With my passion for fashion and the branding and marketing industry, I wanted to find a way to combine both. ZDHC was my answer to that! A place where fashion, marketing, branding, and strategy all come together with the bonus of their huge involvement in the sustainability industry. It was not easy to find an internship that combines my interests and it did take me a while to get what I wanted. I believe that it was important for me to be a part of an organization that can keep me interested and also help me follow my passion to an extent, because I would like to enjoy the work I am doing, and also enjoy what I learn along the way.
ZDHC is a non-profit organization that has been around for 10-15 years and its goal is to make the textile and footwear industry sustainable in each supply chain step. In my position as a communications intern, I was in charge of social media, content management, partly event management, taking care of the newsletters, the website news and blog updates, as well as helping other team members with simple tasks like creating surveys, analyzing the results and also attending various events. I am halfway through my internship right now and I have already been in charge of the many tasks mentioned above and also some additional tasks that come along the way. It has given me a great opportunity to learn about the industry, and also the use of many different tools.
Impact Day is the most important day for ZDHC in terms of stakeholder interaction. Once a year, ZDHC celebrates Impact Day, which is filled with representatives from various stakeholder brands that gather together to hear different keynote speakers in the industry talk about new advancements, new methods and technologies, reporting on different viewpoints, and so on. From ZDHC’s side, it is a crucial day as they get to report their progress and their plans for the long term and short term to their stakeholders. This is important as this is a moment for stakeholders to re-evaluate their position with ZDHC and whether they would like to continue being a part of this programme or not.
Moving towards my contribution and experience to this big day, I would say that it was new to me how much planning and coordination is required for an event like this which lasts for about 10 hours. When I was interviewed, my boss mentioned this day and said that the weeks leading up to this day would be the busiest weeks of my internship, but I did not understand how different my days could look when an event was upcoming compared to a normal day in my office life! Overall, I learned a lot about how an event like this must be organised and all the steps that need to be taken in the weeks leading up to this. I was in charge of the promotional activities for this event, creating agendas and brochures, staying in touch with our stakeholders to keep track of their issues regarding ticket purchases, voucher codes and so on. It was not an easy month, but I got through it and I feel like it makes my other days feel easy compared to this month. This was all before the event took place. The day of the event was quite enjoyable as I got an opportunity to be in a room with many well-known people in the industry who have been working towards different goals for such a long time. It was a great learning experience and nice to see how the different industries can combine as well as how different organisations see things. This event as well as the past 3 months have also peaked my interest in the sustainability sector and helped me understand the impact of this industry on our environment. This is something I would like to be a part of in the future!
At my halfway stage of the internship, I would say my favourite parts have been attending events as I feel like you get to visibly see the output of your work as well as the opportunity to meet new people!