Supporting home-based workers
In the Philippines, we work with a small number of homeworker communities who make jewellery and accessories using natural materials such as wooden beads and shells. Working with Engaged Partnerships for Change we assessed our supply chain model, and engaged in direct dialogue to find out about the risks and challenges of those involved, and how we could improve the quality of their livelihoods.
The results of the programme so far have been inspiring, and we’ve shared some of the key steps and highlights below.
Grass-roots assessments up and down the supply chain
We started with assessments to establish the depth and breadth of the supply chain; to create a profile of the homeworkers; and to identify the issues at each different level of the chain in relation to social compliance.
A standard audit approach typically does not work for small and informally structured groups such as homeworkers, so our partners employed a range of different methods such as individual interviews with homeworkers, visits to communities, inspections of work areas and facilities, document review and participatory group sessions.
They also looked at the needs of the wider communities and how improvements could be made in a more sustainable manner such as sanitation in urban areas and access to medical and healthcare facilities.
Our assessments took in urban and semi-urban communities, sub-contractors, factory sites, and went as far as visiting remote areas to look at how wooden beads were sourced and manufactured from sustainable plantations of Pangantuon trees.
A forum to discuss workers’ needs and capture their voices
Following the assessments, Engaged Partnerships for Change hosted a one-day workshop, inviting factory workers, home-workers, raw material and component suppliers, and members of worker co-operatives. The workshop sessions were highly interactive, and workers shared the role of facilitating and leading sessions.
Participants were asked to imagine what their lives could be like if there were no barriers to success; and then identify what those barriers were, both external and internal.
What we learnt
Our homeworkers, and their families, rely very heavily on the home-working they receive. Most of them are women whose husbands are either unemployed or have semi-permanent / temporary employment as casuals or daily wage earners.
Over the past several years, the fashion jewellery industry in the Philippines has seen a dramatic decline, and exports are estimated to have fallen by as much as 55% in the period from 2006 to 2010. As so many homeworkers have come to depend on the fashion jewellery for their livelihoods, this has impacted heavily on them, their families, and ultimately the communities in which they live. Ensuring regular, steady orders is a key challenge to meet livelihoods needs.
What do our homeworkers look like?
- Almost 98% of the work-force are female
- Their ages range from 21-45 years old
- 60% are mothers; a third of them are single mothers.
- They have an average of 3 children, with two in school.
- All of them live in semi-urban poor communities; most do not own their homes and are leasing or sub-leasing their homes.
- They have been working as homeworkers for a minimum of five to a maximum of twenty years.
- Some worked as regular factory workers in the fashion jewellery industry but were made redundant following the economic decline in the industry.
A forum to discuss industry needs: different voices, shared goals
Following the workshop and assessments, we participated in a ground-breaking ethical supply chain workshop, organised and hosted by Engaged Partnerships for Change and the Fashion Accessories Manufacturers and Exporters Association (FAME).
The workshop was designed to bring together, for the first time, the voices of factory workers and homeworkers, sub-contractors, suppliers, brands, buyers, government and civil society organisations to drive shared ethical achievements and goals in the Philippines fashion jewellery and accessories industry, and to discuss how to create a shared platform to promote this work.
Key highlights included how the industry could work with its suppliers and buyers and retailers to increase orders, extending the seasonality of the current products such as wooden beaded necklaces; the creation of an industry owned ethical code of conduct and assessment programme; and social achievement maps to recognise the many positive and relevant programmes that stakeholders are engaging in, but that fall outside the traditional scope of a retailer audit. Sustainability and ownership were the key themes of the discussions.
Our actions to date
A common theme that we heard over and over again, through our assessments, and in the workshops and forum, was that the decline of the jewellery industry had led to decreased orders from retailers, which had impacted heavily on home-workers and their communities. Our first action was to look at our own orders from the Philippines, and working hand-in-hand with our UK and international buying departments and our suppliers, we have explored increasing the type, size, and frequency of orders, which has been successful to date.
We have also commissioned further assessments from our partners in the Philippines to address the challenges that were identified in the original assessments. We were extremely pleased that one of the homeworkers has been employed directly by our partners to help facilitate and manage the work. The assessments – or Social Achievement Maps – will be highly participatory, and homeworkers will appoint representatives from their communities to help monitor and assess working conditions, and to determine collectively how issues identified are addressed, and in what timescales.
We have promoted the work of FAME and their desire to create a self-owned sustainable framework for compliance to other members of the Ethical Trading Initiative, and will continue to champion this approach. Engaged Partnerships for Change and FAME’s collective enthusiasm, responsibility and engagement with all levels and stakeholders in their supply chains has been incredible, and we hope it inspires other stakeholder groups to do the same.
Why it matters
by our supplier, Mayek
“Within our company, we look at ourselves not only as a manufacturer of fashion jewellery but more importantly also as community builders. Each time we receive an order; there is a dramatic ripple effect in various communities. One purchase order infuses several communities (barangays - as we call these in our language) with a sharp increase in income and a dramatic sense of well-being and esprit de corps.
The dynamics in the barangay are shifted positively. A lot of the people are mobilized in the barangay, to help in the production of the items, thus strengthening the bond in the community. Since most of the homeworkers are stay-at-home mothers, this order gives them a certain level of independence and self-esteem. They proudly call themselves our homeworkers.
This is why we work very hard to ensure that these homeworkers will always have steady work from us, all year round. But we cannot do this without the commitment from our partners in this industry to provide us with orders on a more constant basis.
In tandem with our community building, we are also involved with an organization here, Share a Child Movement Inc (SACMI). The main purpose of SACMI is to provide education to very poor children. We have scholars in all levels: primary, secondary and college. Aside from giving them this opportunity to have an education, we are also engaged in various other programs for these children. We have conducted seminars on how to deal with sexual harassment both at home and in school. We regularly have leadership activities with them.
Our dream is to provide these underprivileged children with the necessary skills to be better citizens of the world.”