Some moments in charity and campaigning work arrive quickly. Others take decades.
Traid was the first charity to gain official recognition that reusing clothes was an environmental act that benefitted the people and planet further. We went on to become the only charity dedicated to the fashion industry alone.
This month, we received the extraordinary news that the Global Environment Facility (GEF), working with UNEP and UNDP, has approved a transformative project (FARM+) to mainstream organic cotton production in Benin. For many people, this is a major sustainability story. For me personally and for everyone at Traid who has supported this work over the years, it is also deeply momentous.
Because this journey began with a question, I could not stop thinking about the moment that changed my thinking.
When I became CEO of Traid in 2003, I wanted to rethink the organisation into something that connected fashion, people and the environment in a much deeper way. At the time, we had tonnes of clothing arriving every week to our warehouse in Wembley. Every day I could see the scale of fashion consumption and waste.
I wanted a circular business model, so aimlessly drew a big circle on a flip chart and stared at it for a few days.
Then one day a eureka moment.
I saw men’s cashmere jumpers being sold incredibly cheaply in a supermarket and thought: how can this possibly cost so little? That question led me into researching the environmental impacts of fashion production.
I realised the damage did not begin when clothes were thrown away, it began much earlier, in fields, soils, chemicals, and farming communities. Traid could not simply deal with fashion waste at the end of the system. We also had to help change the beginning of it.
Finding PAN UK and OBEPAB…
At the time, it was very difficult to find projects that were fashion related to support at the grass roots level. Then we found PAN UK and OBEPAB and the inspirational Professor Simplice Davo Vodhoudê, a highly respected agronomist and founder of OBEPAB. Davo is the pioneer in Benin of transitioning to organic cotton as a response to pesticide poisoning and environmental degradation. When we stepped into the project to fund in 2009 Davo had been running it, and had this vision for at least 15 years prior. Immediately I could see the determination and integrity of the work they were doing with cotton farming communities in Benin. PAN UK had been exposing the devastating impacts of hazardous pesticides, while OBEPAB was working directly with farmers to prove that organic and agroecological cotton farming could succeed. It was about protecting people’s health, restoring soils, improving livelihoods, and creating a different future for farming communities. Traid began supporting this work in 2009, helping fund research, farmer training, and long-term development.
What started as a small partnership grew into something much bigger.
What this NEW project means…
The new FARM+ Benin programme will train more than 50,000 farmers, support over 354,000 people, restore degraded land, avoid over 2,000 tonnes of hazardous pesticides, and reduce more than 1.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. But beyond the numbers, this project represents something even more important.
It proves that long-term partnerships work.
It proves that sustainable alternatives are possible at scale.
And it proves that the actions of our Traid donors, shoppers and supporters, can help create real change far beyond the UK. This moment belongs to so many people, especially the team at Traid, many of whom have been here right from the beginning and PAN UK and OBEPAB, who have spent decades building trust with farming communities and proving another model is possible.
Thirty years ago, this began with a handful of farmers and a belief that there had to be a better way.
Today, that belief is helping reshape the future of cotton production in Benin, a massive step towards the mainstreaming of organic cotton production – the dream!
