USA: Emily Sandall Memorial Grants Awarded Fall 2011 – IIECL

The Emily Sandall Foundation and the International Initiative to End Child Labor’s Board of Directors and staff are pleased to announce the new Emily Grantees for the fall of 2011. This brings the total to 20 grants in 2011 and 48 grants awarded since the mini-grant program began in 2004.

From a wide and varied group of applicants, ten Emily grantees have been selected. The current group of grantees represent three regions of the world—Africa, Asia / Near East and the Middle East. The competition this round was extremely keen, with so many worthy applications that proposed a wide variety of creative and meaningful projects. This made the decision very difficult to narrow down to the ten grantees selected. The ten projects selected stood out among the other applicants for their unique, innovative and collaborative approaches to address ending child labor. Congratulations to the following winning applicants (presented in alphabetical order by region and country):

Africa:

• Ethiopia – Woliso Youth Development Association (WYDA): Social Entrepreneurship Trees Seedling
• Ghana – HOGFE Foundation (Collaboration): Support for Construction of Roof for Technical Skills Center for Street Children
• Kenya – Deaf Outreach Program: Reaching Deaf and Albino Children in Child Labor
• Tanzania – Mara Widows Development Group: Combat Child Labor in Gold Mines through Micro-loans to Mothers

Asia / Near East:

• Bangladesh – Change Through Research and Communication: Child Journalist Provide Child News
• Cambodia – Sustainable Cambodia: Supplemental Education Classes for Rural Children and Youth
• India – Women and Child Development Charitable Trust: Micro-loan Program in Sheep Rearing
• India – Rural People Development Society: Micro-enterprise and Skills Training in Poultry Rearing
• Philippines – Diocese of Masbate Social Action Foundation (Collaboration): Production of Educational Materials on Child Labor

Middle East:

• Pakistan – FARZ Association of Rehabilitation and Development: Rag Pickers Video

There were numerous other worthy applications. Should you or your organization wish to support us in financially supporting additional projects and activities around the world working to end child labor, please give your support. There are an additional 20 qualified applications that need your support today.

Following identifies the organization and/or individual grant recipients and provides a brief description of projects that will be undertaken using the Emily Grants (presented in alphabetical order by region and country):

Africa

Ethiopia—Woliso Youth Development Association (WYDA) Kumsa Deme and Abera Taye: Social Entrepreneurship for OVCs in Woliso Town, Ethiopia through Tree Seedling Project

The Woliso Youth Development Association (WYDA) is a cohesive group of 48 young amateur athletes ranging in age from 14 to 16 years with volunteer support from one coach and two mentors and motivational support from one professional athlete. Woliso is a destination point for most rural-urban and urban-urban migrants, including young people. With its trend of urbanization, there are complex pull and push factors behind migration for employment that add to the problems of Other Vulnerable Children (OCVs) in the town.  Although extended family systems establish a social protection mechanism for OVCs, about 230 children are currently estimated to be out of such social support. In response to this, a few institutions have recently provided packages of support for some children, however there are about 130 remaining children estimated to be in critical need. For most of them, carrying (transporting) heavy loads is the common activity, along with street trading and shoe polishing at the expense of schooling. For those attending school, low achievements have been common as they spend little time for reading and home work studies. Although public school is free, expenses for uniform and educational kits are too high for a number of children from poor families but especially orphans with weak social supports. The cumulative problems result in school dropouts. For a boy out of school, there is high probability to be trapped in drug addiction (especially chewing ‘Chat’ leaves) during adolescence. For an orphan girl without support, the primary option is domestic service employment in a private household and the secondary option being street trading; both options offer ingredients of gender-based violence and worst forms of child labor.

WYDA plans to use their Emily Grant to improve the livelihood of 50 children (13 to 17) vulnerable children through sustainable social entrepreneurship based on nursery management of 60,000 tree seedlings for use with environmental protection and post harvest labor saving technology services (rental of an adult operated threshing machine), improve self-esteem of 32 orphan children through lifeskills, emotional support, sports therapy and tutorials to applying varying learning styles, and increase awareness on child development for 3,000 people through art shows, testimonies, demonstrated supports and a sports event to occur during the annual World Day Against Child labor in June 2012.

Emily Impression: Emily would love that this project offers both the environmental protection and sustainability with the tree seedlings project and the added self-esteem gained through sports therapy.

