By Rachel McGrath
Ventura County Star
In Cambodia, he showed up at a factory in Phnom Penh that made jeans where he met a Cambodian woman called Nari, who earned $50 a month working to support her family of eight. She also was training to become a beautician so she could have her own business, he said.
A young man who traveled the world to find out how his clothes were made told a lunchtime audience in Camarillo last week that the experience taught him how interconnected the lives of people are.
Kelsey Timmerman from Indiana, who published the book "Where Am I Wearing? " in the fall of 2008, was speaking as part of the series of public talks hosted by the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics at CSU Channel Islands.
"Ninety-seven percent of our clothes are not made in the U.S.," he said. "Think about what the lives are like of those who make your clothes."
Timmerman, who has a degree in archaeology, said he was working as a scuba dive instructor in Florida when he decided on a whim to travel to Honduras to see where a T-shirt he was wearing was made.
After returning home, he realized that he hadn't really asked any questions or learned anything about the workers at the factory in Honduras and determined to make more trips to see the working conditions of garment workers in other countries.
He decided to go to Bangladesh where his underwear came from, to Cambodia where his Levi jeans were made and to China where his flip-flops were manufactured. His travels made him realize, he said, that the issue of sweatshops and child labor is not "a black-and-white issue."
In Bangladesh, he found a single mother of three who earned about $24 a month making underwear.
"To feed a family of four just rice last year cost $15 a month. So it's a tough life,' he told the audience.
In China, he met a couple who worked in a factory that made his flip-flops who earned about $150 a month, but must work 100 hours a week.
In Cambodia, he showed up at a factory in Phnom Penh that made jeans where he met a Cambodian woman called Nari, who earned $50 a month working to support her family of eight. She also was training to become a beautician so she could have her own business, he said.
"One person's sweatshop is another person's opportunity," he said.
He contrasted Nari's situation with what he found at the Phnom Penh city dump where people were paid about a dollar a day to go through the trash to find recyclables. Children, many of them barefoot, earned 25 cents a day.
"The smell, the sight, makes you want to throw up," he said.
"Should garment workers be treated better? Yeah. But I wish this 11-year-old girl was making bluejeans," he said, pointing to a photograph enlarged on the screen behind him of a child combing through the rubbish dump.
Timmerman said he believes the garment industry has a real opportunity to play a part in improving the lives of people in developing countries. By paying more, he said, mothers could afford to send their children to school instead of sending them out to earn money.
He says while Americans are wrapped up in the effect the economic crisis is having on their own lives, it's easy to ignore the effect it's having in other parts of the world as American orders for goods go down while the cost of food goes up.
"Our interests are so tied together and our lives impact each other," he said.
Students studying business and economics who attended the public talk said they found Timmerman's comments thought provoking.
"It was interesting when he went into the child labor in the garment industry. I think we in America are blindsided by that and so I thought that part was really cool," said Jessica Combs, 23.
"To hear how your clothes are made is very interesting because it's not something I have ever really thought about," said Whitney Van Blargen, 22.
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