Around the world, people who work in garment factories are paying an unfair share of the price for our cheap clothes. And so is the environment: the garment industry uses an incredible amount of resources which our planet cannot sustain.

Thousands of people spend their working days trying to fix the human rights and environmental failures of the global garment industry. Trade unionists, NGO staff, government workers, politicians, journalists, consultants, employees of responsible companies and people at a range of other organisations have spent years investing a huge amount of effort in trying to secure basic rights for garment workers, and to reduce the environmental impact of the industry. 

If you are one of those people – and if you wake up too many mornings thinking ‘After all these years of effort, shouldn’t things be better?  What are we doing wrong?’ then The Threads is for you.  

Together we are searching for strands that make up the story of How the Industry Transforms into a Force for Good. How did we get here? What is emerging? What patterns do we see? How can we make sense of what we see?

There is a lot of information being published about what is happening in the industry, but not nearly enough attention is paid to why things are happening – and how organisations working to improve conditions in the garment industry could adapt and align their theories of change and their activities to be more effective.

The Threads was created to help weave together different disciplines and points of view about what needs to happen to speed up human rights and environmental improvement in the garment industry.

This can only work as a collective effort and this is just the beginning. The Threads is designed to integrate the strengths, insights and innovative ideas of key partners in the industry. It is intended as a platform for innovative ideas that are not limited by any one organisational Theory of Change.

We invite you to join us on our treasure hunt for answers and perspectives and look forward to spinning a yarn that tells us more about garmenting in the years to come.

The Threads was launched with support from Fair Wear Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Strategic Partnership for Supply Chain Transformation.