Think about that cheap t-shirt you impulse-bought on your way out of the store. Or how easy it was to click on the clearance jumpsuit that popped up on your Instagram. Cute and useful, perhaps, but if you’re not paying much for fast fashion, know that someone else is. Dearly.
Nasreen Sheikh was born in a dusty, non-documented village in Nepal. She’s not sure how old she is, as births and deaths went unrecorded, but she dates herself in her late 20s or early 30s. As a child of 9 or 10, she was ushered into a life of slave labor for the unquenchable textile industry in Kathmandu. These are clothes so ubiquitous that we stop seeing them. They are everywhere–the mall, the internet, the drugstore. And while everyone else made money from her work, she lived in a 10′ x 10′ room with five other people making less than $2 a day. No bathroom. No bed.
In her TED talk, Sheikh remembers being surrounded by new clothes and coming to hate them, wondering who would wear them and if those people would even think about how they were made — “woven with the energy of my suffering,” she says.
Some folks thrive because of their adversity–and some in spite of it. Whichever one it was for Sheikh, a chance encounter with a dog led her to make friends with the owner, who would help her lift herself from poverty, get a birth certificate, and become educated. At about 16, she went on to found Local Women’s Handicrafts, a company that connects fairly paid artisans with customers to remove slave-labor from the textile equation.
“As a customer you have the power to make a decision and to have a positive impact on the planet and the people. Choose wisely. Support small businesses instead of big manufacturers, support empowerment and environment instead of slavery, child labor, and pollution,” she says.
“By supporting Local Women’s Handicrafts you are directly contributing to empowering marginalized women from rural areas, with no education and many mouths to feed. Almost every week we have women coming to us begging for a job. Our aim is to keep empowering women by teaching them the world working skills and support them financially so they don’t depend on the donations.”
Today, Sheikh lives in Oregon and runs her business from the United States and Nepal. Unfortunately, there’s been a pandemic lockdown in Nepal since March 24, and these artisans need your help now more than ever. “The lockdown is still going on and has caused immense economic hardship and an immeasurable number of people have no food to eat. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia with around 50% of children suffering acute malnutrition and forced 61% of businesses to close completely,” Sheikh says.
On the website, you’ll find truly lovely and affordable gifts (and plenty for yourself). Felt toys, home textiles, face masks, clothing, bags — there’s something here for everyone. Because I have such a thing for floors, I ordered an irresistible rug from recycled saris, which seems like a bargain at $60.