Stories

Muslima Khatun

Peer Educator

I know women who have made big changes based on the training or on what we have told them. One of my sisters used to live near my house. My sister was always in a hurry when she arrived home from work, so she never washed her hands before feeding her baby.

After I received the HERhealth training, I knew the importance of washing your hands. So I told her that she should wash her hands before feeding the baby, or if not, let the baby eat by itself. Nowadays she never feeds her baby without washing her hands.

Stories

Chen Jinqin

Peer Educator

I’ve learned many things in the HERproject. The most important is about prevention and treatment. For example, the chance of having breast cancer has increased. But if you take preventative measures, you can reduce the chances of having these kinds of diseases.

Once, a colleague had a cyst in her breast. We were learning about breast cancer, and she realised she might be sick, so she went to the hospital and had the proper treatment and her condition did not worsen.

Since the training, the women pay more attention to their health. Sometimes they go together to exercise after work. Recently, we have also noticed that they take less sick days. They are more motivated at work, and the productivity has increased.

Becoming a peer educator has allowed me to learn real knowledge about health and share it with other people and help them. I hope to share the things I learned in the HERproject so they can also share it with their friends. That would mean we can help more women. It makes me very happy and proud to be able to help others.

Stories

Davis Waswa

Human Resources Manager

Before HERproject, we saw a lot of absenteeism and sick days, and a high turnover. Employees had musculo-skeletal issues, they didn’t know how to eat healthily, and they didn’t have a lot of information about diseases.

Now women have a lot more information about nutrition and reproductive health, and we have made changes on the farm too. We used to provide the same food every day—beans, maize, cabbage, etc. But now we have changed that. We have different foods each day, to ensure that we have proteins, vitamins, and carbohydrates. We have made sure that workers know how to stand and how to carry things when they are working.

Our turnover rate has roughly halved, and absenteeism has dropped by 60 percent. Because absenteeism and turnover has been reduced, productivity has actually increased on the farm, because people are present and healthy. And employees appreciate it! Today we have a very good relationship between employees and management, because employees know that the management are caring for their welfare.

Stories

Emily Adhiambo Odongo

Worker

The challenge that I faced is that I did not know how to use family planning. I just heard people talking about it, but I had not started using it. I heard that at times it might harm you, at times it might react with your body, sometimes you cannot see your period completely. So I went for advice.

When I went to those who had been taught, the peer educator explained to me how I can use family planning safely. She told me that I could go and ask my doctor, and that my doctor would recommend the right method I could use. I didn’t want to take the pill because I was afraid of forgetting to take it daily, so I went for the injection. My first-born is one year old now, and I have not had any more children because I am using family planning.

I'm now a free lady. Thanks to this training, I've learned how to live my life without giving birth every year. I can now plan for my life, can plan when I want to have a child.

Stories

Geeta

Peer Health Educator

According to the traditions in my family and village, the menstrual period is something unclean and unpure. One is therefore supposed to stay at home and not show oneself to others. Before the program, I wasn’t supposed to touch the kitchen or to cook, and I wasn’t supposed to take a bath during my period.

When I was younger, I couldn’t go to school during my menstruation period. I wasn’t even supposed to stay in the house with the rest of the family during my period. Instead I stayed in the outhouse with the cows for 2-3 days while I was bleeding. Now, after the training, there has been a lot of change. Now I use a sanitary pad, which I can buy in the store. I stay in the house during my menstruation period. Girls can go to school now, during their period. It has been a big change.

Stories

Jane

Peer Educator

When my five-year-old daughter grows up, I want to teach her many things from HERproject. I will teach her about sexually transmitted infections (STIs): to always be careful and treat them immediately, because if they are left untreated, they can become a major problem.

I want to give her lots of nutritional information to help her make family strong, as this is the duty of women. And I want to help her make sure that her family is well planned, and that she has the power to make decisions about her family size.

Stories

Krishnakumar T, Dineshkumar N

HR Coordinator, Safety Officer

Our factory (RRD Clothing) has implemented the Health Systems Strengthening Toolkit, as part of implementing HERhealth at our factory. The ambition of the toolkit was to strengthen our health systems—both our factory clinic and our health policies and systems. In our factory, we had already invested a lot in our clinic facilities, but through the program, we have been able to focus a lot of attention on our health policies, systems, and budget.

