Badiri E-Academy’s open-source e-learning platform, founded by the Badiri Education and Development Academy – the education and capacity building arm of the UAE-based NAMA Women Advancement Establishment (NAMA), offers university students, women and men, aspiring and established entrepreneurs, working professionals, job seekers and a host of others, many useful online courses for free, covering a spectrum of disciplines from business and entrepreneurship to culture and self-improvement.

Four Million Threads: The Garment Workers of Bangladesh is a 25-minute documentary film in English with subtitles in Arabic, made by Jackie Hurwitz Baskin after the horrific tragedy of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013.

It is a part of the package of nine courses offered for free by Badiri E-Academy, and can be accessed online at https://www.badiriacademy.org/my-courses/lessons/52.

The documentary is about Monria, a 19-year-old girl who had to leave her home for a one-room flat in a city with a husband she barely knew. She works with 5,000 others in a factory, sewing zippers onto 180 sweaters every day. She is the first woman in her family ever to earn a salary, but it is barely enough to survive.

Monria’s life offers a window into countless others who are at the very bottom of Bangladesh’s booming garment trade – a complex world full of difficult choices and competing values.

The E-Academy mobile App, available on both Google Play and Apple Store, will enable you to access the course anytime, anywhere. Registration for all the courses are free.