Ghana—HOGFE Foundation (HOGFE): Support Cost of Roof for Technical Skill Center for Street Children in Ghana

The HOGFE Foundation is a German non-profit organization that promotes public health purposes, HIV / AIDS preventive education, teenage pregnancy education, youth / adult and vocational education, and development cooperation. HOGFE has made a commitment to build libraries, schools, hospitals, provide books, wells, medical care and other life necessities. Street children are a significant part of the picture in every Ghanaian city. In Accra, according to UNICEF, there are approximately 30,000 street children. Due to economic hardship about 57% of children in Ghana are forced either to work on their own initiative or by pressure from their parents, for their livelihood. They have to drop out of school or cannot attend school at all. The cost to attend school and/or vocational training is such that poor families who can barely provide basic services cannot send their children to any school either a basic school or vocational school. Poverty pushes children towards the street. Families may not be able to provide the money they need to send the children to school, so the children feel the need to go to the streets and try and earn the money they need. Some children are asked by their families to beg during the day to help supplement the family income. The use of drugs, in particular glue, is rife among the street children in Ghana. It is easy to obtain in the markets and surrounding compounds, and is made out of a mix of petrol and jet fuel, which makes for a very potent mix. When asked why they sniff glue, children point out that it suppresses their hunger and takes away the cold in the evenings. It also takes them out of their own reality, a form of escapism from street life.

The objective of HOGFE is to help the most vulnerable children and to enable them to return and to reintegrate into social life and protect them from violence and exploitation. The Technical Skills Centre will give the street children and youth the opportunity for a restart at life away from the street. Many of the street children have been raped and abused by adults. Mistrust and fear of adults are the result. The Technical Skills Centre is aimed at young people between 10 and 25. HOGFE will be using its Emily Grant to support the construction of the roof for the Technical Skill Center for Street Children in Ghana. The diverse programs that the Technical Skills Center offers will give street children a real chance to live away from the street, a school and vocational education, and a future safe job at an appropriate age. At the Technical Skill Center, young people can learn for themselves and others to take responsibility and to manage their own lives. The help offered by the Technical Skill Center can lead to street children fulfilling their vast potential. Street children may be marginalized but many are also ambitious, tough and resilient. They manage to survive in the toughest of environments and they have dreams of getting out of their situation.

Emily Impression: Emily would be so pleased to provide these street children with a safe haven for education and skills training.

Kenya—Deaf Outreach Program (DEAFOP) / Ann Gloria Njoki: Reduce Deaf and Albino Child Exploitation through Promotion of Education

Children with disabilities, such as deafness and albinism, are at high risk of exploitation and abuse. In Kenya, an estimated 200,000 children below age 18 are deaf. These children suffer language barriers, low self-esteem, and lack of access to education. Further, their disability is often associated with witchcraft. Deaf girls become easy targets for rape where often by the time they are of age, many girls will have suffered multiple rapes, STDs and early pregnancies. Like deafness, albinism is not understood and accepted in most African culture. In 2010, cases of albino children disappearances was reported in Kenya and Tanzania, where albinos were trafficked into Tanzania for witchcraft purposes with the belief that their body parts can be used to heal diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, and for other rituals. As a result, fear of being abducted has resulted in albino children dropping out of school and the albino community beginning to organize for protection. The DEAFOP will use their Emily Grant to reduce deal and albino child exploitation through education. The primary objectives of their grant funded project will be to raise awareness among parent and communities on the hazards of child labor (particularly in the domestic sector for girls); educate parents, children and communities on child labor policies/laws in the Kenya; spearhead peer education in schools; and to increase sensitivity and understanding among students, teachers, parents and communities about deafness and albinism. Highlights of the project will be the forming of Human Rights Clubs in schools to promote peer education using a child to child approach, building the capacity of an albinism organization, and education and training with the parents of deaf and albinism children.

Emily Impression: Emily would absolutely want to work for access to education and protection of human rights for these vulnerable children.

Tanzania—Mara Widows Development Group: Combating Child Labor in the Gold Mines of Tanzania through a Micro-loan Project

Mara Widows Development Group is a women-led community-based organization dedicated to work for and with underserved children and women. Most children around the mining areas are between the age of 5 and 12 and are engaged in hazardous work due to the prevalence of poverty in the rural communities. With limited knowledge on child development and survival, most parents and families force their children to engage in worst forms of work to supplement household incomes for survival.

Mara Widows plan is to use their Emily Grant to remove children from worst forms of child labor by creating awareness and providing parents / caregivers of children with small business skills training and revolving loans. The micro-loans for small business development will serve as an alternative support to increase household incomes to sustain care and education for the children. By providing knowledge and financial support to parents and families, children will be able to access education and health care. Parents / caregivers will be provided training on small business development and provided a revolving loan that will be repaid within six months.

