For the past two weeks I have been working with the People & Planet for work experience. When I first received the placement I was excited, I was already really interested in issues such as climate change and human rights but i completely underestimated how much I would learn from this experience.

My first proper introduction to the Wear Fair campaign was through the fantastic online learning course. The videos that were provided for the course were a brilliant visual representation of Fairtrade and organic cotton. Also i really benefited from writing the blogs afterward, it made you properly think about the things that you have just watched. After doing this online course, i have become very interested in Fairtrade cotton and when i get back to school I am going to approach my tutor about making a campaign to make our school uniform ethical.

As well as the online course, i also really enjoyed the promotion side of the job. Firstly, i started with promoting the People and Party event by posting comments on Facebook and local information sites. I found it surprisingly enjoyable and worked my way through site after site. When i finished that, I then wrote a news story for the People & Planet website. Normally i wouldn’t be too happy about doing lots of writing (English isn’t really my strong point!) but i got a real sense of accomplishment when i had finished it.

There were many positives to this work experience but only one negative.. data entry! Although it was fairly boring and slightly tedious, i worked my way through them all. In the end i even got quite competitive with myself to try and finish them all by the end of the week. Friday loomed and i still had a significant pile left on my desk, so i sat down and whizzed through them and eventually finished!

I have enjoyed these two weeks tremendously and I’m very sorry to be leaving. Ultimately, i have learned so much over this experience and have enjoyed every minute of it. I want to thank everyone on the People & Planet team for being so friendly and welcoming and who knows i might be back here in a few years time doing some volunteer work myself!

In November 2009 Reyna Dominguez, a Honduran union activist from the closed Jerzees de Honduras Fruit of the Loom factory toured the UK speaking at various events as part of Boycott Fruit of the Loom campaign. The ‘Stitched-up in Honduras’ tour was also joined by Rod and Shaun from United Students against Sweatshops, the pioneering student anti-sweatshop organisation who kicked of the campaign in the US and Canada. This blog is the collective diary of that hectic and tiring tour, enjoy! (more…)