Founding Supply Chain Transparency
GoodWeave was born in an Indian jail cell in the early 1990s. After reuniting a trafficked child weaver with his mother, future Nobel Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi
was outraged to see dozens of children with a labour broker. Imprisoned
overnight for causing a disturbance, he awoke with a simple idea;
follow the money. If companies and consumers refuse to buy products
tainted by child labour, producers can’t make them. Kailash reached out
to allies and GoodWeave International was officially established in
1997. It was the first organisation to use product labelling to
remediate a human rights issue.
Ending child labour is everyone’s
business. Sometimes the sweat of children is literally woven into the
products we buy every single day. Child labour taints global
manufacturing supply chains across sectors–from carpets and garments to
chocolate and tea.
In the carpet industry where GoodWeave has
worked for over 20 years, "carpet kids” sit at looms for up to 14 hours
per day, using sharp tools to weave carpets with no access to education.
Some are trafficked to loom sheds far from home – often under threat of
violence – to work off a family debt that can never be repaid on meagre
weaving wages.
Today, GoodWeave’s market-driven model includes company engagement, supply chain inspections, product certification, consumer awareness, victim rescue and remediation and preventative efforts such as educational programmes in at-risk communities. GoodWeave reaches layers of the supply chain that were previously invisible – making child labour a thing of the past.
