Our partners GoodWeave secure funding to further their good work

Producing beautiful rugs with high quality materials by expert weavers is important to us.  But what’s even more important is that our rugs are made using absolutely no child labour whatsoever.  That’s why we partnered with GoodWeave.

GoodWeave is an anti child-labour and anti-forced labour labelling scheme.  Since its inception in 1995, it has made major in-roads into reducing child labour by 80% in the South Asian rug industry. So far, their programmes have rescued over 3,000 children from working the looms, and prevented thousands more from entering the factories. Those rescued from working are reunited with their families or taken to live at one of our sponsored rehabilitation centres.

Goodweave also run vital educational and welfare programmes for poor weaving families and their children – providing pre-school day care for small children who would otherwise spend their days hanging around factories waiting for their parents to finish work.

Photo by U. Roberto Romano

GoodWeave has been named as one of ten successful bidders for a share of the first Modern Slavery Innovation Fund (MSIF), totalling up to £6m, initiated by the UK Government.This new investment will fund the expansion of the labelling scheme into new product sectors and directly help more UK companies and leading high street brands to effectively tackle modern slavery in their supply chains.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates 168 million children and 21 million forced labourers toil in the world today. Standard corporate compliance and auditing programmes fail to help the vast majority of victims, because their reach remains within factories. Meanwhile, the most exploited workers are virtually invisible at the bottom of the chain in difficult-to-trace locations, including cottage industries and home workers. This situation is typical of the handmade rug sector in India and Nepal, where GoodWeave already operates. The grant will allow GoodWeave to fast-track developments into other manufacturing sectors in India and Nepal and help more UK companies establish a real-time map of their supply chains, from factories right down to home-workers.

A GoodWeave affiliated school – photo by U. Roberto Romano

Always look out for the GoodWeave label when buying a rug – Photo by U. Roberto Romano.

The funds are a major affirmation and boost to GoodWeave’s work and we’re delighted to share their good news.