Aug 16, 2017
In episode 75, Kestrel welcomes Executive Director of The C&A Foundation, Leslie Johnston, to the show. The C&A Foundation is a corporate foundation pushing to transform the fashion industry.
The C&A Foundation's mission is "to inspire belief that change is possible, and to support those initiatives that can drive that change."
From Leslie's perspective, the big way to push the needle when it comes to the fashion industry, is through a business to business play. While customer education is key, Leslie believes that the brands, retailers and manufacturers really need to step up and act differently. And as she acknowledges, within the industry, these players have been stepping it up in recent years.
Leslie shares insight on how currently, the data from supply chains is living in a collection of separate silos. One of the ways that the C&A Foundation is working to collaborate with others in the industry is by finding ways to accurately aggregate the information, so people can access it. One of the partners they are working on this project with is SourceMap.
Throughout this conversation, Leslie brings up several organizations and initiatives that the C&A Foundation is working with on some capacity. These are outlined below:
- Organic Cotton Accelerator
- New Foresight
- Sumangali Scheme + Bonded Labor in India
- Labor Link + Labor Voices: allow C&A and others to hear directly from workers, with realtime supply chain data
- Global Fund For Women
- Thomson Reuters
- Forum For The Future