Company C to Host Faces of Freedom Exhibit in High Point

February 25, 2010  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Rugs on February 26, 2010 Rug supplier Company C will host RugMark USA's Faces of Freedom Photography exhibit in its showroom during the Spring High Point Market in April.

The exhibit spotlights child labor and the South Asian Rug Industry. RugMark is a non-profit organization working to end exploitative child labor in South Asia's handmade carpet industry through the GoodWeave certification program. The U.S. fund for UNICEF is the exhibit's national co-sponsor and Company C serves as a regional host for the exhibit.

Faces of Freedom is a nationally traveling  photography exhibit. This collection of photographs, taken by documentary photographer U. Roberto Romano in South Asia, depicts both the horrors of child labor and the hopeful faces of children the GoodWeave program has saved from the looms.

Company C has been a GoodWeave member since 2006.

€œBringing Faces of Freedom to all of its retail stores shows how committed Company C is to ending child labor in the rug industry,€ said Nina Smith, executive director of RugMark USA. €œNot only are they helping rescue children, they are helping us educate consumers about the powerful impact their purchases can have.€

By building awareness about child labor in the handmade rug industry and creating a certification system for child-labor-free rugs, RugMark has catalyzed a profound shift in the marketplace. Since 1994, more than 5.5 million carpets bearing the GoodWeave label (and its predecessor, the RugMark label) have been sold in Europe and North America, and the number of South Asian children trapped in illegal and exploitative carpet-making work has dropped from 1 million to 250,000.

Faces of Freedom has been exhibited at more than 20 venues including the Miami International Airport, the World Bank, and the Russell Senate Rotunda. Click here to view the full collection of images and tour calendar.