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10/30/2009 Miami Airport Set to Unveil Art Exhibition With a Purpose |
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Miami Airport Set to Unveil Art Exhibition With a Purpose‘Faces of Freedom’ Addresses Child Labor Crisis in South AsiaNew label to reflect more rigorous social and environmental standards, ensures child-labor-free rugs. Miami-Dade County, FL – Faces of Freedom: Behind the Looms, a photography exhibition documenting efforts to end child labor in South Asia’s carpet industry, will be on display at Miami International Airport’s South Terminal Art Gallery beginning Thursday, November 19 through April 2010. The collection of photos, developed by the Washington, DC-based organization RugMark USA in conjunction with award-winning photographer U. Roberto Romano, takes you behind the looms and inside the lives of “carpet kids” – children illegally employed to weave carpets in India, Nepal and Pakistan. The exhibition also features a breath-taking selection of child-labor-free, hand-spun, hand-carded and hand-knotted Himalayan wool carpets by Odegard, a leader in contemporary carpet design with showrooms across the U.S., to include Miami. RugMark, an international nonprofit organization working to end child labor and offer educational opportunities to children in South Asia, assures that the carpets are child-labor-free through its GoodWeave™ certification. Faces of Freedom is the latest exhibit in the 4,200-square-foot South Terminal Gallery, located on the fourth level above the international greeters lobby for concourses H and J. University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala, a former Peace Corps volunteer, will be the keynote speaker at the unveiling of Faces of Freedom on November 19, and members of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of South Florida will be honored for their efforts against child labor around the world. RugMark USA Executive Director Nina Smith and Odegard Founder and President Stephanie Odegard will also speak at the event. An estimated 250,000 children in South Asia continue to work in inhumane conditions portrayed in these photos. Children aged four to 14 are kidnapped or sold into debt, bondage or forced labor, where they suffer a myriad of physical and mental abuses. The GoodWeave certification program works to end exploitative child labor by inspecting weaving looms and providing rehabilitation and education for former child weavers. Experts estimate that child labor in South Asia’s carpet looms has dropped by two-thirds since the launch of RugMark in 1994. In conjunction with the exhibit’s national co-sponsor, U.S. Fund for UNICEF, Faces of Freedom is being hosted in venues across North America 2009 to herald the progress that has been made in the fight against child labor worldwide. Venues include the Russell Senate Rotunda and the World Bank in Washington, DC; UNICEF Headquarters in New York; the Minneapolis Children’s Theater; and the San Francisco Design Center. To learn more, visit FacesofFreedom.GoodWeave.org or press kit at www.GoodWeave.org/uploads/GoodWeave_Exhibition_Press_Kit.pdf. ###
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