With more than 400 million poor people, or one-third of the world’s poor, according to UNICEF, ensuring youth have access to education in order for them to find stable employment at the appropriate age and break the cycle of poverty, is a priority in the country. Although more than 53 million people escaped poverty between 2005 and 2010, most remain vulnerable to falling back below the poverty line.

Lack of educational opportunities in India are often due to issues of caste, class and gender and with 44 percent of the workforce illiterate, there is much work to be done. Less than 10 percent of the working-age population has completed a secondary education and too many secondary graduates do not have the knowledge and skills to compete in today’s changing job market.

In honor of World Day Against Child Labor, which is celebrated annually on June 12, Salesian programs in the Bangalore Province in the State of Karnataka in Southern India have been campaigning aggressively to raise awareness of the dangers of and issues associated with child labor.

“Children who are compelled to work, even for a fraction of the day, are deprived of the education they need to learn valuable skills that lead to stable employment later in life,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco. “Unfortunately, in many situations, children are being forced to work around the clock with barely enough time to eat, let alone study, and their prospects in life are diminished.”

On June 12, leaders from the many Salesian-run child right’s clubs in India held public meetings and rallies in collaboration with government and non-government organizations, school students and the public in the cities of Bangalore, Chitradurga, Davangere, Deodurga (Raichur District), and Hospet (Bellary District).

Speakers denounced child labor and addressed its root causes while offering solutions to keep youth safe and engaged in education and social programs. Posters and flyers advocating children’s rights were widely distributed. Media channels have also been highlighting the Salesian campaign in several parts of the southern state.

Through several ongoing initiatives, Salesians have made considerable progress in fighting child labor. The Child Rights Education and Action Movement Project, launched in November 2012 by the Salesian-run Bangalore Rural Educational and Development Society, has started over 200 child right’s clubs that are responsible for training more than 8,000 children and adults on the rights of children while providing resources to keep children safe.

Child Rights Education and Action Movement Project staff have also provided human rights education in schools for thousands of children, youth and teachers as well as formed task forces, peer education programs and three regional networks and one state level network to address the issues of child labor.

“By integrating intensive training in current social issues such as child labor, human rights, women empowerment and health and hygiene, among other topics, Salesians aim to effect long-term social change while helping youth to create a future where they can attend school and find jobs in dignified, safe and profitable fields,” adds Fr. Hyde.

Sources

ANS – India – Salesians campaign aggressively against Child Labour in Karnataka

UNICEF – India

The post INDIA: Salesian Child Rights Awareness Campaigns Highlight World Day Against Child Labor first appeared on MissionNewswire.

The ILO launched the World Day Against Child Labor in 2002. Each year on June 12, the day brings together governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, civil society and millions of people from around the world to highlight the plight of child laborers and what can be done to help them.

The movement is succeeding in its ambitious goals. In the late 1990s, the estimated number of children in various forms of child labor was nearly 250 million. Today, that figure has dropped to 168 million. The decline has particularly benefitted girls; total child labor among girls has fallen by 40 percent since 2000, compared to a drop of 25 percent for boys.

Child labor is defined as work that is hazardous to a child’s health, education, or physical or mental development. Too often, it traps children in a cycle of poverty. Too many children in the world still work instead of going to school. For example, an estimated 98 million children worldwide work in agriculture. Children harvest tobacco, cocoa, rubber and other global commodities. Children also work in dangerous industries like shipbreaking in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and in services such as construction and restaurant work. However, the U.S. Government has made a substantial contribution to ending this vicious cycle for tens of millions of children.

What have we learned about what works?

Social mobilization and awareness-raising: Like so many of the world’s ‘wicked’ problems, addressing child labor requires a concerted effort by multiple stakeholders acting together. Work to promote awareness of child labor among citizens and consumers in developed countries, and among families and communities in developing countries where children are at risk, has proven to be an important part of the solution. U.S. Government agencies, in particular the U.S. Department of Labor, have produced important reports documenting the issues thoroughly. Recognizing that raising public awareness also requires compelling photo and video documentation, in the mid-2000s USAID supported the creation of a photo and video repository, in particular to document conditions faced by girls. This material was ultimately turned into a film, Stolen Childhoods. The film documented not only the problem but examples of what interventions could help working children – such as a new USAID-supported schoolhouse in communities of coffee pickers in Kenya, creating opportunities for children who had been working on coffee farms to attend school for the first time.

Another very important part of the solution is mobilizing communities and empowering them to work at a grassroots level on practical solutions to address root causes of child labor. For example, through our Global Labor Program, USAID has helped workers in the rubber sector in Liberia to organize, mobilize and negotiate with their employer to end exploitative wage practices that compelled rubber tappers to bring their children to work. In the early 2000s, the problem of child labor on the world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia came to light. Adult tappers were compelled to bring their entire families to work with them just to meet their daily quotas. Following the exposure of this problem, a transnational campaign emerged, linking civil-society organizations and trade unions in Liberia with consumer, labor and human rights groups in the United States. Through USAID’s Global Labor Program, the Solidarity Center was able to work directly with rubber workers in Liberia and assist them to organize, join unions and negotiate better wages and working conditions for themselves and their families. Today, thanks to the combination of effective awareness-raising, campaigning in the United States and the work of trade unions in Liberia to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, there is a school on the rubber plantation where all children attend school while their parents, the adult workers, are paid a living wage.