For instance, we realized that we had too many policies that covered health. We have streamlined these, reducing the number of policies from 12 to five. In addition, we previously didn’t have a specific budget for health-related expenses, and a lot of the cost was driven by buying medications. Now we have put in place a specific health budget and outlined the different budget items. Through this, we have been able to reduce the total cost by properly reviewing the different budget line items.

We also realized that workers who worked the night shift until 7 a.m. were not able to get appropriate rest, as lunch was served at midday. Now we have installed dark rooms where they can rest and we have changed the lunch hour to 3 p.m., so that the night shift workers can fully rest and still have a meal when they wake up. This has improved worker satisfaction as well as productivity.

Stories

Mosammat Marzina Khanam

Peer Educator

As a peer educator, I have had a very good experience. Previously, many women used to skip their breakfast and felt weak and tired during the working day. So they were unable to perform well.

Some of them used to wake up late and they had to finish a lot of work in the morning, like waking up and taking care of their children, and cooking. They did not have enough time to eat breakfast before coming to work, so they used to skip breakfast.

As a peer educator I have taught them about the importance of eating breakfast, which can help them to stay strong during work. They told me that after the training they have changed their eating habits. They are now more fit and healthy and are performing very well.

I want my daughter to know the things about health that I did not know when I was young. I think it is important to learn about how to maintain proper hygiene, how to stay healthy during pregnancy, and so on. If she can know about health issues she will be able to keep herself and her family healthy.

Stories

Rachael Moraa

Worker

I'm 34 years old, and I'm a general worker on the farm. I used to have back problems, and I would bleed frequently. It was because we were bending in the wrong posture. We had no knowledge on how to bend while working. My back started aching and I started bleeding, and my blood level was low because of this.

I was unable to work, and I used to be absent quite a lot. Even at home, I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do.

But later, when we got to know Zipporah (our peer educator), she trained me on how I was supposed to stand and bend at my work station. Then I knew and the bleeding stopped.

I now understand how I should take care of my body. I have learned a lot. She has taught me how I should care for myself.

I have faith that this will continue, because I have learned how to take care of my body and my children. Now the money I get from my monthly salary will help me to raise my children.

Stories

Ran Wanqiong

Production Manager

Through HERproject, women have learned a lot about women’s health. This means that they take fewer sick days and are more productive.

Before HERproject, some workers felt very worried when they had small health issues. Now they know to go to the hospital and have health checks. They feel less worried and have more energy at work.

There has also been a big change in the relationship between managers and workers. We promote the training in all departments. It allows direct contact between managers and their employees, which helps them create a more easy going environment.

Chen Jinqin, our Peer Health Educator, is very capable. She also helps me solve management issues. She can influence the work environment in a positive way.

Stories

Reshma Khatun Asha

Peer Educator

Between the way we used to live and the way we live now, there is a big difference, and that change has come from being a peer educator. Before we became peer educators we did not eat properly. That meant that we would become sick during work. Now we have become conscious about our health. We eat properly, and overall we are leading healthy lives. And we can teach other people about many health-related issues.

We have influenced a lot of people in this way. I know a woman who was working in another factory who had a sexually transmitted disease. Here, as peer educators, we had learned to recognize the symptoms of sexual diseases. But she was totally unaware about this and did not want to approach the doctor. I convinced her to go to the doctor immediately, telling her that otherwise it could develop into a cancer. But that woman also needed to convince her husband to go to the doctor. As it is a sexually transmitted disease, they both needed to get treatment. I went to discuss the issue with the couple and I convinced them to go to a doctor and start their treatment. They listened to me, and now they are completely cured.

Stories

Siruli Devi

Peer Health Educator

Previously I regularly had pain in my stomach and I also had typhoid. During the project, over 50 water sources were tested in the villages around here and we found out that only about 10 percent of them contained clean water. This was a big surprise to many people.

During the project, we learnt to use water purification tablets and to boil the water before drinking. This has had a big impact on me, my children and my entire family. I don’t have typhoid anymore and my stomach and body pains have reduced a lot. We also spoke to the school, as they previously used non-filtered and non-boiled water. We convinced them to use filters and water purification tablets instead. In the beginning the kids didn’t like it, but when they learnt at home that this was the good water, they started to ask for it. The local government was informed and put the same practice in place in the local college.

Stories

Xu Shanzhong

Worker

I've faced health issues before, such as ovarian cysts. We had a talk about cervical erosion last year. It sounded scary for us. But since starting this project, we learned that we didn’t need to be afraid of it, as it doesn’t affect general health. That makes me feel much more relaxed.

