Social Responsibility and the Global Garment Industry

Students will learn about industrialization today, globalization, free trade zones, the fashion industry, sweatshops and child labor issues.  After viewing a video documentary about a maquila in Central America, students will confront these issues in a classroom simulation:  a U.S. clothing corporation must decide how profits and its own human rights policy will guide overseas operations.  Students from seven different interest groups make recommendations to the corporation's vice president in an advisory board meeting about a subcontractor's use of child labor. Following the simulation, students will consider their own roles as teen consumers and/or workers and determine the issues they will produce action on.  Some possible options include:  identifying where consumers can buy socially responsible clothing, creating a corporate responsibility letter-writing campaign, launching a consumer awareness petition project, educating teen workers about their rights, surveying teen workers to assess.