#gnhinternship2015

With this post I am ending my internship experience 2015! It has been some really interesting months and a great experience.

Now I am all set and ready to start working on my BA thesis, which I am looking forward to.

Thanks for following my blog!

Kind regards,

As mentioned before, the Fashion Summit is coming up and my internship host asked if Rikke and I could assist in developing an index of designers that have marked themselves in the industry with aspects of sustainability in their work. It was quite a challenge to pinpoint the designers from the Business of Fashion 500 index, since that webpage only shows the most influential persons – not necessarily the most “green” persons.  The list that our internship host needed was to find potential key speakers for the Fashion Summit, which unfortunately is confidential.

The experience at DAFI has showed me how they as an organization work with sustainability. With the help from DAFI, the members have taken some great steps towards greener productions and created a movement within the area.

This internship experience has moved some thoughts about applying public health into major textile industries and inspired me to think really broad in terms of how to work within my profession. It has also given me the insights of how organizations may benefit from taking in interns/workers from other educational backgrounds to create an interdisciplinary working environment, which may bring in new aspects. However, I still plan to do a master degree in order to be more competent within my area of interest.¨

The internship has inspired to some interesting research questions, which are both relevant to my study programme and upcoming BA thesis.

1. What are the implications of the high chemical use in the textile industry for human health?

2. How does chemical use in the textile affect the local environment at production site and the environment in consumption countries?

3. How do women in the reproductive age in Denmark perceive the health impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) through textile wear? Where are the target group confronted with information about the topic?

The people around me are all very engaged and eager about their field - they all seem to be experts on their area! They all possess skills within teamwork and multidisciplinary working approaches, which is very inspiring and much in line with my own study program. Another dominant skill they possess is the ability to work independently and do all sorts of “mini-researches” to keep up with the newest updates and initiating new projects. Due to the limit resources, they seem to put a lot of personal time in their work and are very flexible with their working hours. This is a very inspiring skill and working style and really shows how much of their own personality they put into their job.

As mentioned in the previous blog post, Suzi is the project manager of the Fabric Source Library and a key person within the Nordic project, NICE. Rikke and I found it therefore very interesting to conduct an interview with her in order to get her personal and hands-on experience of the library and project.

We spend some time on developing the interview guide, which was approved by Suzi prior to our interview date. After the interview, we transcribed and got the following main points from Suzi:

The main challenges were the minimum requirements for the suppliers, in terms of price and set-up cost.

DAFI is merely a facilitating actor between suppliers and buyers - it is therefore not DAFIs responsibility to ensure that factories live up to the standards they claim.

The general feedback from the textile industry was positive and many brands were interested in converting into a greener production. Approximately 2.200 brands visited the library and many are continuous users of the library and advancing in sustainable production