Emily Impression: Emily would love that this project offers microloans and training to the families as a means of sustainability and that allows them the ability to afford education for their children.

Asia / Near East

Bangladesh—Madame Imran Khan/Change through Research and Communication (CRC): Child News by Child Journalist Project

Situated on the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh shares large borders with India and a small southern boundary with Myanmar. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet in Bangladesh to form the world’s largest delta. Children comprise 41% of the over 159 million population in Bangladesh. Three-quarters of the population live in rural areas where families rely primarily on agriculture and fishing for their livelihood. Over half of these families and their children live below poverty. Bangladesh has made significant strides forward in reducing poverty, but many children are still forced to work to supplement family income. It is estimated that 7.4 million children are engaged in some form of work. Most of them work in the informal sector (agriculture, fishing and street selling), many in hazardous conditions. By working at such a young age, these children miss out on an education. Emily Grantee, Md. Khan, has been working and studying child rights, child labor and law in Bangladesh for three years and conducting research on child labor in rural Bangladesh. She has a Masters in Social Science (MSS) and worked as a journalist in local, national and international media. Md. Khan through the CRC (newly formed NGO), will work in child labor and law with the objective to change rural society by conducting effective research and communication.

Md. Khan/CRC will use the Emily Grant to raise awareness by increasing child labor and related law news in local newspapers reported by child journalists trained by Md. Khan. Specifically, the project will establish a Voluntary Child Journalist Association (VCJA) comprised of child journalists to report about child labor and law in local newspapers in Tangail; increase knowledge of children interested in journalism on child labor and laws; increase awareness about child labor among local newspaper editors and publishers; and develop relationship between the VCJA and local newspapers and publishers. The result will be a 45% increase in the number of news stories and reports published during the project period and improve the quality of the reporting.

Emily Impression: Emily would feel passionate about this project of giving children a “voice” through journalism.

Cambodia—Sustainable Cambodia: Using Education to Prevent Child Labor and Encourage School Participation for Rural Children and Youth in Kravanh, Cambodia

Sustainable Cambodia is a grass-roots, volunteer-based, Rotary-supported not-for-profit organization working with the residents of rural Cambodian villages to help them achieve sustainability and self-sufficiency through Education, Jobs and Skills Training, Clean Water Projects, Food Security and Health and Sanitation. Children in Cambodia work in exploitive conditions, in garment factories, restaurants, as domestic servants. Most child domestics are girls 14 to 17 years old, though it is not uncommon to find workers as young as 6 or 7 years; they typically work 12 to 16 hour days, 7 days a week. Cambodia is a country of origin, transit, and destination for trafficking in children. Children are trafficked internally for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, work in garment factories, begging, in construction, as domestics, and porters.

Sustainable Cambodia will use its Emily Grant to provide supplemental classes, such as computer, physics, chemistry, math, Cambodian language and English to 150 students in the Kravanh Bright Future Center (KBFC); build awareness with parents in six villages on children’s rights, child labor and advantages to children attending school; and provide study materials to 150 students at risk of dropping out of schools in six villages in Kravanh, Cambodia.

Emily Impression: Emily would be excited about this project as she had worked tirelessly in the education of street children and vulnerable teens in Mexico, Nepal and the US.

India—Women and Child Development Charitable Trust (WCDCT): Releasing Children from Work by Supporting Their Mothers with Rearing of Sheep

Women and Child Development Charitable Trust (WCDCT) is a registered, nongovernmental organization. WCDCT’s major activities are operation of nursery & primary school, child development, promotion and protection of child rights, school enrollment campaigns, income generation programs, training and counseling for self-employment, school for child laborers, free uniforms and education materials for disabled children, and maintaining rapport with banks for financial micro-loan sources. In addition, the WCDCT is involved in health, environment, prevention and control of HIV/ AIDS; child health promotion; reproductive and breast feeding education; promotion of naturopathy and yoga awareness; animal welfare and plant-based diet, vegetable food promotion campaign, and integrated rural development activities in Salem and Namakkal districts of Tamilnadu, India.

WCDCT is a prior recipient of an Emily Grant in the spring of 2011 assisting 30 families with micro-loans to raise rams and providing mothers with training on animal raising and azola production to improve their overall income. Their first Emily Grant was a very successful project and is being awarded a second Emily Grant to assist 30 additional families with sheep rearing for income generation and azola production. The objectives of the second Emily Grant will be to provide orientations to parents of child laborers on alternative sources of livelihood, such as sheep rearing (including sheep management, disease control and azola cultivation); to distribute revolving load funds for the families with child laborers to purchase and rear a pair of sheep each; and to orient them on the need for the enrollment of their working children and the importance of education and risks of child labor.

