Trade As One

As many of you will know, our T-Shirts are made from Fair Trade, organic cotton from India. Our partners in India, HAE Now, are doing fantastic work restoring dignity and stability to cotton farmers in the region. What many of you may not know is that the screen printing on each shirt tells a story as well. All of our printing is done by Ashbury Images in San Francisco, a youth development social enterprise that provides paid employment, job training, and supportive services to at-risk youth recovering from poverty, substance abuse and homelessness. They do wonderful work, and we’re proud to partner with them. Today we’re featuring Stephanie’s story, one of many Ashbury Images success stories. We think it’s a fantastic example of what Fair Trade is all about.

Stephanie’s Story

“I said to myself: this is an open door; I need to take this chance and take a shot at it. It was like a break in the struggle - and I just took the opportunity immediately. And I succeeded.”
Looking back at her life before she started working with Ashbury Images, Stephanie can hardly believe how far she has come.
“Before I started working with Ashbury, my life was horribly unpredictable. I had just gotten out of a shelter and gotten on food stamps. I didn’t have a high school education. I would spend most days just wandering around the city. It was kind of an empty existence.”
Listening to her talk her about her life now, “a complete turnaround” almost seems an understatement.
Stephanie came to Ashbury Images in 2008 and was placed in a six month, job-training internship. Eager to grasp her opportunity, she impressed her managers with her hard work and positive attitude, always looking to learn new things and take on extra responsibilities.
“It was like a big hole in my life that just got completed with this job. It made me feel really good that I could actually do a job - it was really enlightening and gave me a lot of self-esteem.”
So impressed were her managers at Ashbury Images that, once she had completed her internship, they offered her a permanent, full-time job. Now supervising other youth interns, Stephanie is a role model to show what they too can achieve.
Though rightly proud of her own achievements, Stephanie is quick to acknowledge the support that Ashbury Images provided along the way.
“I had a case manager - Carin - she worked with me not only at work but also to get my GED. I had dropped out of high school early and she helped me pass my tests to get a high school equivalency. Sometimes, when you’ve been in a lifestyle like mine, you need that person to keep pushing you, to keep you going and to give you reasons why you should. And anytime I felt like I had a problem at work, I could let her know and she was able to put it in perspective for me and help me work through it.”
“If I hadn’t had that person to support me along the way, I think I would have ended up not knowing what to do, having nowhere to turn and having just a bunch of problems and not seeing any solutions. I might have just stopped coming here. And that would have been awful. I’d still be angry and depressed and feel no self-worth at all.”
Despite all the changes that she has already made to her life, Stephanie is not yet ready to rest on her laurels.
“I feel like I’ve been taking so many baby steps for so long that I need to continue on that road. So I’m going to go to City College and enroll in some classes - maybe just one class a week on a Saturday would be fine. Anything from banjo lessons to art to chemistry or engineering classes!”
Like everything else that she has tried since coming to Ashbury Images, we’ve no doubt that Stephanie will succeed at that too.