to have Christine & Elise advising us on exactly how the WFTO systems should be applied in our specific context.
It'll be no small task to follow up on all this! As a production unit, we are responsible for cutting, stitching and finishing products. Fabric choices are up to our clients and we work with such a variety of brands that we have materials from many different sources coming into the unit. However as part of our commitment to the WFTO and fair trade in general, we need to place more emphasis on encouraging clients to select fabrics that are produced in line with the 10 Principles of Fair Trade:
We're up for the challenge! Several of our clients already have very strict standards for their fabric sourcing and we're developing a strong network of ethical fabric suppliers that we can recommend for future orders. Ensuring every step of a garment's production chain is fair and sustainable truly adds a huge value to the final product.
We have monitoring committees to form and supplier auditing to begin. There's no such thing as a quiet day around here!