How your Lost Stock purchase supports garment workers

Whether your Lost Stock package is on its way (exciting!), or you are still thinking about treating yourself to a box, you might be wondering how your purchase will make a difference to others.

By choosing to buy a Lost Stock box you really are helping workers whose livelihoods have been removed and lives turned upside down. 

In the wake of COVID-19, over $3 billion worth of stock orders were cancelled by leading brands, leaving manufacturers in Bangladesh unable to pay workers and millions of garment workers faced losing their livelihoods and potential starvation.

Every Lock Stock box ordered supports a family of four for a week through our NGO partner, SAJIDA Foundation. 

To tell the story of what is happening to workers SAJIDA spoke to Fatema Begum, just one of the thousands of workers that they’re supporting thanks to your purchases of Lost Stock boxes.

Fatema is a 30-year-old mother of two and is one of an estimated two million garment workers in Bangladesh who lost their job during the Coronavirus crisis. As the sole earner, when Fatema lost her job her family were battling to survive.

"It has been really difficult, my family is dependent on me, but now we are all helpless," she explained. "My kids aren't able to go to school as their fees are overdue. I am not able to pay back my debts, our home rent, and I can't find any work. As I am not able to earn any money, I can't provide food for my family, and I am afraid that this is harmful for our health."

“SAJIDA and Lost Stock have supported me by providing essential foods and hygiene products, the food that I received has helped my family get by,” said Fatema.

Of the £35 cost to buy Lost Stock package, 37% is donated to Bangladeshi garment workers like Fatema - enough to support her and her family for a week. You can read more about our cost breakdown here.

This is just one example of the thousands of garment workers that have received aid. SAJIDA Foundation is so grateful for every order as “the support from Lost Stock is allowing us to support workers in this position and we’ve been blown away to have seen 105,000 weeks-worth of support so far. For that we say thank you to everyone who has bought a box.”

We would love Fatema's story to be unique, but too often over the last two months since we launched, we've heard of whole families facing destitution and living with no income due to the continued cancellation of stock orders and the reduction of manufacturing in garment factories. 

“The situation for many Bangladeshi garment workers, like Fatema, is only getting worse as lockdowns continue impacting factories and many workers continue having no work especially as future orders are now being cancelled as well,” Fazlul Hoque, SAJIDA Foundation's senior director of development programs explained.

The impact of Coronavirus is, unfortunately, is far from over and workers need our support now more than ever. If you haven’t already, and you are able, we hope you will consider buying a Lost Stock box to help many more garment workers and their families.

Keep following us on social media to hear more about the families your purchases are supporting.