GoodWeave Founder Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Furniture World News Desk on 10/16/2014

GoodWeave’s founder, Kailash Satyarthi, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. He shares this honor with Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban for campaigning on behalf of girls’ education.

In the announcement from Oslo, committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said: “Children must go to school and not be financially exploited. It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.”

Originally on track to be an engineer, Kailash became so concerned for the welfare of children that he began risking his life to conduct rescue raids freeing boys and girls who were torn from their families and exploited as cheap labor.

Following one such raid, Satyarthi personally returned a trafficked boy to his home village. When he went to board a train home, Satyarthi saw dozens of children destined for the carpet looms in the hands of middlemen. Arrested for causing a disturbance at the station, Satyarthi suddenly realized that the situation required a larger solution. (You can hear him describe this “a-ha” moment here.) Where international conventions and local laws fell short, the global marketplace had muscle.

This realization was not only the beginning of the birth of GoodWeave, but a turning point for the child labor movement. And today, with this morning’s announcement, the 168 million children who still toil in obscurity – their plight took the world stage.

Remarking on this achievement, Kailash said: “If with my humble efforts the voice of tens of millions of children in the world who are living in servitude is being heard, congratulations to all.”