DOHA: The Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz AB recently announced a new five-year project with Unicef called “All for Children,” backed by a $4.5m donation from H&M, to help improve the lives of children in one of the most disadvantaged cotton-growing communities in the world.

The project’s aim is to ensure children’s rights, to lift children out of work and into education, while also providing them with health and nutrition care, as well as build a protective environment to help prevent child labour. H&M customers can help by buying an exclusive bag designed by Sonia Rykiel.

The project is focused on the children in the Salem and Dharmapuri districts in Tamil Nadu, on the southern tip of India.

The project is the longest and most wide-reaching initiative H&M has ever undertaken with Unicef. It will work on concurrent strategies including child protection structures, education, community mobilisation, social protection and health and nutrition services. It will focus on children from vulnerable families and children who are working in cotton fields and in other areas of employment.

To raise funds for Unicef, Sonia Rykiel has designed a bag made from organic cotton exclusively for H&M. Available in approximately 1,500 stores from December 5, 30 percent of the price of the bag will be donated to Unicef. It is the first in a series of bags designed to raise funds for Unicef and H&M’s All for Children project.

“I am really pleased that after years of planning and research, the All for Children project is now off the ground… Over the next five years H&M and Unicef will work together to create a better and healthier future for the children in this region, preventing child labour and promoting access to good education,” says H&M’s CSR Manager Ingrid Schullström.

Meanwhile, H&M is launching a new line of coveted Jimmy Choo shoes, handbags and accessories on November 19, and will also display on December 5 Sonia Rykiel bags exclusively for its children’s project.

H&M will launch on November 19 the red carpet, shoe, handbag and accessories brand, Jimmy Choo, in its stores here. Around 200 H&M stores worldwide will display the British accessory brand Jimmy Choo’s line of shoes for the store, a major coup for H&M as the “holy trinity” of couture shoes – Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin – has remained impenetrable to the high-low trend.

The Jimmy Choo for H&M collection brings some of the world’s most coveted shoes and accessories as well as a limited range of women’s clothing. Also in the collection is clothing, shoes, bags and accessories for men.

Since its launch in 1996, Jimmy Choo has been such a phenomenal success that the brand name has become part of popular culture.

In Hollywood, Jimmy Choo shoes have become a red-carpet essential, and have been worn at the Oscars by winners such as Cate Blanchett, Halle Berry and Hilary Swank among many other actresses.THE PENINSULA