The London 2012 Olympics provides a fantastic opportunity for pupils in the 9-14 age group to learn more about who makes the sportswear and sporting merchandise they buy.  Fair’s Fair brings alive the concepts of human rights, equality and fairness by telling stories of people who make these goods in poorer countries, often working with few rights, and for poverty wages.

To learn more about sweatshops in the garment industry, students can stage their own one-day sweatshop for charity, living through the experience of working in an exploitative garment factory in their own school, just for one day.

The students plan and lead their own project, deciding how to stage the one-day event, what product to manufacture, what rules to abide by (for example, 'no talking', 'no toilet breaks', which is common in the sweatshop world), and how to sell the product they have produced afterwards. All profits from this event go to Labour Behind the Label to support garment workers' struggles for better working conditions in the real world.

What is life really like for workers making sportswear and merchandise for the London 2012 Olympics? Could you face the dilemmas and pressures of work in a factory, trying to make ends meet and provide for your children?

Edited by Liz Parker for Fashioning an Ethical Industry (UK) and Marsha A Dickson for Educators for Socially Responsible Apparel Business (USA). This item is available to download or to order.

Bring sustainability and ethics into your teaching and, by doing so, motivate students to consider the people and environment when making decisions in their future careers.  We have an opportunity to create a fashion industry we are proud of, and we hope this Handbook can contribute to the journey towards a sustainable industry.

Step Into Her Trainers is a teaching pack aimed at Fashion & Textiles related courses, Citizenship, and Geography, at KS4, A-level and BTEC. This pack has been produced for the Playfair 2012 campaign, calling for better conditions for workers in sportswear and merchandise factories worldwide in the lead up to the Olympics in London 2012.

Sense is a beautifully produced magazine for fashion students, covering everything from business ethics to sourcing fair trade fabrics, packed full of industry tips and profiles of students designing an ethical industry. Sense offers inspiration and ideas for students wanting to learn about ethics in fashion and get involved in creating change while at university or college.

The latest edition of FEI's magazine, Sense, folds out to create a poster of the best in graduate ethical fashion for 2009. Find out more about how you, as a students or tutor of fashion, can get involved in creating a more ethical industry in this one of a kind publication.

(Fashioning an Ethical Industry, June 2009, 8 pages)

This publication presents three case studies, alongside ideas of how to use them in fashion education, to illustrate different ways sustainability is being approached and interpreted in Bangladesh by diverse companies.

This item is available to download or to order.

Fashioning an Ethical Industry has produced a range of factsheets for students and tutors, providing case studies and background to the issues facing garment workers the world over. 

Click here to link to the full range of downloadable FEI factsheets.

If you want to write a letter to your current uniform supplier, ask questions of suppliers and shops, or adapt an Ethical School Uniform policy, we've prepared a few helpful draft documents to get you started.

For an extensive selection of reports and books relevant to students and educators please follow these links to Fashioning an Ethical Industry's website.  Labour Behind the Label does not take responsibility for the opinions expressed within reports published by other organisations.

• Reports
• Books