No Sweat Organic Fashion, Made In Palestine, Sold Internationally By A Jewish Run Boston Company
Angelique van Engelen - 3/24/2008
An important part of the Palestinian economy consists of organic cotton manufacturing but the conflict in the Middle East has badly impacted the industry.
A Boston business called NoSweatApparel.com is partnering with a Palestinian organic clothing factory in Bethlehem on the Westbank.
Teeshirts, shoes and pants produced in the Bethlehem factory are being marketed custom printed and wholesale to Jewish, Muslim, Christian/secular schools/camps in the US, Canada and Israel. The company is seeking distributors in France, Italy, Netherlands and Japan. "We’ve found a rare piece of common ground- more good jobs for Palestinians on the West Bank will help", says the Jewish Boston entrepreneur Adam Neiman who partnered with the factory after it was forced to lay off over 30% of its workforce due to the violence.
"Economic development is no substitute for a diplomatic settlement but no settlement can survive without a sustainable Palestinian economy. So while waiting for a resolution we've created a mechanism for ordinary citizens to build good will on the ground & support the peace to come", he says. Neiman has submitted his business plan on Ideablob.com, a crowdsourcing site where each month the top voted idea garners USD10,000 in seed funding. "We'd use the money to purchase another container of t-shirts from Bethlehem so our burgeoning network of high school distributors have a competitively priced product to sell to camps this summer & schools in the fall", Neiman says.
So if you are in favor of this venture, vote it up. Remember, the clothing that's marketed is not only ecologically correct but also politically correct. Plus, the workforce in the Bethlehem factory are members of a trade union, so it's genuine No Sweat!
* Angelique van Engelen writes http://AmplifiedGreen.wordpress.com, a blog about micro green issues, macro perspectives.
Angelique van Engelen is a freelance journalist who is involved in www.reporTwitters.com, a journalistic project that combines reporting with Twitter. She crowdsourced opinions on this issue on this site.
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