Ten years ago, if you told Sanita Lama and Jaya Bhandari, two former child laborers, that one day they'd be sitting in Tufts' Hillel talking about their lives, they wouldn't have believed you.
In fact, they never thought they'd get out of the Nepalese carpet factories where they worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks weaving carpets, taking their rest by sleeping on the floor between the looms.
Lama, a petite 19-year-old clad in a print dress, shed a few tears while recounting how she lost her mother at the age of eight and was forced to go weave at a carpet factory in Kathmandu. "It was horrible," she said.
But thanks to a school sponsored by a nonprofit organization called RugMark, she got an education and another chance. "I found love with the teachers," she said, composing herself. Now, Lama has earned her secondary school proficiency certification and is teaching adult carpet workers English, math and sanitation.
Lama is one of more than 3,000 success stories in the history of RugMark, which has worked since 1995 to end child labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan, explained Nina Smith (LA '89), the organization's executive director.
Labor for children under 14 is illegal in Nepal, but ongoing conflicts and the monarchic government stand in the way of enforcement, she said.
The organization's model is simple: RugMark licensees agree to operate their factories with no child labor, and their carpets receive a RugMark label, which pictures the face of a smiling child and satisfies consumer demand for ethical labor.
The Tufts stop was part of a four-city tour to publicize RugMark's "Most Beautiful Rug" campaign, which is looking to raise consumer awareness of the carpets. And the organization is making inroads: 4 million carpets with the emblem have been sold in Europe and North America since 1995 and have appeared on display in New York's Time Warner building and on the set of the reality television show "The Apprentice."
The organization is hoping to crack 15 percent of the U.S. market share by 2012, creating what its leaders hope will be a "tipping point" to roll back child labor in the region, Smith said.
Though there are still an estimated 300,000 children toiling in carpet factories, RugMark's efforts may be beginning to make a difference; this number is down from 1 million two decades ago according the RugMark's Web site.
To try to ensure compliance with the no-child-laborers promise that member factories make, RugMark inspectors then circulate among them, Smith explained, and if children are found, they may leave the factory to seek education supported by the organization, whether at schools, vocational institutes or boarding school-like rehabilitation centers in Kathmandu.
RugMark will first try to re-integrate the children into their home communities and provide for their schooling there.
Both Lama and Bhandari, the other former laborers, were found in carpet factories at the age of 10.
"The importance of them being here is to put a face on what really is a very hidden problem," Smith said.
"It's [a] great opportunity to help RugMark. I'm really, really happy with RugMark," Lama said. "I want to end it, child labor."
Bhandari, also 19, said he never thought he'd get out of the factory. "They asked me if I liked education or not. I loved the education," Bhandari said. He'd never learned to read at the factory or at home, but had watched longingly as other children went off to school.
"I started from A, B, C, D," he said, to laughter, of his training at the RugMark center.
After being placed back in communities or in one of the cities, Smith said, the children undergo physical and mental health treatments to respond to long-term respiratory problems, malnutrition, spinal injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.
While RugMark says more than 4,000 children have been directly touched by its educational programs, many others may have also been helped if it has been successful in drawing negative attention to the practice of child labor.
Associate Professor of Economics Drusilla Brown has studied RugMark and organizations like it, examining their effect on labor economics for more than a decade.
As an economist, Brown said that one might expect her to say that markets work well enough in coping with economic pressures. But only in a limited number of countries, she said, has the market produced a good relationship between education and work for children, and only since the 1930s. "I've spent a lot of time trying to understand why the market's going wrong," Brown said.
In the developing world, child labor is still an overwhelming concern.
"Acting ethically turns out to be a very good response," Brown said of consumers who are using their purchasing power and clout to demand better conditions for workers.
"Agencies like RugMark have become imitated by very large groups of people," and influenced corporate codes of conduct and other campaigns like that for fair trade coffee, she said.
Smith also mentioned how her time at Tufts, namely through campus sit-ins and a divestment campaign in protest of apartheid in South Africa, helped her start thinking seriously about global justice.
"I really began to understand how our actions here have an impact half a world away," she said. "For me it was a major learning time. There are so many wonderful professors and programs that have created a real global awareness."
The event was sponsored by the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.
