Things I Learned Escorting the LS&Co. Service Corps.

Consistent honking of car horns is necessary because you never know when a car, person or cow or horse will pull in front of your vehicle.

Simple contraptions like a Tippy Tap can provide easy solutions to hand sanitation the harder issue is how to you sustain the key elements of soap and water if the well is dry and there is no money for staples.  

Collaboration among schools could help solve problems but they choose not to share given the competition for students at the private schools.

It would be insanely hard to learn in a Haitian classroom with all the motorbike noise created and the windows open.

There is such a thing as too many beans, rice, and coffee.

Simple games on the playground spoken in any language can break down any barrier.

Describing the service corps experience in six words is tough.

Service Corps. volunteers have unlimited energy, deep compassion, and compelling storytelling abilities.

Dignitaries of even the poorest towns have inflated egos.

LS&Co. leads the industry with its commitment to improving the lives of the individuals who manufacture their product and through its efforts will continue to drive change in the apparel industry through its foundation, its business practices and the engagement of its employees.         

Picking Up the Pants and Heading Home

We started early and headed by van to Santiago to check out GrupoM’s laundry and finishing facility. The volunteers had the chance to see all the machines that finish our denim products like the lasers, the ozone and the waterless finishes.

And they got their finished pair of 501s.

Reliving Community Day, Witnessing Improving Worker Well-being programs, Seeds for Future LS&Co. Service Corps.

For 15 years, Levi Strauss & Co. has organized a global day of service known as Community Day. It’s day where employees throughout the globe go into their communities and give back by cleaning, painting, teaching and mentoring in a variety of projects for hundreds of organizations.

On Thursday, May 14, we held a Community Day project with our partner GrupoM. The park in the center of Oauanaminthe was in desperate need of painting, cleaning and playground maintenance.

So the LS&Co. employee volunteers and the entourage arrived for service. The morning kicked off with the newly elected mayor of Oauanaminthe coming to greet us and thank us for our partnership. (He was flanked by his two security guards swinging rifles from their necks.) We also drew a significant attention from the entire park crowd with our film crew. (We’ve been documenting the week with a film crew following us.) They brought a drone to fly over the park to capture aerial shots of the work performed on the park. So as if a group of very Western looking Americans didn’t draw enough attention, the flying camera made us a true spectacle in the park.

Regardless, everyone grabbed a rake, a paint brush or a hammer and went to work. What was most inspiring was not the fifty workers from LS&Co, GroupoM or the Dominican Red Cross volunteering. What moved every member of our crew was all of the Haitian community members who stepped up and asked to paint or sweep or fix the playground equipment. They saw the benefit of a refurbished park and wanted to play their role in its beautification.

We spent about three hours in the 90 degree weather working and we made a pretty significant difference. They mayor asked that we stop by his office so he could present to us the key to the city. We crowded into his sparse office (it had a mail tray but no computer) and he thanked us for helping in what he planned as many refurbishment products that would take place in Oaunaminthe. According to the mayor the Haitian news media covered the event and the island was all aware of the first official “Oauanminthe Community Day.”

The afternoon took us back to the factory and to the Codevi Park. We had the chance to sit in on two  HERHealth trainings taking place in two separate factory classrooms. The execution of the HERHealth program is supported by the Levi Strauss Foundation. These lessons are taught by peer health educators – volunteers from the factory – to educate women on a number of topics which include nutrition, reproductive health, hygiene and sexually transmitted diseases.

From there we went to the onsite daycare facility – Tipa Tipa (step by step) where we brought gifts of diapers, breast pumps, and a thermometer. We had a few minutes to witness the mothers taking a break from the factory to nurse their babies and also crawl on the floor and play with them for a few minutes.

Again on the move, we celebrated with some of the children whose parents worked at the factory. We had the kids draw a variety of pictures. Our hope is to try and create a t-shirt using artwork from one of the factory worker’s children and sell it in our stores to continue to support the worker well-being programs. GrupoM made the event a party with balloons, music, food and a really creepy clown that the kids loved. Everyone watched the kids dance and sing and just enjoy an afternoon of fun. It’s definitely worth noting that all kids were dressed in their finest clothes and they looked precious.

