Brooke Talbot learned a lot about business in the classroom at John Carroll University in Ohio. But her experience during a manufacturing immersion program offered by the Ignatian Solidarity Network brought her face to face with some of the people often just talked about in business textbooks—the workers at an apparel manufacturing site in North Carolina who put the clothes on her back.
Ms. Talbot, a business major, explained that the visit made classroom insights tangible. Speaking in an I.S.N.-produced video describing the program, she recalled classroom discussions about sustainability. “Can you actually achieve a triple bottom line [of people, planet and profit]?” J.C.U. students asked. The visit taught her it was possible. “The word I keep coming back to is hope,” she said.
The garment manufacturing industry produces 80 to 150 billion items of clothing every year, contributing to rising rates of global textile waste, according to the U.S. Slow Fashion Caucus. The International Labor Organization reports that many of the garments in circulation today were produced by women garment workers enduring precarious working conditions and outright exploitation.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor found that at one factory in California, garment workers were paid as little as $1.58 per hour. Other aspects of apparel production pose environmental problems to workers and the planet. Unregulated factories around the world pollute the air and local waterways with dyes and other chemicals.
Not content to accept this level of harm, organizations like the Ignatian Solidarity Network are speaking out. Since its founding in 2004, I.S.N. has addressed numerous domestic and global injustices head-on through social justice education and advocacy efforts. In 2021, after years of working with Catholic institutions from parishes to colleges to support ethical apparel manufacturing in purchasing practices, I.S.N. helped launch CEPA, the Catholic Ethical Purchasing Alliance.
CEPA is a corporate nonprofit partnership between I.S.N. and Ethix Merch, a promotional products supplier that relies on union labor and ethically sourced materials. The project connects Catholic institutions to apparel producers that adopt ethical business practices, balancing profit margins against respect for worker rights and care for creation, and offers guidance on integrating ethical products into commercial spaces on campus.
Transformation Through Immersion
CEPA also sponsors educational opportunities for campus leaders, from students to faculty and staff, through immersion experiences with apparel and merchandise production partners. Students and campus staff have the chance to “meet cotton farmers, people involved in the milling of fabric and thread; [in] cut, sew and assembly; and [in] dyeing processes,” and many real people involved in real apparel production, Christopher Kerr, I.S.N.’s executive director, explained.
In March 2022, CEPA hosted its first immersion experience. A cohort of students from John Carroll and Fordham universities gathered with CEPA staff in North Carolina, still home to the nation’s textile mill industry. The group visited The Industrial Commons, a network of manufacturers and workplace development programs, as well as a local cotton farm.
Alayna Milby, the ethical purchasing program coordinator for Ethix Merch, describes CEPA’s immersion program as a completely unique opportunity. Clothing manufacturing sites are usually off-limits to visitors, she explained. But CEPA participants “are able to go in and see the facility.” They also get to use an industrial sewing machine and join sewing tutorials.
“People have the perception that everything is automated now, that all of manufacturing is just big machines doing things and maybe humans are to the side pressing buttons,” Ms. Milby said. The immersions prove otherwise.
CEPA immersions show participants the success of ethical businesses, or in Ms. Talbot’s words, how “companies are achieving profits” and “staying in business, but they are also keeping an emphasis on the environment [and people].”
In the I.S.N.-produced video describing the program, John Carroll student Jenny Arnold said, “It’s really cool to see these cotton farms today and then yesterday we saw the cut-and-sew [garment making process] and we learned to sew…and then we [saw] a shirt come out of [the process]!
Since that first immersion, CEPA has sponsored additional trips. In August 2023, it facilitated another two-day immersion for institutional leaders in North Carolina.
In Morganton, representatives from Catholic schools and workers’ rights organizations gathered at The Industrial Commons. They toured numerous production sites and met with textile workers throughout the day.
One site, Opportunity Threads, is a worker-owned, cooperative textile and garment factory primarily operated by immigrants from Guatemala, and Material Return, an organization tackling textile waste through reuse, textile regeneration and other waste-reducing practices. These facilities—like TS Designs, a T-shirt manufacturing business in Burlington, N.C.—embody CEPA values, taking worker and environmental rights seriously throughout their supply chains.
CEPA staff find that these immersion experiences are powerful catalysts for change. “When we come to know the people and better know the planet,” Mr. Kerr said, “it changes our mindset around the products. It opens our eyes…this [shirt] is tied to many people and the earth.”
For many students the immersion experiences represent first encounters with alternative production methods and philosophies, according to Grace Adams, a CEPA coordinator. “And they can see [these production methods] working pretty successfully and in a way that’s honoring the dignity of workers and the planet.”
According to Ms. Adams, after learning about the possibilities of ethical apparel production, participants return from immersions eager to educate their institutions on value-aligned purchasing choices. “We largely find that [after immersions] students, faculty and staff are strong believers and are committed to ethical purchasing and can envision it happening on campus,” she said.
“A strong point of CEPA is that we’re able to identify the people who already care,” said Ms. Milby. “They just need a few more resources that we’re able to provide.”
CEPA has established collaborations with a number of Catholic colleges and universities. The University of Dayton, which has demonstrated commitments to ethical sourcing since the 1970s, expanded those commitments through a campus bookstore partnership with CEPA in 2022. Since then, more schools have signed on.
In 2024, Saint Louis University began its partnership with CEPA, in part due to support from students at S.L.U.’s Richard Chaifetz School of Business. “S.L.U. has really stood out where those business students have made a real commitment, going back [to their school] and having active steering committees for other goals, like bookstore partnerships at their spirit store,” Ms. Adams said. “That all began because of a staff member who also attended an immersion and then came back and really organized around that work.”
Towards a More Just Future
CEPA has so far established bookstore and campus partnerships with 17 Catholic institutions. CEPA’s presence at the Ignatian Family Teach-In For Justice, held in Washington in October 2024, emphasized the project’s hope to connect more Catholics students and institutions with ethical apparel and merchandise sourcing.
“We’re looking at the garment industry in Los Angeles and other potential partnerships that can bring in many different connections, both in Jesuit Catholic institutions on the West Coast and the larger manufacturing industry in that area,” Ms. Adams said.
At Ethix Merch, Ms. Milby believes informed consumers will drive demand for ethically sourced products. That will mean fair and living wages for more garment workers. “There is a need for this, for a shift in the promotional products [and apparel industries] for high schools, colleges and universities. The fact that we’ve been able to [pull] revenue away from those harmful industry suppliers really speaks to the fact that folks will spend more money and will do the extra work to find the products.”
Mr. Kerr sees the church’s universality guiding this work. “The Catholic Church’s common beliefs rooted in the Gospel create the opportunity for collective action,” he said. CEPA staff hope that their work will support positive changes in the domestic apparel industry, while inspiring Catholics—and all consumers of good will—to let faith values guide their personal and institutional choices.
