Wear It Fair

Objective

To help youth workers and youth leaders become committed, confident and skilled to advocate for a sustainable and ethical fashion industry. 

Target group

• (aspiring) Youth workers and youth leaders who run activities with and for other youth, are at least 18 years old, and live in one of the participating countries
• Who have a general understanding and can related to the issues in the current fashion system, including the human rights and environmental violations that take place as part of it
• And are motivated to put pressure on fashion businesses to adopt fair policies and practices 
• But who feel insufficiently confident or equipped and or well-connected to do so, and are therefore struggling.

Main setup

A 7-day training course for 24 participants, taking place in Ommen in the Netherlands from 4 to 12 May 2024 (incl. travel days). The training course consists of the following main elements:

Increasing the understanding of what wrongdoings take place in the fashion system and why this is (still) the case, including diving into the complex power relations, the interests of the different stakeholders that are active in the industry, and the factors that hamper the adoption of alternatives to fast fashion. 

Practise what we preach: participants adopting responsible consumption behaviour as a prerequisite for advocating in the outside world

Familiarizing with a framework and techniques & tactics to influence decision makers at fashion businesses and to pressurize them to adopt fair policies & practices. Such tactics include mobilizing youth in their (= participants’) communities, getting in touch with the decision-makers of the industry and being active activists. 

Participants each design and plan a real-life action, through which they, together with other youth from their community, are to put pressure on fashion businesses, making them become accountable and change their practices. 

After the training course, the participants actually implement these actions, with the support of their community members and leaders. They’ll try to engage people from all sorts of different power positions to ensure impact on a deeper, foundational level. 

Anticipated impact on participants:

• Feeling more empowered to advocate for a sustainable and ethical fashion industry, which essentially means that they are more committed, more confident and feel more skilled to make a change. This feeling is a result of a mix of elements that take place during the training, such as: getting inspired by attitudes and behaviours of other participants; deepening their understanding of how the dynamics in the industry can be turned around; learning how alternatives for fast fashion could gain momentum; getting access to new tactics for influencing others and practising these in realistic simulation settings; etc.
• An increased ability to successfully engage other youth, including those from their own communities, with their advocacy actions. 
• A stronger network with people and organisations that are actively contributing to change in the fashion system, and with whom they can collaborate and rely on in the future, for their personal & professional advancement connected to the topic. 
• Experience with real life form of activism, be executing local educational workshops.