A connection between our employee’s children back in San Francisco was the distribution of stuffed animals to the Haitian kids at the party. These animals were constructed by the SF kids on our “Take Your Kids to Work Day.” As the animals were distributed, the children squeezed their stuffed creations and opened the envelopes tied to their necks. They pulled out cards that had been written in English that read “ hope” or “make sure you squeeze him tight when you go to bed at night.”  The delivery and receipt was a reminder of what we have back at home and what a delight it is to receive such a gift.

But there’s more.

Throughout the Codevi park you will see trees planted in honor of individuals. We had our inaugural Service Corps. group plant a tree to mark the beginning of what we hope to be an ongoing exposure to LS&Co.s commitment to improving worker well-being.  

The rest of the night was something out of a Latin fantasy novel with music, food and crazy carnival creatures. Probably best to sum up as what happens in Villas Codevi stays at Villas Codevi.

A Day Dominated by Water

Early morning. A few of us woke up to catch a glimpse of the factory workers stopping by the cook's kitchen outside the factory gates to grab plates of pasta as they eat on the go. It's a mad dash of thousands in colorful shirts rushing to get to their lines on time. Some are running for fear they will be late, others don't seem to care that they may not make it there on time. It's pretty fascinating to watch.

Today was a day dedicated to experiencing the community of Ouanaminthe. Our partner CES who work with us to teach the financial literacy class at the factory organized our experience.

It began with the group leaving the factory on foot and walking over the bridge and through the outskirts of town. On the bridge were hundreds of people waiting to see if an opportunity to work in the factory would present itself. As we crossed the bridge they are staring intently at us. It's a rare sight to see fifteen "blancos" walking over Massacre River.

Our walk took us along the dusty streets lined with trash and stray pigs, horses and goats. Families are in open cement structures peeking out as we move closer to the center of town. There are a few paved streets in town and they are filled with people walking or speeding on motorcycles. It's starting to get hot and the humidity is high so the group is starting to sweat. Our first stop on the walk is to tour a private international school funded by missionaries. It's clean with many facilities including a bakery, a private well, and a vocational center. We stopped for fresh baked goods and peered at the temperatures. Inside it was almost 85 degrees.
  

From the bakery, we hopped into  trucks and drove to the CES offices to prepare for the afternoon lessons. Breaking into two teams we were going to two different private schools to meet with the administration to discuss the availability of clean water at the school, install a water filter and discuss hygiene and sanitation with the students.

We prepared for our visit by practicing our focus group techniques, learning a hand washing song in Creole and preparing a Jeopardy style game for the kids to play that consisted of questions in Creole about when, where, how long you wash hands and other sanitary practices. We were ready.

Before we entered the schools we took the group to lunch in town. And we ate the best spicy cabbage I have ever tasted.

Fueled from lunch we broke off into our teams and headed to the schools. Our school was the Eureka school a private school of 1200 children. The conditions of the school were more primitive than the school we visited in the morning. It had a deep smell of urine throughout the building. They had four toilets but no running water. We spent the first part of our visit meeting with the principle discussing the water filter we donated. We also set up one of our tippy tap washing stations in the playground to help the kids wash their hands after they used the bathrooms. From there we went to the playground to meet with the kids. We played a few games and sang some songs and got the kids to try our hand washing station. Engaging with the kids, getting them to communicate with us in a mix of Spanish, English, Creole created an afternoon that our group will never forget.

    We regrouped after our day to discuss what we saw, the challenges these schools face just in trying to maintain the water filters and the tippy tap washing stations. We discussed how to address the problems of sanitation and how could we connect these schools to the crude water system that does exist in the town. Progress is slow and requires a huge amount of innovation and patience.

As we got ready for dinner a massive rain shower unleashed at least an inch or two of water over an hour. It was raining so hard outside that the water leaked into my bathroom shower. The stream of water was so heavy I didn't have to use the cold in my shower it was that fierce of a drip.   

Our evening ended on the shores of the Dominican Republic where we went to dinner at a restaurant close to where Christopher Columbus landed when he sailed to the new world.

    

Lizards in the shower, rivets on the pants, tippy taps in the trees

What a day.

It started with my morning shower. I woke up to a small lizard who refused to scurry out when I turned on the water. As my friend Natalie commented "at least you weren't lonely." That's one way to see my reptile company.

