PPB February 2020

operations creates value for our company, our investors, our consumers, our employees and our communities." The money saved through cleaner manufacturing has allowed HanesBrands employees to help with school, hospital and orphanage refurbishment projects, beach cleanups and tree plantings, among other efforts. One such effort is a 10- year partnership with nonprofit Glasswing International to support at-risk youth in El Salvador, and HanesBrands has contributed more than $1.5 million to provide teachers with professional development, make upgrades to area schools, and offer educational, athletic and artistic afterschool programs for more than 5,000 children. Another project includes an education program established in 2009 in Honduras that allows employees fromHanesBrands facilities to attend classes, free of charge, at local schools. Nearly 3,000 employees in Latin America have earned their high school diploma or college degree through this program so far. A few years later, in 2011, HanesBrands started bringing volunteer medical staff from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center inWinston- Salem overseas to provide complimentary health care to areas surrounding Hanes factories in Latin America. A team of health care professionals— consisting of surgeons, doctors, anesthesiologists and medical students—have since traveled twice a year to perform eye, ear, nose and throat surgeries for employees and their families resulting in more than 950 surgeries and 5,400 medical consultations in total. And in 2019, HanesBrands helped bring the gift of entrepreneurship to female human trafficking survivors through nonprofit Free The Girls. In partnership with this organization, HanesBrands’s more than 200 retail stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico set out collection boxes for customers to donate new or gently-used bras for trafficking survivors in Mozambique, East Africa; Costa Rica, Central America, and El Salvador. The women there could then establish their own secondhand apparel business selling the bras, allowing them to earn a stable income, and were given complimentary financial planning and inventory management lessons, along with low-cost inventory replenishment. With so much work not only dedicated to making the company a success, but a gamechanger in the way manufacturers address social responsibility and eco- consciousness, HanesBrands has received high accolades for its work. Among other accolades, the company has been recognized by the UnitedWay with its Decade of Excellence Award, and by the U.S. EPA Star Energy program for 10 consecutive years. HanesBrands was also just one of nine international companies to be named by Prince Felipe of Spain during an awards ceremony in 2014 for CODESPA, a nonprofit that recognizes corporate social responsibility programs that work to absolve poverty. HanesBrands also earned an A- score in the CDP 2018 Climate Change Report, where it scored in the top six percent among nearly 7,000 participating companies, and achieved the highest score in the apparel industry. But the most admirable aspect of the work that HanesBrands has done is reflected in the people and communities that are helped, made possible by the generous donations from HanesBrands, and the time selflessly given by thousands of its employees. Danielle Renda is associate editor of PPB. Hanes has a program where doctors and health-care professionals from a Winston- Salem, North Carolina hospital, located near Hanes's headquarters, travel to Latin America twice a year, to provide health screenings and ear, eye, nose and throat surgeries for Hanesbrands employees and their families. HanesBr ands SOCIAL GOOD | FEBRUARY 2020 | 69 THINK