Emily Impression: Emily would strongly support the sustainability of microloans for sheep and education on crops to help these families achieve a better life and educational opportunities for their children.

India—Rural People Development Society (RPDS):  Micro-enterprise and Skills Training in Poultry Rearing for Mothers of to Promote Access to Education for Child Laborers

RPDS is a non-governmental organization founded and serving the Valapadi block of Salem District in Tamilnadu in India. Since 2003, RPDS has been engaged in child development, child labor elimination, coaching classes for slow learners, working with school dropouts, school enrollment campaigns, income generation through micro-enterprise and skill development trainings, promoting child and women rights, health development, and integrated village development. RPDS will be using their Emily Grant to conduct a project to ensure the children’s rights and opportunity to experience a childhood through creating self-employment for parents of the child laborers. The activities to be conducted include orientations for mothers of child laborers educating them about their child’s rights, offering “Evening Bridge” course classes to child laborers and school dropouts (one center with 30 students), school enrollment campaigns combined with active participation in Parent Teacher Associations at schools, income generation through poultry rearing for parents of child laborers (30 mothers), and education and motivation of mothers to provide health food (protein in the form of eggs for children daily).

Emily Impression: Emily would be very happy that this project includes microloans, education on nutrition and human rights, and opportunities for children to return to school. These were all issues that she cared about deeply.

Philippines— Diocese of Masbate Social Action Foundation, Inc. (DIMASAFI): Child Rights Intervention Alleviating Child Labor

The Social Action Center of Masbate (SAC-Masbate), popularly known as Diocese of Masbate Social Action Foundation, Inc. (DIMASAFI) was established four years after Diocese of Masbate was founded. It is considered as the implementing social arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. DIMASAFI’s mission is to provide social and support services to the poorest of the poor and the marginalized sectors; promote the core values of Christian orientation, solidarity and accountability; advocate environmental-friendly, child-caring and gender sensitive development programs; and advocate peaceful and healthy communities with respect for human dignity. DIMASAFI currently operates a program entitled, CHRIST IN with funding assistance from Kindernothilfe of Germany. This program focuses on championing children’s rights.

DIMASAFI will utilize its Emily Grant in support of this project activity to conduct a Youth Workshop on Child Rights by producing materials on child rights and child labor, printing posters, tarpaulin, leaflets and distribution and cost of mats, and coordination expenses of staff to handle such activities. This will support advocacy to create awareness on the negative effects of child labor to the well being of the family, particularly the children.

Emily Impressions: Emily would really like that this organization is trying to raise awareness of the effects of child labor.

Middle East

Pakistan—FARZ Association of Rehabilitation and Development (FARZ): Rag Pickers’ Video

Formed by youth, FARZ (meaning “obligation or responsibility” in Urdo) envisions “an equitable society for children and youth where they avail equal opportunities to harness their full potential to become socially responsible citizens who fulfill their rights and obligations.” Farz strives for the development of youth and children through building capacities, creating a supportive environment for growth and development, proactively involving stakeholders to mutually decide and share their roles and responsibilities, and building gaps between public community and private institutions.

FARZ will be using their Emily Grant for the writing, recording and production of a brief five minute video that provides an overview of the nature and extent of the problem of children engaged in rag picking in Pakistan, their health and safety risks, and their need for education and other interventions. According to an ILO rapid assessment of rag pickers in 2003, there is an estimated 89,500 to 106,500 children engaged in rag picking in five major cities in the country. An occupational safety and health study conducted by ILO and rapid assessments by some other organizations transpired that children working outside their homes to earn livelihood for their families are exposed to serious physical and mental health hazards. These include sexual abuse, disturbed sleep, malnutrition, excess loads, long and odd working hours). Children involved in rag-picking are facing problems of anemia, palpable lymph nodes, and parasitic infections. FARZ will implement an advocacy and social mobilization campaign with all key stakeholders through seminars, using electronic media to show the documentary with parents/families, contractors of rag-picking sector, auto workshop owners, municipal administration, district health offices, hospitals’ management, Department of Labor, NGOs, CBOs and others.

Emily Impression: Emily would love the use of video as an educational tool to depict the hazards for these children. She felt photos were a very poignant way to show the vulnerable children’s lives.

For more information on Emily Sandall Memorial Grants, information about child labor, and/or how you can support these and other actions to end child labor, please visit IIECL’s website at www.endchildlabor.org, follow us on Twitter, and become a fan on Facebook.