It's an action packed day for the employee volunteers. We started off with Liz O'Neill the SVP of product development and sourcing for Levi Strauss & Co., Michael Kobori, VP of Sustainability and Kim Almeida program manager for the Levis Strauss Foundation describing how the improving worker well-being program began, the pilots we've tested in countries beyond Haiti. We discussed the success of the Haiti program - particularly the financial literacy trainings. Partnering with a local NGO - Community Enterprise Solutions along with our partner GrupoM we have taught hundreds of factory workers about savings, budgets and ways to plan financially. The story of the factory sweeper who went through the program and saved enough to add an addition to his home was a powerful example of how these simple but effective programs can change the likes of the workers in the factories.

Our factory hosts GroupoM - Mercedes Capellan de Lama founder and executive of the GroupM Foundation described the long range plan for growth and expansion. Some of the projects on the list include the construction of a cook's kitchen to provide a sanitary and healthy place for the 7,000 factory workers to buy and eat their breakfast and lunch.

Mercedes explained some of the accomplishments achieved so far including the day care center that cares for fifty worker's babies. She shared that only those who belong to the factory's pregnancy club, who participate in the onsite health classes and who pay a nominal fee are given the chance to have their infants cared for by educated counselors and fed, bathed and diapered regularly. Honestly, it's a luxury. And it's expensive. The factory is still grappling with how to continue to fund the diapers. Any ideas?

We got our employees out of the Codevi conference room and walking around checking out the factory grounds. We straddled the Haitian and Dominican Republic border. We stopped for a photo by the conference room Levi Strauss built of sludge. We spied the health clinic and the onsite TV/radio station and we crossed the bridge over the Massacre River that separates the town from the factory. That's where the contrast is jaw dropping. In the river are the Haitians washing clothes and collecting water. It's where dogs and chickens and naked babies roam. It's where the lunch is prepared for the factory workers and it's where hundreds of Haitians wait for the opportunity to try and get a job at the factory. Really, you have to be here to truly experience it.

After lunch we got down to business and our employees set out to sew their own pair of 501s. Yes, that's right we set up a sewing line to stitch the arcuate, nail some rivets and get that two horse pull patch onto the waistband. It's so much harder than you can imagine. Fortunately, the GrupoM factory workers took over and the final product will look like the premium product we are known to produce.

But there's more.

Our afternoon included presentations from the two NGO partners on the ground in Haiti helping us to deliver our financial literacy programs and build empowering local business solutions along with health programs educating the factory workers on the importance of clean drinking water, sanitary health habits, reproductive health and prevention of sexual diseases. Thanks to Community Enterprise Solutions and Sharehope for helping to build programs that meet worker needs, involve input from GrupoM and further our mission of improving the lives of the workers manufacturing our produce.

As a final group activity, our Community Enterprise Solution partners gave us a task. We divided into groups to create a "tippy tap". It's a simple but very effective way of creating a hand washing system to promote sanitation and cleanliness. Our luck provided two incredibly resourceful volunteers in our group Britteny Skaggs from Kentucky and Brandy Huff from Mississppi. Both pulled the projects to the finish line and created workable sanitation systems. We will now recreate these systems in Ouanaminthe schools tomorrrow.

Our night ended with a dinner under the stars of Codevi with fabulous food (healthy portions of green veggies!) and enough dessert for everyone.  And much conversation on how to build on what we saw today. How do we measure impact? What works in the vendor community and how do we present the metrics that matter most to them? And how do we get more diapers to that daycare?

Hospitality in Haiti and Dajabon

It's a long trip to Haiti. The group arrived in Santiago and the last member of our entourage Elizabeth Carlo met us at the airport. Elizabeth works for LS&Co. in Santiago. She works with GrupoM and together with the manufacturer she has helped pull together our employee experience for the week.

We decided to feed the group as they had been traveling overnight and were served coffee on the plane. Our food stop took us to a traditional Dominican buffet and everyone refueled on beans, rice, meat and potatoes. (It's rare to see fresh vegetables around here.)

Then into the van for another two and a half hour drive to Codevi the GrupoM factory.

The people at Codevi are so happy to host us. When we arrived they had hot towels and fresh coconut water.

We gave our group some time to shower and relax before we went to dinner in the Dajbon which is on the Dominican side of the factory. Our typical transport involves taking several trucks driven by Codevi security agents. It's not dangerous, but it's smart to be cautious.

I think as I visit the DR/Haiti for a second time,  one of the most striking visuals is the difference between neighborhoods. On the DR side the streets are paved, you see banks and restaurants and street lights. On the Haitian side only the main road through town is paved, there are two banks in the town and no lights are on as electricity is only available for a few hours a day.

