I am a big fan of H&M. It’s not just because I like the fresh design, but to a large extent because I had researched the company’s sustainability goals and activities and I was impressed with its efforts. (I have detailed them pretty extensively in this blog post here.) Now proving their drive for sustainability once again, the global fashion brand has launched a new initiative called H&M Conscious Foundation. In this post I would like to introduce it to you and urge you to join the sustainability movement together with H&M.

The H&M Conscious Foundation is a global non-profit foundation with the mission to “reach beyond H&M´s value chain, and contribute to positive long-term change for people and communities where H&M operates.” After consulting global experts in the field, including for example Sir Richard Branson (whom I am a big fan of too), H&M developed a list of five most immediate global challenges: safeguarding natural resources, strengthening women, reduction of poverty through self-employment, clean water and education.

Of those five, H&M is going to focus on the three most critical ones as defined by us, the people most affected. H&M has therefore launched a website, where you and I can vote. And this is where you come in! Just head over to http://makeadifference.hm.com/, have a look at the initiatives and vote for those that you think H&M should support. You’ve only got until 29 October, so hurry up!

Here some shocking facts to get you thinking:

• The levels of CO2 emissions are almost 50% higher than in 1990.
• Children of educated mothers are less likely to suffer from hunger and 50% more likely to live past the age of five.
• 1.2 billion people are living in extreme poverty. Of these, 7 in 10 are women and girls.
• Roughly 1 in 10 people on earth do not have access to safe water with almost 2,000 children die every day from water-related diseases.
• Throughout the world more than 57 million children of primary school age do not attend school and 123 million youths lack basic reading and writing skills.

The five challenges are equally important to secure a sustainable future. However, for one organisation alone it is simply not possible to fight all sustainability megaforces – that would be doing a lot of different things at the same time without really achieving much on either of them. This is why I quite like how H&M is planning to focus its efforts and resources on just three initiatives (still a lot!) because that way it is far more likely to make a real difference in those areas.

I also like how they are involving the general public in this so important decision that concerns all of us. Addressing these three challenges is H&M’s promise to make a long-term positive impact for people and communities around the world and I look forward to seeing how the foundation is going to run this great project.

I hope to see more companies starting such programmes aiming to tackle the pressing sustainability issues we are facing. The future is going to be truly challenging and it is in our hands to shape it.

UPDATE:

The three initiatives that the public chose are:

• Strengthening women - foster opportunities for women mainly through education and economic empowerment
• Clean water - provide safe access to clean water and sanitation
• Education - champion every girl and boy’s equal right to education.