Akkas was sold into bondage as a young child, forced to trade his dreams and his education for hard labor and constant hunger. Today, his laughter tells a different story. It's a story of hope, mirrored in the lives of thousands of other children whose lives have been transformed.
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RugMark’s 2007 Annual Report is here! Read more about Akkas’ remarkable journey, and how RugMark has ensured that he and over 3,200 other children are going to school instead of laboring on the looms.
Read about children who are now enjoying their childhoods. Instead of spending long days for little or no pay working on weaving looms, they are attending school preparing for their futures.
SPOTLIGHT The Rug Company, known world-wide for its hand crafted, high design rugs and tapestries, has joined RugMark to ensure children go to school instead of work.
“The lives of workers in the rug industry are of paramount importance,” says Christopher Sharp who co-founded the company with his wife, designer Suzanne Sharp. “We are happy to be involved with RugMark. What we like is that RugMark monitors the situation on the ground not from a distance.”
Recognized internationally for its forward thinking approach to rug design, The Rug Company is renowned for its collaborations with luminaries of fashion.
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The first U.S. company to join RugMark, Odegard, Inc. was founded by Stephanie Odegard, who initially visited the carpet factories of Nepal in 1987. At the time, she was concerned less with style than with sustenance. She had been hired by the World Bank to help the rug business in Nepal expand into an industry that could offer a better life to greater numbers of locals. She was there as a consultant, “to redesign how they marketed and presented traditional crafts to the rest of the world,” she recounts. That meant everything from pressuring local officials to resolve problems with the wool-supply chain to advising the makers on the types of carpets that affluent Westerners wanted to buy. More >
TOOLKIT
RugMark’s new How to Buy a Rug guide now makes it easier for individuals to buy handmade rugs that are both visually beautiful and ethically made. The guide, which distills the often daunting process of purchasing a handmade rug into five steps, stresses the importance of selecting a carpet that is made by skilled adult artisans. More >
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The Rug Company,
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The first U.S. company to join RugMark, Odegard, Inc. was founded by Stephanie Odegard, who initially visited the carpet factories of Nepal in 1987. At the time, she was concerned less with style than with sustenance. She had been hired by the World Bank to help the rug business in Nepal expand into an industry that could offer a better life to greater numbers of locals. She was there as a consultant, “to redesign how they marketed and presented traditional crafts to the rest of the world,” she recounts. That meant everything from pressuring local officials to resolve problems with the wool-supply chain to advising the makers on the types of carpets that affluent Westerners wanted to buy. 
