Pumpkintastic!

Hello there pants fans!

There’s a tang in the air and it definitely feels like autumn is here and winter is around the corner. We’re had our first frosts here in Southampton and there was a fun pumpkin festival locally this weekend where I bought bright orange pumpkin bread!  Hope you are all warm and well where you are.

The work we do here with our team is as much about teaching employability skills as it is about making and selling our gorgeous pants. They are the vehicle, if you like, through which we provide the training and support that we do. Over the next few weeks we are focusing on precision and paying attention to the sewing machines.

Some of our machines look a lot like a sewing machine you might have at home. Others look very different and these do the more complex work that we need. Many of them have four threads coming in from the top and a bobbin, too, and we tread a fine line between wanting the team to understand them and be able to fix them, and not letting non experts loose on expensive bits of kit and damaging both the machine and their own confidence. When we pull out a bit of time, such as now, to do deep training, we are able to spend time on these tricky technical things. We think that having our team understand how to fix and maintain the machines they use will increase their feeling of ‘ownership’ of their tools and this as their space, and that in turn will add to their feelings of responsibility and pride.

I was in London last Thursday for one of the most amazing events I’ve ever been part of. October 11^th was the first ever ‘Day of the Girl’ and I was asked to go ‘speed mentoring’ young girls on the London Eye at the eye watering 7.30 AM. It was great fun to meet the girls and the other mentors (PR guru Lynne Franks was wearing our pants, BBC presenter and documentary maker Cherry Healey has said she’d like to help us) but sad to be reminded that girls around the world are still routinely excluded for education and therefore control of their own futures. I came back more determined than ever to do more and better for the women we seek to support.

Your purchase helps us do just that so a sincere thank you – by buying our pants you’re helping us make a real difference but also getting yourself something lovely I think that’s a win win – hope you do too.

Very best wishes

 

Becky and the Who Made Your Pants? Team

Filed under: Uncategorized, Cherry Healey, day of the girl, lynne franks, Pants, pumpkins, southbank centre, teaching, training