2010 Awards
Africa
Liberia—Buchanan Child Community Based Care (BUCCOBAC): Campaign Against Child Prostitution
The Buchanan Child Community Based Care (BUCCOBAC), an NGO formed in 1994 with the support of Save the Children UK-Liberia, will be funded an Emily grant to conduct a local community awareness campaign against child prostitution. The goal of the project is to work towards supporting the successful eradication of child labor in the families and communities of Grand Bassa and Rivercess Counties. In particular, the project will target child labor education, prevention, and withdrawal of girls sent by parents to engage in commercial sex as a means to support their family. In particular, the project will be carried out in the city of Buchanan and the surrounding Grand Bassa County, both in urban and peri-urban communities. Later, the project will be extended into Rivercess County where a new logging company (Liberia Timber Trading Company) has begun operations. The project’s first objective is to increase awareness in Grand Bassa County by 25% by identifying victims of child labor and their parents in 80 targeted communities, facilitating 8 meetings with victims of child labor and their parents on the danger of child labor (prostitution), and facilitating the establishment of a network of four (4) child labor monitoring groups (CLMGs). The second objective is to increase knowledge of the dangers of child labor by 80% of community members targeted through artistically informed activities that will aid in awareness raising and behavior modification through establishing one artistic club to dramatize the activities of child labor, facilitating radio broadcasts on the issues involving child labor, and developing one video clip on child labor dramatized through music and video by the members of the artistic club and presented throughout the targeted communities.
Emily Impressions: This project would be very important to Emily. She worked tirelessly to improve the lives and futures of child laborers and street children around the world. She would have felt passionate about supporting a project to help prevent girls from entering a life of prostitution.
Asia/Near East
India—Women and Child Development Charitable Trust (WCDCT): Micro-loan for Mothers of Child Laborers to Promote Education
Women and Child Development Charitable Trust (WCDCT), an NGO operating in Tamil Nadu, India, will be funded an Emily grant to target child labor prevention services for children working in brick kilns, wheelers, spinning mills, agriculture, construction and domestic service in Nalikkalpatty, Gajalnaickenpatty, Dasanaickenpatty, Thammanaickenpatty and Nillavarapatty villages of the Salem District in India. The project will establish a micro-loan program and provide orientations to 30 mothers who are parents of child laborers on alternative income generation methods, such as sheep rearing and growing Azore that allows for children to attend school as opposed to working providing income for the family. More specifically, the project will: 1) provide orientations to parents of children at work on alternative methods of income generation, ram rearing and growing azolla; 2) establish a micro-loan program to distribute revolving funds to targeted families to purchase and raise a pair of rams and grow azolla; and 3) orient the families on the ills of child labor, the importance of education and the need for enrolling their children in school.
Emily Impressions: Emily believed strongly in the philosophy of micro-loans as a way to empower women and improve their family’s future. She would be very excited about this project.
India—Ms. Vasanthan Padmavathi: Artisans Campaign Against Child Labor
Ms. Vasanthan Padmavathi is a young woman from an artisan community living in Tiruchirapalli district of Tamil Nadu, India. She has worked on human rights issues for the past 12 years before forming the Community Renovation and Organization Advancement Trust (COROAT), a newly formed NGO soon to be registered in India. Ms. Padmavathi is from a vulnerable family and is the first woman from her community to obtain a post graduate degree. She is working to mobilize the artisan community into a self-help group to seek alternative employment that will lead to support for the education of artisan children. Ms. Padmavathi will be funded an Emily grant to develop two folk songs as a communication tool for sensitizing artisans on the benefits of education for children and the risks to that education associated with child labor. Specifically, her project objectives are to: 1) sensitize the artisan community on the importance of education for their children, 2) reduce the vulnerability of artisan children from entering child labor, and 3) to motivate the children of artisans to continue their education and not drop out of school. Project activities and outcomes will include: a) developing two folks songs for sensitizing the artisan community, b) training children and youth volunteers on using the songs for street performances, c) training five volunteers in folk dance for dissemination of messages through song and dance among the artisan community, d) recording the two songs on a CD, e) releasing the CD to government officials, f) using the CD as an advocacy tool for attracting support for the education of artisan children, g) supporting the education of 10 of the most vulnerable children from the artisan community through the purchase of education materials, h) motivating other children to continue their education, and i) garnering media support to spread the work of the project.
Emily Impressions: This project would be very dear to Emily’s heart. She believed strongly in the power of music as a tool. She was very creative when she worked with disadvantaged children and had hoped to work in India.
India—SCORE: Education and Recreational Clubs to Prevent Child Labor
SCORE is being funded to conduct a project that provides educational support for children and youth, through clubs. Through the recreational clubs, children will have the opportunity to be nurtured and enhanced with personal growth and development experiences.
Emily impressions: Emily would be so pleased to have a project that supports education, children and youth clubs in India. She had a degree in education and was always very active promoting fitness and self-esteem with children. She had hoped to travel to India to work with street children and to help combat child labor.
