Hundreds of children are living in carpet factories and helping their parents or guardians in daily chorus like cooking, taking care of younger babies or just doing nothing. They are already of school-going age or older. Some of these children are there without their parents but not enrolled in schools and some have parents but the parents are economically unable to send their children to schools. These children, if not sent to schools, soon will join carpet work becoming child labourers.

RUGMARK has formulated a set of criteria and procedure to enrol these children in a gradual manner in public schools. RUGMARK goes into a one-to-one agreement with parents/guardians for specific support from RUGMARK and the guardians’ own responsibilities. This scheme is being implemented with direct involvement of the Inspectors, expecting a positive change in perception and attitude of factory owners and workers towards the Inspectors and RUGMARK. Often the Inspectors are perceived to be acting as police looking for child labourers, but of no help for out-of-school children that are living in factories. RUGMARK also often finds difficulty in convincing people why it is only working for child labourers and not doing anything for non- working children and workers at large in carpet factories.

Since 2001 NRF started sponsoring the carpet workers’s children for schooling and as of now 469 children have been covered. They are studying in different schools near their factories and are studying in classes starting form Kinder garden to grade X (10).