Our dinner was an adventure. I'm not sure they were ready for a group of over 15. It took almost 45 minutes to bring out our order. The best part was half the dishes weren't exactly what was ordered but our group ate what was served. And the local beer was excellent.

For a little adventure, (sadly no pics) we took an errand run for toothpaste our international traveler Kim Almedia forgot hers and our other volunteer Jamilla Hubbard forgot her band-aids. So we stopped by the grocery store - think 7eleven Dominican Republic style to collect both. Sadly the band-aids were not available - not even at the pharmacy next door! But our security guard Alex (who spent six years in the Israeli army) sweet talked the pharmacists into a few plastics for our group.

 

Profits Through Principles, Improving Worker Well-being and Pilot Programs

The pilot program has taken off. Welcome to the five day journey of LS&Co’s inaugural service corps program. So what is it?

Well you may be familiar with Levi Strauss’s commitment to earning profits through principles. Sure it’s a lofty goal and one that sounds good but how do we back it up? We can point to a number of examples, the first would be the company’s founder Levi himself. His luck in selling durable canvas pants reinforced by rivets earned him more riches than most gold miners. So he decided to share some of his financial success by donating some of his business wealth. Back in those mining camps during the California gold rush Levi established our corporate giving precedent by donating $5 to an orphanage in San Francisco which we still support over 160 years later.

Growing from that desire to give back inspired the creation of the Levi Strauss Foundation in the 1950s. Funds for the Foundation were a direct result of LS&Co’s business success. The more denim we sold, the more we contributed to the foundation which was established to support progressive leaders and organizations that take risks and innovate as they address the most pressing social issues of our time which includes improving the lives of apparel workers in our global supply chain.

Giving continued with the origination of our annual global community day. Employees from around the globe step away from their desks, their designs, and their distribution centers to participate in a global day of service. Last week, we celebrated our 15^th annual community day engaging thousands of employees from San Francisco to Singapore and Brussels to Bangalore.

Our Foundation (we have two believe or not another one was established to benefit the direct needs of our employees), community day, our matching grants and our time off for individual volunteer service are great examples of our giving back philosophy, but what really ignites our profits through principles directive is our business commitment to grow LS&Co. but not at the risk of those who manufacture our product.

In 1991, we established our terms of engagement, at the time it was a mandatory code of conduct LS&Co. set up with our vendors to protect the factory workers cutting, stitching and finishing our 501’s, truckers and now our graphic t-shirts. Revolutionary at the time, many of our competitors have now followed our lead. And it’s proven to be successful not only protecting workers from difficult working conditions, we’ve continued to make our quality products at above country minimum wages. 

But providing a fair wage for our products wasn’t enough. In 2011, LS&Co. introduced its Improving Worker Well-being program. Designed to meet the specific needs of individual factory workers, LS&Co. began working with factory owners in Haiti, Egypt, Sri Lanka, China and Bangladesh supporting programs to educate factory workers on topics like health and nutrition, water sanitation, financial literacy, energy and safe cooking techniques and more. What started as a pilot program in five different factories is now becoming our standard business practice. By the year 2020, eighty percent of our product will be manufactured by suppliers providing programs to its workers that improve their lives and the lives of those they support.      

  

      

Which brings us to the LS&Co. Service Corps. We are really proud of our commitment to improving the lives of those who manufacture our product.  We want to expose our employees to that obligation. And we want to continue our history of service. So we started the LS&Co. Service Corps. in partnership with GroupoM one of our vendors in the America’s Sourcing region. GrupoM has been supporting Worker Well-being programs since the beginning of our commitment and they have been one of the most successful. Together we agreed to expose our employees to the factory conditions of the workers and the programs implemented to improve their lives.

Participation in the program required an employee to submit an application and six employees were chosen by an advisory committee. To be selected, the applicant had to demonstrate a personal commitment to service, maintain an above average business performance and a write a persuasive essay. The six individuals chosen included: Jamilia Hubbard, Christine Wong and John Prendergast from San Francisco and the global supply chain, Brittany Skaggs from Hebron, Kentucky distribution center, Brandy Huff from Canton, Mississippi distribution center and Rose Rereat from Levi’s marketing.

Over the next five days we will share with you what they saw, how they engaged and their plans to continue this experience beyond their brief time in Haiti.