H&M customers help empower women in Ethiopia
Fashion retailer H&M has made a donation of SEK 20 million through its H&M Conscious Foundation to help poor women in Ethiopia to set up their own businesses.
The money was raised through sales of special gift labels over the Christmas period. For each set of gift labels bought by an H&M customer, the H&M Conscious Foundation made a donation to the global humanitarian organization CARE.
H&M says that the majority of the poor in Ethiopia are women and teenage girls who are frequently subjected to discrimination. Due to the large amount of time they spend working within the home, they also have less time for paid work.
In a three-year project, CARE will support women in developing their own business in order to generate income, gain more power in their families and communities and enhance their self-esteem.
The women will be trained and coached in both business and life skills and some of the enterprises will deliver social services such as child care and catering to help more women to combine paid work with family responsibilities.
H&M says the donation will result in 5,000 women entrepreneurs from low-income communities receiving training and 500 enterprises being developed with and by women.
