A presentation given to students in Global Fashion Management (Fiber Science & Apparel Design 4440) at Cornell University on March 21, 2017. It covers efforts by Ashoka Fellows through the Fabric of Change partnership between Ashoka and C&A Foundation, as well as broader apparel industry sustainability trends to improve working conditions and environmental impacts.

1. An initiative to transform the apparel industry
through the work of social entrepreneurs
March 7, 2016
Dan Schiff, Ashoka
Engagement Manager for Fabric of
Change
Cornell University
March 21, 2017

2. Ashoka: 37 years of supporting social entrepreneurs
• Founded in 1980.
• Represents the world’s largest network of leading social
entrepreneurs, with more than 3,300 Ashoka Fellows in 85
countries.
• Social entrepreneurs are innovators with models for
completely changing an industry or system, for the benefit of
society.
• Ashoka Fellows in the US include Van Jones (Ella Baker Center
for Human Rights), Wendy Kopp (Teach for America) and
Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia).
• “Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or
teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have
revolutionized the fishing industry.”
-Bill Drayton, Ashoka founder and CEO
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

3. Ashoka Fellow selection criteria
1. The Knockout Test: Does the social entrepreneur have a new idea, solution or approach to a social or
environmental problem that will change the pattern in a field?
2. Creativity: Does the social entrepreneur have a vision for meeting some human need better than it has
been met before?
3. Entrepreneurial Quality: Is the individual totally absorbed in his/her idea and committed to transforming it
into reality over the next 10-15 years?
4. Social Impact of the Idea: Will the idea change the field significantly and trigger impact or change at the
national, regional or global level?
5. Ethical Fiber: Does this person inspire a level of trust in others that will allow him/her to introduce major
structural changes in society?
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

4. Cornell is a Changemaker Campus!
www.CenterforTransformativeAction.org
• Ashoka U oversees a network of 37 universities committed to institutional change by embedding social
innovation in academics and in partnerships with the community.
• Ashoka U supports campus change leaders with processes for building their team, getting institutional
buy-in, sharing other successful models in the field.
• The Center for Transformative Action at Cornell provides fiscal sponsorship to transformative, non-profit
social ventures on campus and around the Ithaca region. These ventures benefit from the Center’s
mentorship, business services and social entrepreneurship education offerings.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

5. • Anabel’s Grocery: A student-run grocery store that
addresses food insecurity on campus by providing access to
healthy, affordable food, increasing food literacy, and
running educational programs on healthy and cost-
eating.
• The Dorothy Cotton Institute: Building a network and
community of civil and human rights leadership.
• Ethical Shareholder Initiative: Seeks to educate investors to
play a positive role in encouraging corporations to act in an
ethical, socially responsible fashion.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation
Select projects
in Ithaca

6. A partnership to reimagine fashion as a force for good.
• C&A is a fashion retailer with more than 1,500 stores and
35,000 employees in Europe, Latin America and China.
• The Foundation focuses on sustainable livelihoods for
garment workers, organic cotton, and value chain
transparency.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation
Fabric of Change is a three-year
partnership in which Ashoka and C&A
Foundation are sourcing and
supporting a new wave of social
entrepreneurs with innovations to
reshape the apparel industry.

7. Our theory of change
Strategies
• Provide lifecycle support to leading social entrepreneurs (stipends, pro bono expertise, industry
connections)
• Encourage more institutions, organizations, experts and resources to support innovative industry
solutions
• Encourage collaboration to drive bigger results with limited resources
Outcomes
• Increased acceptance among industry players of social entrepreneurs as a key source for solutions
• Leading social entrepreneurs have the support and resources to widely implement their innovations
• Workers, consumers and communities along the value chain benefit from social entrepreneurs’ work
Impact
• An industry that offers transparency and fair wages, whose (primarily women) workers feel safe and
supported
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

8. April 24, 2013
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

9. Ashoka + C&A Foundation

10. Ashoka + C&A Foundation

11. Roadblocks to industry transformation:
Four barriers to target for change
A. Hidden from View: Conditions in forests, farms and factories
are only visible to a few
B. A Job is Not Enough: Low-income workers cannot secure
long-term wellbeing
C. Consumers are Unaware or Unmotivated: Consumption
habits are hard to shift without easy avenues for change
D. Sustainability is Not Yet in the DNA: Current system
disincentivizes value-driven business
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

12. Unlocking a sustainable future:
Four design principles to tackle systemic problems
A. Unite More than Voice: Tap into community capital and
collective resources
B. Activate Local Know-How for Driving Solutions: Build
opportunities for workers to become leaders
C. Disrupt Business as Usual: Target key players who can
influence the bottom line
D. Transform the Chain into a Web: Link unlikely sectors to open
new pathways to sustainability
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

13. Lingering questions – need for additional solutions
1. How can small suppliers and the “murky middle” be
incentivized to become sustainable?
2. How can more industries be linked to activate conscious
consumerism?
3. How can solutions better empower and improve the lives of
women (about 70% of the global apparel workforce)?
Key additional stakeholders to engage
1. Social entrepreneurs outside the industry who can inspire
new solutions
2. Governments that can ensure that sustainability is a long-
term priority by institutionalizing standards
3. Young consumers who can create an entirely new system in
which fashion is a force for good
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

14. Ashoka Fellow Suraiya Haque, founder of Phulki
• Suraiya founded Phulki to provide child-care options for
Bangladeshi garment factory workers, 80% of whom are
women.
• Phulki’s business-friendly model gives factories the option of
sharing costs with workers for operating the on-site day-care
centers.
• Today, Phulki operates about 90 community-based and 25
factory-based child-care centers in Dhaka.
• Barrier: A Job is Not Enough – Low-income workers cannot
secure long-term wellbeing
• Solution: Transforming the Chain into a Web – Focusing on
community needs to support holistic local development
• Solution: Unite More than Voice – Use cost-sharing to provide
social protection services
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

