The new AfghanMarkSM trademark empowers
conscientious consumers, wholesalers, importers and retailers
to make a choice, get involved, and decide to ask for and select
high-quality AfghanMarkSM certified carpets and rugs at competitive
prices, while knowing that the women who made them received fair
wages and higher rates of pay under inspected working conditions
with no illegal child labor and access to health care and education,
including literacy classes.
Only “better” carpets
-- “heirloom quality” carpets -- will be allowed to carry
the new AfghanMarkSM certification trademark. Each carpet
will be numbered and will have with it a brief story of the
woman who wove the carpet on the loom.
The Afghan Women’s
Business Federation created the AfghanMarkSM to create brand name recognition
for carpets made by Afghan women in order to certify increased income for women
working on the looms, to create a monitoring system to certify working conditions
and to increase educational opportunities and social responsibility to benefit
the Afghan women weavers. The AfghanMarkSM is expected
to become a meaningful brand-symbol of a better life for Afghan
women weavers who are asking for no charity, but just the opportunity
to benefit fairly from their hard work and high quality artisanship
on the looms. “AfghanMarkSM” was created by and is wholly-owned by the post-Taliban
era Afghan Women’s Business Federation, which is headquartered
in Kabul with women-owned and women-managed business members
throughout Afghanistan.
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