About
Hi, I'm Hannah. I love clothes, but hate their cost: environmental damage and the unfair treatment of garment workers. I want you to help me band together with garment workers to create a sustainable garment manufacturing facility in the Philippines that gives workers more power and a better profit.
Two years ago, I moved to the Philippines and made friends with some garment workers. I learned that garment workers in the Philippines are generally paid between 7000 and 20,000 Philippine pesos per month ($131.00-$375.00)- severely under a living wage. A recent survey found that only 1 in 4 garment workers are paid the legal minimum wage, and only half receive government-mandated benefits.
For the past two years, I've been running a successful eco friendly sewing and screenprinting workshop, A Beautiful Refuge, providing employment to a small group of Filipina women overcoming difficult circumstances. Now, with your help, my friends and I are going bigger and bolder. I decided to launch TELAstory to give more power and better profit to Filipino garment workers by paying full benefits and a real living wage, while manufacturing clothing in a responsible and environmentally friendly way. We'll begin as a modest 10-person manufacturing facility with the dream of working our way up to a huge factory: the first living wage, ethical, and sustainable garment production factory in the Philippines.
The Rewards:
Our first round of rewards: the organic tee, cotton bandana, and cotton tote, are made in the A Beautiful Refuge workshop.
A Beautiful Refuge will continue to exist as a part of TELAstory's brand family, providing employment to women who need it in a supportive environment. Funding TELAstory benefits A Beautiful Refuge as well by bringing in new clientele and bigger orders (A Beautiful Refuge produces all our product dusbags, tote bags, and provides printing services).
Creating Sustainable Textiles:
For the remainder of our backer rewards- a line of 4 unique garments that will be entirely made in the Philippines- we're literally creating our own custom fabrics. From purchasing pineapple leaves from local farmers to dying and finishing the completed textile- we will have complete control over the transparency of the supply chain and the sustainability of our materials.
We'll document and track the process of creating your garment, and bring you along to see exactly where your garment comes from. We'll condense all of this footage and information into a mini documentary that will be shared with all our backers.
Paying a Living Wage
The most important aspect of raising funding for our startup costs is being able to ensure that we can pay our workers a solid living wage. This is a great topic.
Garment workers at TELAstory will receive full benefits, food and transportation allowance, and a living-wage salary based on the research behind Asia Floor Wage (https://asia.floorwage.org/what). Working hours will be strictly 9-5, Monday-Friday.
The TELAstory team believes that a living wage should allow for the following:
-Safe housing
-Food (healthy!)
-Transportation
-Education (children's school fees and continuing education for adults)
-Clothing and household needs
-SAVINGS for big purchases like a motorbike
-Some leisure money (eating at a restaurant or seeing a movie every once in awhile, being able to afford to go visit family in the provinces, etc)
A worker in Asia should be making enough to support themselves and several other dependents (one adult and a few kids)
The fine print: garments in the photographs are prototypes. Actual garments may vary slightly in their final form. The natural dying process sometimes results in slight irregularities in fabric coloration.
Risks and challenges
TELAstory, being the opposite of fast fashion, is S L O W, intentional, thoughtful fashion. After our Kickstarter funding is complete, we'll start from scratch with creating not only your garment, but the fabric that your garment is made from... down to buying pineapple leaves from the farmers. We're betting on gathering a group of backers that are okay with the delay of instant-fashion-gratification and excited to receive their finished garments in May 2019!
Instead of starting a fashion line by designing garments and sending them off to an existing factory to be cut and sewn, we are literally starting up the manufacturing space that will be sewing your garments. We'll take time to hire an all-star team of experienced workers and an amazing production manager to ensure that workers are well trained and skilled and will be able to produce your garments with excellence!
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Funding period
- (30 days)