25-year social project in Colombia brings fair-trade first for Páramo
06/02/2017
At a press conference at ISPO in Munich on February 6 to announce the development, the president of the World Fair Trade Organisation, Rudi Dalvai, confirmed that Páramo is the first outdoor brand to offer products with “guaranteed fair-trade status”.
Miquelina launched in Bogotá 25 years ago when a community of nuns set up a garment-making and sewing co-operative to provide work for women seeking to leave prostitution. One of the nuns, Sister Rosaura Patiño, also travelled to Munich for the announcement, accompanied by one of the women to have benefitted from the initiative, Amparo Chambo.
At the event, Sister Rosaura said: “Our special charism is to work with women who have fallen into prostitution. It goes against their human dignity, but they go down that path because they see no other way of providing for their families. We’ve found that offering them decent work as a genuine alternative is the best strategy for helping them find a new way of life.”
She described Ms Chambo, who now works as a pattern cutter at Miquelina and recently bought her own home, as “a model mother” who has inspired her five children to study hard in preparation for professional careers.
Páramo chief executive, Nick Brown, has family ties to Colombia and has been a frequent visitor to the country for decades. He told the press conference: “I have been going back and forth to Colombia for 25 years and one of the things that keeps bringing me back is the spirit of the Miquelina women who make Páramo clothing.”
He said he been reluctant to talk about the social responsibility aspect of the partnership for a long time because he feared this might detract from the “high-quality, high-performance clothing” his manufacturing partner is producing.
Sister Rosaura said she believes the whole project, which she said also owed much to high levels of support over the last ten years to aid agency Caritas Germany, was proof that “a better world is possible”.
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