GoodWeave’s social programs serve survivors and address the root causes of child labor. In the countries where we work, GoodWeave tailors interventions to the context. Over the years, we have offered early childhood education, non-formal education and bridge schooling, and community-based school sponsorship. Through our center-based rehabilitation we have also made a second home for children who desperately need one. Casework and counseling for children and families are integral to our approach.

Schoolrooms, Not Looms

Our aim is to reach children before they ever have to come face-to-face with an inspector in a factory. Education is key to achieving this goal. With that in mind, we have directly provided educational opportunities to more than 46,180 children since 1994. Equally important are efforts that increase access to education for children in vulnerable worker communities, collaborating with stakeholders and working alongside government schools and programs.

Our educational initiatives represent the outgrowth of small-scale, targeted programs originally tailored to the needs of communities directly linked to GoodWeave-inspected supply chains. These include daycare and early-childhood education centers for the children of adult workers, as well as school-sponsorship programs for children who were identified as high risks for exploitation and trafficking.

In Nepal, GoodWeave operates a unique home for children who have been rescued from work, called Hamro Ghar (Our Home).  While we make every effort to reunite rescued children with their families, it is not always possible to facilitate this in the near-term, especially for trafficked children. This center-based rehabilitation effort ensures children have food, education and a true home.  Many of the children from Hamro Ghar advance multiple grade levels in a short period of time and successfully advance to our secondary school partner, the Laboratory School in Kathmandu. Likewise, we run early childhood education centers for the children of adults employed in rug weaving, which puts children on an early track for learning and enables mothers, many of who are sole income earners, to focus on their work.  Community-based education programs ensure former child laborers and those at-risk of child labor stay in school until they are legal working age or beyond. 

In India, the GoodWeave-supported Child-friendly Community (CFC) program is resulting in increased enrollment and learning outcomes in informal worker communities, as well as measurable, long-term government support for improved schooling. Today, programs such as these are necessarily expanding in lockstep with the growth of supply chains that have been brought under the GoodWeave banner.