Written by Cassell Ferere originally published on Forbes

September 10th, 2020, the Slow Factory Foundation is opening admission for a free, online educational program. This Open Education opportunity will be taught by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Minority Ethnic teachers for BIPOC students.

"Open Education is created by and offering free classes for Black Brown, Indigenous, and minority ethnic folks working in Fashion, who wouldn’t have access to this type of information and sustainability literacy.

The program is looking at fashion’s impact socially, economically, and from an environmental standpoint and offers a curriculum of applied knowledge, meaning: information and best practices that can be applied immediately within the industry giving our community a cultural advantage and a way to being hired and needed within the industry.

Open Edu also facilitates paid apprenticeship with brands like adidas, Stella McCartney, WWAKE, Studio 189, and Collina Strada to name a few." - Céline Semaan, Founder, Slow Factory Foundation. 

Founded by sustainable fashion advocate Céline Semaan, this new installment from the Slow Factory Foundation is granting free environmentally responsible and culturally diverse information toward critical advancement for the fashion industry. Educators who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, and from Minority Ethnic groups will break down sustainability, racial injustice, and the many avenues those cover in fashion.

One instructor and writer, Aja Barber has good reason to promote the program's curriculum. Barber states,

"I think that Slow Factory has been doing good and important work about sustainability and colonization for far longer than many. For so long many were afraid to even touch these topics and appreciate the way Slow Factory has always addressed these topics fearlessly." 

Figuring out sustainability can be a difficult challenge for most. It’s why we educate ourselves daily on things that make life simpler, healthier, and fruitful. With a focus on social reform, the program extends into black and brown relations within the fashion industry. 

Instructor and fashion editor Sophia Li explains her reason for signing up as, "I joined this initiative because if you fundamentally believe and advocate for a society that is inclusive, representative, spiritual, and just then education is usually the answer." Li believes in "striving for the nuance for topics that are usually presented with binary solutions." She continues, "education is liberation; this is why it's important for Open Edu to exist and why I joined and championed this initiative."

Ideally, participants are urged to find solutions to the issues. Semaan says, "the main takeaway would be to obtain a level of understanding and creative thinking at the intersection of social and environmental justice that will provide our participants the ability to think up solutions that are climate positive with racial justice at the heart of their strategies."

Li expands on the notion, "one of the biggest enemies in the sustainable space is an absolutist mindset: a simplistic solution or binary approach to complex topics writing off things as either "good" or "bad" as opposed to a spectrum of answers."

Slow Factory is the place to improve your literacy in sustainability through a holistic and human-centered approach. Delivering technological, culturally diverse, and fashion-based curriculum to develop products, resources, and certifications for the industry. It’s the university built to up your game in living a sustainable life while becoming even more cognitive of our environment. The goal is to gain a cultural understanding of "regenerative design and circularity, only then can we effectively close the loop from consumption and manufacturing to waste and agriculture," Semaan explains. 

Semaan also references who should want to take part in this program. "These classes are open to all, anyone interested in working in fashion or who is already working in this industry and wants to gain additional knowledge at the intersection of human rights and environmental justice," she answers.

Geographer Teju Adisa-Farrar is eager to dish out her knowledge as an instructor with a unique perspective on fashion sustainability. Farrar emphasizes, "we need to focus on increasing awareness of interconnected injustices to create alternative futures that are truly sustainable and decolonial..."

Adisa-Farrar continues, "centering accessible education to advance structural change is a primary focus of this initiative, and it is what I aim to do in my work as a geographer and writer. Joining Slow Factory’s Open Ed Initiative felt like an effective way to expand the community of people I can reach who want to change their industries for the better."

Through a public fundraiser and a partnership with adidas, this program is available for the systemically disenfranchised and those with limited access to the fashion industry. As sustainable education is diverse on its own, Slow Factory's educational program will cover chapters in food, fashion, labor and racial justice, transparency, and greenwashing, as well as manufacturing and demanufacturing.  

Farrar goes on to mention,

"my focus is on environmental and cultural equity. This means connecting the dots between environmental, cultural, and political injustices to support climate justice, decentralized regional economies, wealth redistribution, and Black liberation. As a Slow Factory Open Ed instructor, I will take a social geographies-approach that centers space, place, and identity in discussions on justice-centered sustainability and regenerative practices." 

As a for the valedictorians of the program, Slow Factory facilitating paid apprenticeship after the program ends with names like Stella McCartney and Collina Strada is sure to be worth participating. Slow Factory's past program garnered about 1500 participants. While admission opens up its registry for all who are interested, the free course will start on September 18 and will be a 2 to 3 class-a-month curriculum through November. 

Sophia Li concludes, "Even if fashion consumers don't take this course, I hope they remember the lessons we all individually and collectively learned from this pandemic. The lesson that human behavior is not impossible to change. The lesson that we don't need to consume/buy 10x a day to navigate through a capitalistic-focused society. The lesson of what a 'want' vs. a 'need'."

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