Ethical lingerie helps women in South America gain entrepreneurial skills

Naja provides Colombian women with marketable skills and employs them to help create its luxury products.

Regular readers of Springwise may remember our recent coverage of Canada’s World Housing, the company that donates new housing to locations that need them every time a customer purchases a property. Now Naja is aiming to do the same for underwear, providing Colombian women with marketable skills and employs them to help create its luxury products.

The Naja range includes a variety of bras and panties available in different prints, using Peruvian Pima cotton, nylon lace and even memory foam for its bras. Despite the use of luxury materials and attention to detail, items cost around USD 10-20 for panties and USD 50 for bras. Through its partnership with the Golondrinas Foundation, it has created its own nonprofit called Underwear for Hope. Through the scheme, it invests Naja profits into teaching single women in the most poverty-stricken areas of Colombia to sew. After they’ve been trained up, Naja employs them to give them a regular income. The video below explains a bit more about the company:

Are there other industries where this model could be easily adopted?