Dartmouth Events

Student coffee hour with Kalpona Akter, Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity

Kalpona Akter co-founded the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity & has done more to unveil the killing conditions under which 21st century clothing is made than perhaps anyone.

Friday, May 26, 2017
3:30pm – 4:30pm
Morrison Commons, Rockefeller Center
Intended Audience(s): Students-Graduate, Students-Undergraduate
Categories: Free Food

RSVP here.

Kalpona Akter was a former child worker in Bangladesh’s garment factories, starting as a seamstress at age 12. She organized her fellow garment workers to demand fair labor rights, enduring threats and retribution and finally termination from the factory at age 16. She co-founded the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and has done more to unveil the killing conditions under which 21st century clothing is made than perhaps anyone else. As Executive Director of the BCWS, Akter continues to educate works about their rights and to campaign for fair wages, garment factory safety, and the right to form labor unions and collectively bargain. She has been recognized with numerous human rights awards, including the Human Rights Watch’s 2016 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism. She was one of the prime movers in the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Accord, a landmark 2013 agreement now signed by 220 global fashion and retail companies, binding them to accept independent safety inspections of factories in their global supply chains and to make necessary repairs. Akter will speak about the work yet to be done and the lives that have already been saved by the groundbreaking Accord.

For more information, contact:
Joanne Needham
603-646-2207

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.