I’m very grateful to HERproject. Since the peer educator started teaching us about work-related women's issues, we know a lot more about periods and our breasts.

Now I go to the doctor when I have any health issues, even if it's just abdominal pain. Women often have abdominal pain, and now I know that I should go and see a doctor and do some check-ups. For example, we now regularly do a smear test for cervical cancer.

If I have any personal problems, it’s impossible to ask my family to help as they are far away. We support each other in the workplace.

Since the HERproject started, for those of us who are from other towns and come and work here, it's quite good. We can ask Chen Jinqin (our Peer Educator) for help if we have any general problems or health issues, or need information.

Stories

Zipporah Suva

Peer Educator

I chose to become a peer educator because I wanted to be able to deal with my health issues. I can deal with the issues more easily, and I can train others and empower them on how to live well. For example, now I can check myself about breast cancer, and if I have a problem I can talk to the doctor and be examined.

I am also able to plan my meals and have a healthy balance. Before, I would take a lot of ugali and not many vegetables. Now I take a lot of vegetables to ensure I get all the nutrients I need. I didn’t know what vitamins and proteins were contained in which foods but now I can balance my food, with carbohydrates and proteins. I have become much healthier than before and I am not getting sick.

The most important thing I have learnt is about the family planning. There were so many myths about family planning and sexual health. For instance, people would say that if you washed yourself after having sex, you could not get AIDS, or if you had sex standing up you could not get pregnant. Now I know that that is not the case. I also learnt that by using condoms, I could reduce the chance of getting pregnant. Through HERproject I could learn these things and also enable others, so that they know what to do.

Stories

Anna-Karin Dahlberg

Corporate Sustainability Manager | AB Lindex

Women are central to Lindex, since the majority of our customers and employees, as well as the sewing workers in our supply chain, are women. At Lindex, we want to empower and inspire women in everything we do.

HERhealth enables us to empower the women in our supply chain and extend that empowerment and knowledge into the communities where these women live. The business benefits for the factory owners include a healthier, more productive workforce, and empowerment often leads to enhanced social dialogues between female workers and management.

However, the level of impact HERhealth has on each woman in the program goes beyond the business case. The sense of empowerment the women get after gaining new knowledge related to personal health, and the ability to extend this knowledge to their communities, is a great motivator. We have been working with HERhealth in our supply chain since 2012. Knowing the positive impact the program has had, we intend to continue with the program in our global supply chain.   

Stories

Danielle Jezienicki

Director, Corporate Social Responsibility | Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a female-led company that takes pride in having strong representation of women at every level of our organization—including a female CEO and CFO and a diverse board, as well as our customer base. As our products are part of customers’ precious family moments, from baby’s first crib to Thanksgiving dinnerware, consumers want to feel good about where their products came from, and have increased their interest in how purchases reflect their values.

Empowering the women in our supply chain with the most powerful tool available to them—education—is aligned with our most fundamental values as a company. To ensure that these values are applied throughout our business, we have set a target of reaching 100,000 members of our workforce through our worker well-being program by 2020, of which HERproject accounts for approximately 80%. Partnering with HERproject provides us with multi-dimensional benefits that span our business and values. Better-educated workers report higher job satisfaction and lower turnover, and as a women-led and women-driven company, we need to embody our values in order to ingrain them within our culture.

HERproject provides a meaningful connection across our business, from our customers to our corporate offices to the farthest reaches of our supply chain, based on a shared dedication to empowering women. This is a value that needs to live in every element of our business, rather than be confined to a CSR report.

Stories

Kim Almeida

Director of Worker Well-being | Levi Strauss Foundation

At the Levi Strauss Foundation we are committed to advancing the rights and well-being of women in our supply chain. It is estimated that close to 80 percent of apparel workers globally are women.

These women are the backbone of the sector and in many instances also the breadwinners for their family. We have supported HERproject since its inception and continue to recommend the program to our suppliers.

The benefits of investing in women’s health and well-being are clear: women who have access to information about their bodies and their health are empowered to make better decisions for themselves and their families. We have also seen that they are also more productive employees, as evidenced through reduced absenteeism and turnover rates in factories that have participated in HERproject.

Through the Worker Well-being initiative, the Levi Strauss Foundation aims to improve the lives of the workers who make Levi Strauss & Co. products and create an opportunity for others to join in this effort.