SOS Children’s Villages is an international nonprofit dedicated to safeguarding children’s rights worldwide. They believe that every child has the chance to simply be a child. However, the harsh reality is that millions of children, some as young as five years old, are forced to perform some of the world’s most dangerous jobs in industries such as mining, tobacco, and brickmaking.

The brief was to raise awareness around this matter.

We created a line of workwear in children's sizes to spotlight the horrors of child labor in three different industries; mining, tobacco and brick making. The Miner’s Pants came with reinforced knee-padding to crawl through cobalt mines. The Tobacco Shirt has a reinforced underarm section to prevent lacerations from machetes. The Brick Jacket has armpit ventilation to cool down the child when close to the searing hot furnaces. Each design choice told the story of the hazardous conditions that the children face every day.

A film captured the process of creating the clothes. The items were then put on display at a showroom, just around the corner from premium kids’ clothing stores. People could learn more, donate and even shop the collection at a website that looked just like high end workwear webshops. The price of each item represented the annual income of the child workers in their respective industries.

Most people don’t realize just how dreadful child labor can be within some industries. Many journalists have gone to great lengths to expose the industries and tell us these stories through documentaries and lengthy articles. But people have short attention spans, especially when it comes to horrible things. We wanted to tell these children’s stories in an instant, and draw people in, rather than having them look away. That’s why we decided to tell these children’s stories through durable and fashionable clothes that shouldn’t exist, for conditions that can’t be allowed.

We launched the campaign on April 7th with a print ad in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden’s largest newspaper) and by opening our eCommerce site, where people could learn more about the issue, donate to our cause and even buy the clothes. On the website, and on YouTube, we included a longer film that told the story of how three different pieces of workwear were made to combat child labor within three different industries: mining, tobacco and brick making. On social media, we used cutdowns of our film to interest people in the campaign.

On April 8th, we opened our physical showroom in the most family-friendly neighborhood in Stockholm, right next to other premium kids’ clothing stores, where people could see, feel and touch the collection. This was followed up by 3 further ads in the same newspaper.

By raising awareness around child labour through a workwear line, a pop-up shop and a webshop, we exposed a whole new crowd to the horrors of child labour within the mining, tobacco and brick making industries.

During the first week of the campaign, the sales alone generated enough to save 50 children from working within the worst industries on earth. We see this as a success, because the collection is tiny (around 24 pieces in total) and the items are very expensive. They were never meant as a primary source of revenue.

During the first month, we managed to get 10 million impressions (roughly the population of Sweden), with a media budget of 20 euro, which was the cost of running the website, through earned reach.

For more info about our results see ”Confidential information for the jury.”