Who founded GoodWeave, and when?
GoodWeave (formerly known as RugMark) was founded by Kailash Satyarthi, then Chairman of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude. After many years of rescuing Indian children from bonded labor in the carpet industry, only to see them replaced by others, Satyarthi wanted to create a market incentive for manufacturers to stop exploiting children on an industry-wide basis. GoodWeave was formally established in 1994 by a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, businesses, government entities and multilateral groups like UNICEF. The first carpets bearing the organization’s label were exported from India at the beginning of 1995, mainly to Germany. Since then, more than 7.5 million carpets have been sold through the GoodWeave program.