15. Ashoka Fellow Saif Rashid, founder of APON
• Saif developed the APON benefits scheme, subtitled “Inclusive
well-being for makers.” It is now in pilot stage.
• APON shops set up inside Bangladesh’s ready-made garment
factories, selling discounted consumer packaged goods to
factory workers.
• Workers earn points that accumulate until they have enough
to access APON’s zero-cash health coverage.
• The aim is to increase the workers’ disposable income,
maintain the health of the workers and their families, and
reduce factory workforce turnover.
• Barrier: A Job is Not Enough – Low-income workers cannot
secure long-term wellbeing
• Solution: Unite More than Voice – Use cost-sharing to provide
social protection services
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

16. Nest – ensuring craft artisans benefit from sourcing partnerships.
• Winner of the Fabric of Change Challenge €20,000 second
prize, awarded May 2016 at Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
• Founder Rebecca van Bergen has developed a set of open-
source compliance standards to ensure women artisans
benefit from ethical and economically viable sourcing
partnerships with retailers.
• Up to 60% of garment production gets sub-contracted from
factories to women in their homes; Nest builds up their
capacity and increases transparency around their work.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation
“What if we could make
home-work regulated, and
safe, and ensure that women
are paid fairly and working in
safe conditions? It's an
enormous opportunity for
women globally to be
employed.”
—Rebecca van Bergen, Nest

17. Ashoka Fellow Kohl Gill, founder of Labor Voices
• Kohl founded LaborVoices to provide on-the-ground
information about working conditions at supplier factories.
• Through the Symphony platform, more than 10,000 workers
anonymously report real-time data, which helps big brands
comply with regulations against labor exploitation and
modern slavery.
• Like “TripAdvisor” for workers, allowing them to find the best
jobs and improve conditions where they already work.
• Barrier: Hidden from View – Conditions in forests, farms and
factories are only visible to a few
• Solution: Unite More Than Voice
• Enable workers to be their own advocates
• Create a common language to compare behavior
across suppliers
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

18. Ashoka + C&A Foundation

19. Ashoka Fellow Nicole Rycroft, founder of Canopy
• Nicole and Canopy work with business partners in the
publishing and fashion industries to transform their value
chains in a way that protects ancient forests.
• Every year, 120 million trees are felled for rayon and viscose
used in apparel production; projected to double by 2020.
• Canopy drives behavior change among designers and
purchasing/procurement leaders at companies such as H&M,
Zara, EILEEN FISHER, Levi Strauss & Co.
• Barrier: Sustainability is Not Yet in the DNA – The current
system disincentivizes value-driven business
• Solution: Disrupt Business as Usual – Develop future demand
by engaging the design community
• Solution: Transform the Chain into a Web – Involve R&D to
create sustainable alternatives for necessary natural inputs
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

20. Evrnu – recycling cotton garment waste into pristine fiber.
• Winner of the Fabric of Change Challenge €50,000 grand
prize, awarded May 2016 at Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
• Founded by Stacy Flynn, former fabric sourcing manager for
DuPont and Target.
• Evrnu's technology breaks down cotton waste to the
molecular level and rebuilds it into new fiber finer than silk
and stronger than cotton, with minimal water usage and no
farmland.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation
“Our goal is to render
destructive methods of
manufacturing completely
obsolete. Our approach is to
get large brands and retailers
migrated to safer, cleaner,
more effective ways of
working, so that destructive
methods are put out of
business, period.”
—Stacy Flynn, Evrnu

21. Ambercycle – developing ways to use plastics in infinite lifecycles.
• Winner of the Fabric of Change Challenge €20,000 second
prize, awarded May 2016 at Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
• Co-founded by Akshay Sethi while a biochemistry student at
UC Davis, as a project to solve the world’s plastic waste
problem.
• Ambercycle engineers microbes that eat waste plastic and
produce the raw materials for 100% renewably sourced
polyesters that are cheaper to produce than virgin materials.
Ashoka + C&A Foundation
“If polyester were to become
a circular material, we could
continually reuse it and save
a lot of energy, a lot of time,
and a lot of resources to
solve other more important
problems.”
—Akshay Sethi, Ambercycle

22. Ashoka + C&A Foundation

23. Is circularity the future of fashion and
consumerism?
Principles of Circularity
1. Preserve and enhance natural
capital (get away from
“monstrous hybrids”)
2. Optimize resource yields
(maintain a garment’s
maximum utility as long as
possible)
3. Foster system effectiveness
(make feedback mechanisms
more accurately reflect true
costs)
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

24. Circularity initiatives already in motion…
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

25. Ashoka + C&A Foundation

26. Ashoka Fellow Lis Suarez-Visbal, founder of FEM International
• Lis and FEM help women immigrants to Canada, as well as
women’s citizen organizations around the world, to build their
capacity as social entrepreneurs in fashion.
• Building up capacity and network connections with workshops
in Canada, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Mali, Thailand.
• For Lis, the social and environmental parts of the fashion value
chain are intrinsically linked:
• “We believe that we cannot be repeating entrepreneurial
models that are linear because they are creating the problems
that we have today. … The circular economy, we see it as a
systemic approach. Not only working in microbusinesses that
incorporate their waste into their production, but also allowing
different kinds of businesses to emerge—servicing, for
example, rather than product creation.”
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

27. Which brands are driving real change in fashion?
What more needs to be done?
Ashoka + C&A Foundation

28. www.changemakers.com/fabricofchange