Program areas at GoodWeave International
GoodWeave is disrupting the cycle of child labor, slavery, illiteracy, poverty, and climate change through the following interrelated strategies:Harness Market Forces: From the garment factories of Bangladesh to the artisanal cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are 160 million child laborers today. GoodWeave employs a market-driven model to end child labor.See Schedule O for Continuation
Create Educational Opportunities for Children: In 2023, GoodWeave directly provided access to education for 52,684 children GoodWeave teams in India and Nepal have continued to innovate program design, introducing education programs ranging from daycare and early childhood education programs in Nepal to establishing entire child-friendly communities (or CFCs) in dozens of informal worker communities across northern India. While the implementation model, scope, and scale from community to community varies, the strategy behind CFCs remains the same. See Schedule O for Continuation
Establish Transparent and Clean Supply Chains:Inspection, Monitoring and Certification:GoodWeave certification offers the best assurance that rug, home textile, and apparel and fashion jewelry products are made without the use of child labor. GoodWeave's inspection system is the only one that reaches all levels of the supply chain in informal manufacturing. In 2023, GoodWeave's national inspection teams in South Asia reached 117,817 workers through monitoring visits to facilities, which also resulted in more than 2.64 million rugs and home textiles certified as child-labor-free.See Schedule O for Continuation
Other Programs:Improve Conditions for all Workers and Promote Best Practice:Addressing child labor effectively requires more than simply prohibiting the practice as a matter of law, policy, or standard. One important part of the equation is ensuring that adult workers are better compensated and better treated within their workplaces. GoodWeave seeks to improve conditions for workers, and in 2023, extended rights and a range of other services - such as health and financial literacy through its programming in supply chains - to 117,817 workers.The organization also conducts advocacy, promotes best practices, and builds capacity within other organizations based on our model. Additionally, we conduct research and serve as a thought leader to help inform and educate companies, governments, and other supply chain actors about how to address child labor and its root causes effectively.In 2023, GoodWeave continued to participate in numerous high-level events and advocacy platforms to promote the importance of ending child labor and modern slavery through deep due diligence practices that include full supply chain mapping, application of strong human rights standards, ensuring remedy to rights holders, and addressing root causes. These included speaking roles or side events at conferences such as the United Nations Business and Human Rights Forum in Geneva.In 2023, GoodWeave also made progress on a four-year project funded by FBK entitled "Child Labor in Subcontracted Ready-Made Garment Supply Chains in Bangladesh: From impact assessment to holistic due diligence." Partnering with apparel brands C&A and Delta Galil, as well as the Bangladesh Labor Foundation, the goal is to research the presence, risk, and root causes of child labor in subcontracted ready-made-garment (RMG) supply chains in Bangladesh. In 2023, GoodWeave concluded its long-standing collaboration with Humanity United and Global Fairness Initiative on the Better Brick Nepal (BBN) program, transferring our methodologies to the brick-making sector in Nepal where the rate of forced and child labor is staggering. GoodWeave achieved significant progress establishing sustainable structures and building the capacity of key stakeholders to ensure that good labor practices are demonstrated and spread throughout the brick industry, and that the positive impacts of the program continue beyond the close of the project.