Businesses are also an important part of the solution to the child labor problem. Awareness-raising campaigns have succeeded in flagging this as a business issue for many companies worldwide in many industries, and those companies and industries are working on innovative new approaches to ensuring their supply chains do not exploit workers. Goodweave is one of the best-known examples of a program effectively addressing child labor in a sector where it was endemic, the carpet-weaving sector in India. Goodweave is a certification system that works with retailers, rug importers and exporters, and looms to ensure that child labor is not used in carpet production. The program is active in the ‘carpet belt’ of India and Nepal, and recently extended into Afghanistan. The program provides educational transition programs and works with schools to ensure that children that are found working receive the assistance and support they need to go to school. By building awareness about the widespread use of child labor in the rug industry and creating an effective market-based solution, GoodWeave is ending child labor one rug at a time. Since 1995, 11 million child labor free carpets bearing the GoodWeave label have been sold worldwide, and the number of ‘carpet kids’ has dropped from 1 million to 250,000. GoodWeave’s work in Afghanistan is supported by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Finally, governments also have a very critical role to play in addressing child labor, through their role in establishing laws and policies to protect children, and equally important, their role in ensuring that all children have access to basic education. USAID’s Education Strategy is working to increase access to education for all children worldwide, and in particular for children in crisis and conflict environments. To achieve these goals, USAID is committed to working closely with host country governments and civil society to contribute to shared goals. For example, we are supporting a multi-million dollar initiative in Haiti, Room to Learn, that is working to provide universal, compulsory access to education in Haiti. USAID works closely with the Government of Haiti to build up the education system and provide safe, equitable education to children. USAID and the Government of Haiti are planning to work together to offer schooling to working children. Last March, USAID Assistant Administrator Eric Postel visited Haiti to set priorities for the design of the program. Postel visited an evening school for working children with former Minister of Education Vanneur Pierre. A study commissioned by the USAID/Haiti’s education office estimated more than 24,000 children work as domestic servants. Most of them are teenage girls whose education level is low. The Room to Learn project will work with the Haitian Ministry to offer improved services for these girls.

This year’s theme for World Day is Social Protection: Keeping Children Out of Work. This theme builds on last year’s World Report on Child Labor [PDF]. As we learn more and more about the root causes of child labor, we also are moving further back toward addressing those causes and preventing child labor from taking place at all. We now know that poverty and shocks play a significant role in driving children into work, and also in driving adults into forced and trafficked labor. Development assistance will have a very significant role to play in addressing these issues. With more support for social protection programs that have been proven to play an effective role in helping poor families cope with various types of shocks, we can keep even more children in school and continue to ensure children receive other basic protections.

Support for the World Day grows every year and today we look forward to even wider support from governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, NGOs and civil society, international and regional organizations and active citizens worldwide. You can add your voice to the millions worldwide that will celebrate our continued progress toward ending child labor.

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Posted by Bama Athreya on Thursday, June 12th 2014

Photo © U. Roberto Romano

See this Article at its original location >

The post USAID: Ending Child Labor first appeared on MissionNewswire.

The World Day calls for:

• Universal ratification of the ILO’s Conventions on child labor (and of all ILO core Conventions)
• National policies and programs to ensure effective progress in the elimination of child labor
• Action to build the worldwide movement against child labor

As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has stressed, “The exploitation of children anywhere should be a concern to people everywhere.” Children in situations of exploitative child labor are deprived education, and lack the opportunities to rise to their full potential and lift themselves, their families and their communities out of a cycle of poverty.

This year, the World Day Against Child Labor provided a spotlight on the right of all children to be protected from child labor and from other violations of fundamental human rights. Children enjoy the same human rights accorded to all people. But lacking the knowledge, experience or physical development of adults and the power to defend their own interests in an adult world, they also have distinct rights to protection by virtue of their age.

• In 2010, the international community adopted a Roadmap for achieving the elimination of the worst forms of child labor by 2016.
• Some 215 million children across the world are still trapped in child labor and it is estimated that 5 million children are in forced labor.
• In Asia and the Pacific, child labor is declining but the region has the most child laborers ages 5-17 (113.6 million, more than 48 million of them in hazardous work.
• There continues to be a need for specific future actions: strengthening workplace safety and health for all workers with specific safeguards for children between the minimum age for admission to employment and the age of 18.

The awareness day was recognized by countries and leaders around the world, many of which stated that education is the key to ending child labor and protecting youth.

“Education is a critical response to child labor and youth employment issues in Indonesia,” said Angela Kearney, UNICEF Representative in Indonesia. “If the number of children in work is to be reduced and their prospects when they do enter the workforce in later years are to be improved, investment in education at every level – from pre-school programs to vocational training—is essential.”

Salesian programs in more than 130 countries around the globe—including Indonesia—are providing such education and vocational training. Widely considered the world’s largest private provider of vocational and technical education, the Salesians focus on changing the course of a young person’s future by providing opportunity.

“Ending child labor will be the work of those providing better opportunities,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco. “And those better opportunities come from access to education.”

Learn more about the educational opportunities the Salesians provide around the globe at SalesianMissions.org >

Learn more about how the Salesians are giving brighter futures for child laborers in India (and how you can help) >

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The post WORLD DAY AGAINST CHILDHOOD LABOR: Salesians Provide Education Key to Tackling Child Labor first appeared on MissionNewswire.