Development of a child labour free zone
Description
Education International is supporting the development of child labour free zones in 10 countries, through its member organisations in these countries. We are concentrating here on one the most successful ones: Uganda. <br />
Since 2014, a child labour free zone has been developed in Erussi sub-county (Nebbi district, West Nile region, Uganda). <br />
The UNATU (Uganda National Teachers Union) is collaborating with the NGO CEFORD and the coffee company Kyagalanyi to develop this child labour free zone.
This kind of practice is a model of how we may move towards the achievement of Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.<br />
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When we develop child labour free zones, we make no distinction between different forms of child labour: every child has the right to education. However, depending on the situation, we may have to concentrate our efforts on one category of child who faces more challenges to access school. In the case of the Uganda project in Erussi, the baseline research done at the beginning of the project showed a gender disparity: absence or lack of female teachers in some of the 15 schools and, higher dropout rates among girls. <br />
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The issue related to female teachers and staff in school was improved thanks to the UNATU lobbying the Ministry of Education (there is now at least one female teacher in each school)
The implementer is UNATU. A national coordinator is supervising the project from Kampala, he is in regular contact with the UNATU local coordinator in Erussi.
The donors of the project are organizations partnering with Education International.
The partnership in the field between a teacher's union (UNATU) and a private company (Kyagalanyi) is very innovative and is successful.
A baseline study was done at the beginning of the project, to establish how many children were out of school, how many were working, and what are the main reasons for child labour in this area were.
The partners (UNATU, CEFORD, Kyagalanyi) developed their own plans of actions adapted to their expertise/sphere of influence.
For instance, Kyagalanyi stopped buying coffee from parents who were not sending their children to school, but they first gave them a warning and a training on how to grow their beans in a more productive and healthy way. This made it possible for the parents to sell them the beans at a higher price (this increased income could be used to pay the school fees).
UNATU concentrated its intervention in the 15 schools situated in the subcounty. Their strategies were
-Training teachers and working directly with teachers
-Working with different strategic stakeholders in lobbying and advocacy
-Community mobilization and sensitization
The teacher training focused on the goals of universal primary education, the international and national legal frameworks and the introduction of a child-centred pedagogy. There were training sessions on how to provide guidance and counselling, how to identify potential child labourers in the class room, how to find out the problems and invite parents for discussions or if necessary, involve the community leaders such as the local councillors.
There was training sessions on the teachers’ professional code of conduct, particularly in terms of regular attendance, and their professional responsibility to act as role models, including by ensuring all their own school-age relatives are in school so as to have moral authority in the community.
There was also training for teachers on how to communicate on gender related issues and secure girls’ education and how to provide guidance and counselling on sexuality, in particular puberty and menstrual management. Both male and female teachers have been trained on ensuring they give equal opportunities for participation for girls, how to raise their esteem, how to avoid stereotyping girls into certain roles or certain subjects .
There have been training sessions with teachers and members of the School Management Committees and Parent Teacher Associations. These appear to have had a crucial role in creating change agents as well.
School clubs have been formed or reactivated: music, dance, sports, drama, etc These clubs have now become part of the regular school timetable.This is boosting the attractivity of schools.
Talking compounds were created. These refer to creating a culture of discussing children’s rights, for example in class meetings or school assemblies. It also includes the practice of placing highly visible messages in the school grounds on child labour and other social messages, advising children and teachers to report abuse and to discuss problems with their teachers.
A regular monitoring of the results is done by UNATU, and supervised by Educa tion International.
A number of other outstanding outcomes and best practices have been realized from the project and include inter alia the following:
- Teachers trained by UNATU have been influential in tracking cases of child labour and in supporting parents and local leadership in communities to mobilize against child labour.
- Child labour issues have been mainstreamed in local sub-county and district plans, including through the creation of a Stop Child Labour committee composed of the most influential members of the community. Local community mechanisms for reporting and tracking child labour issues have been established and are well functioning, they include the Child Labour committees at Erussi level, child labour focal persons at parish level, and a school focal person. They coordinated and have enabled the systematic reporting and tracking of child Labour.
- Community dialogue combined with home visits by change agents and child labour committees have helped to create awareness and change the mindsets of the parents who refuse to stop the practice or fail to take children to school. This dialogue, combined with reporting to relevant authorities done by teachers, has proven effective. Pupils have also changed their attitudes; they are identifying children who are out of school and convincing them to come back in the classroom instead of working.
- Teachers report a change away from traditional learning methods and the use of corporal punishment, towards a child-centred pedagogy and the use of alternative disciplinary methods.
- Teachers and local authorities report a decrease of early pregnancy cases and of defilement cases
- School feeding programs have started to be developed in the Erussi schools in 2017-2018, as a result of the project activities and the lobbying done at the national level.
When we develop child labour free zones, we make no distinction between different forms of child labour, because every child has the right to education. The focus is therefore not only on children who work in a specific sector or on the worst forms of child labour, but on all children within that area who don’t attend school. These include so-called ‘invisible’ children who work on their family’s land or as domestic workers in the household. In the child labour free zone, people believe that poverty is not the main cause of child labour. Rather, child-unfriendly traditions and norms, the violation of workers’ rights, and poor education systems explain why so many children don’t attend school. The area-based approach towards child labour free zones involves all stakeholders, including teachers, parents, children, unions, community groups, local authorities, religious leaders and employers. The power comes from the people living in these communities who set the norm that ‘no child should work; every child must be in school’.
One of the conditions for the success is that the local authorities are fully supportive of the concept. In our practice (in Uganda as well as in the 10 countries where EI supports the project), it has always been the case: education union leaders meet the local authorities (traditional, political, religious…) before the beginning of any project to gain their support.
In another country, Zimbabwe, Education International witnessed in 2018 that a child labour free zone created with the support of foreign donors since 2014 (in Chiridze) is still fully operational once the mindset of the local population was changed towards the acceptance of the importance of the education for all, there is was going back. Local actors (teachers, community leaders, pupils) keep intervening every time a child drops out from school, and the child labour free zone is sustainable.
The development of child labour free zones is a cost-effective way to fight against child labour, and to avoid forgetting some categories of children in the struggle. Once developed, they may be used to inspire other villages/communities, and show Governments that enrolling all children in schools is possible, despite poverty.
We would like to share with you an evaluation report which was done by an independant audit company, but it's not available on internet, and it seems that this online forms only accepts the uploading of pictures. Please let us know if we could send it to one e-mail address
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Contact Information
Samuel Grumiau, Consultant - Child labour