You wonder how that shirt you are wearing came to be?

These pictures are a little out of order, but you can piece together the process from beginning to end.



Ironing the shirts before they get packaged.

Packaging the shirts.

They use manual labor to print labels and wording on the shirts.

Yes, that is a sweat shop worker :)

Where the clothes are dyed.

Where the water is squeezed out of them.

How the spools of thread of created.

We went to Grameen Knitwear yesterday, and saw the whole process of how cotton is made into thread, thread made into cloth, and cloth made into clothing. Quite a complicated and interesting process actually. Lots of machinery in the initial phases, and then all "sweat shop" work in the latter phases. At least at Grameen Knitwear they provided above market wages, life insurance, safety and quality standards, and other benefits like education scholarships for employee's kids. And, all the profits of the company go to funding the social mission of two not for profit businesses.

Thought you all would like to see the process first hand, so shared some pictures with you. Next time you all put on that shirt (that's made in some third world country), you can appreciate all the work that goes into it.

Oh and on a positive note, I got on a project today with Grameen Trust that is best of all worlds: I will be involved with all of the Grameen replication projects around the world, I can work from anywhere (which means I have the flexibility to take long weekends to travel), and I am going to have major connections with the heads of Grameen America. Who da woman? :)

On a negative note, the electricity has gone out four times already over the course of the last four hours. And my ghetto TV's channel buttons actually regulate the volume, and the volume buttons regulate the menu, and the menu button turns off the TV. Nice. Well, it's Bangladesh. What did I expect? :)