Middle East
Pakistan—Mr. Fayyaz Adrees: Video on Children Affected by Floods in Pakistan
Mr. Fayyaz Adrees is a film-maker, journalist and researcher from Lahore, Pakistan. He has assisted CNN, BBC and the NewsHour teams with filming while on location in Pakistan for news and other film documentaries. Mr. Adrees will be funded an Emily grant to support his developing a five-minute short film story of the impact of the floods in Pakistan on children’s education and involvement in child labor. Millions have been affected by the floods and most of the families have lost their homes and means for earning an income, especially those who had a farm or small business. They have lost all in the flood waters just now beginning to recede. Further, most of the schools that children formerly attended have been destroyed or severely damaged, meaning that once it is possible to return to school, there will be no school for the children to attend. With the rebuilding that occurs during recovery, there is a high risk that children will become a large part of the workforce used in construction, brick making and other hazardous work. Currently, many of the families are living in camps and even some families are living in graveyards as they have nowhere else to go. Mr. Adrees’ project will include his traveling to the flood affected areas, researching the impact of the floods on schools, examining the nature of the recovery efforts and how children’s needs are being addressed during the emergency and recovery phases, filming and photographing the interviews with flood-affected parents and children, and producing a short four to five minute film story that tells their story of the floods from the children’s perspective.
Emily Impressions: Emily believed strongly in the power of images to get a message across. She often worked with disposable cameras with street children, “to see the world through their eyes.” She would feel it very important to support this project.
North America
United States—Aryn Calhoun: The Harvest Song on Child Labor in Agriculture
Aryn Calhoun, also known as Aryn Michelle, is being funded to produce a quality song with lyrical depth and musical emotion to help address and raise awareness about child labor issues. Aryn is known for her completing extensive research for unique and appropriate lyrical content. She also has the song previewed in front of songwriting classes and peers in order to get worthy commentary and re-writing feedback and suggestions. After completing the song, she plans to arrange, record and mix the song so that it would culminate into an excellent sounding final track. IIECL will be given exclusive rights to use the song however it sees fit.
Aryn is interested in working on child labor issues because she feels it is a social justice issue that has not been given enough widespread public exposure. Aryn has a gift and a calling to craft songs that can bring light to ideas that deserve more attention and reach people in a unique and dynamic way—writing a song about child labor issues gives her a chance to use her gifts to help further a noble cause.
Aryn has a great deal of experience in songwriting as evidenced through her personal catalog of several hundred songs and 11+ years of writing. Writing songs is her passion and writing songs with a greater purpose is very important to her. She has written songs in the past specifically catered to all different subjects. Previously, she was commissioned to write theme songs for a church’s children department, a backpack company and for various other functions. Aryn takes careful consideration to research the subject in order to craft a new song that would help further the mission of IIECL and fight against child labor.
Aryn is a former recipient of two Emily grants, one to write and record a song about child labor worldwide and the second to convert the song into a music video and post on YouTube. The title of the song and music video is “Childhood Left Behind.” The music video is getting a good amount of attention with 561 hits thus far and has significantly increased the visibility on the child labor issue.
Music helps people rally around important social justice issues. A well-crafted song that is shared, posted and used as a tool is exactly the kind of thing that the IIECL needs to order to reach out to the public in new and innovative ways. For the new song, Aryn is willing to take on whatever specific topic the IIECL deems most pressing at this time possibly crafting a song specifically about child labor in cocoa or another specific food. With the new song, Aryn plans to launch a YouTube profile (and perhaps Facebook or Twitter page) specifically dedicated to IIECL.
Emily Impressions: Emily would be really excited about using music to increase the visibility of the child labor issue. She used music in her own life as a powerful and compassionate tool.
Latin America
El Salvador—Co-Partners of Campesinas: Leadership Training for Women’s Hub Group
Co-Partners is being funded to conduct a leadership training program with a focus on combating child labor for 15-20 members of a new women’s hub group.
Over the last three years three Emily grants have supported some of the Co-Partners’ work with La Nueva Esperanza. For the last 13 years Co-partners has been working with La Nueva Esperanza and other groups to establish a successful model for Girls’ and Women’s hubs. Co-Partners’ believe that the model is now sufficiently well-defined and understood to test it in a new location with a new group of women. To this end Co-partners has recently established a new women’s group in Apastepeque, Department of San Vicente, El Salvador. The former president of the La Nueva Esperanza group is acting as a promoter to establish this group. To date she has found a donated location for a training center and has recruited the initial group members. The new group began meeting in March, beginning with an offering of classes in sewing and tailoring. The next step for the group is to receive leadership training to learn how they can use their power as women and as citizens to improve their lives, their children’s lives, and their communities.
Co-partners are receiving an Emily grant to conduct a leadership training program for 15-20 of the members of this new group. This training will be different from the training conducted in Ilobasco last year where participants were asked to analyze and solve general community problems. In the forthcoming workshop in Apastepeque, members will be asked to focus on the problem of child labor and school drop-out and for their action plans to address these issues. They will be asked to coordinate with schools to monitor attendance and enrollment in 2010. Just under half of the grant will be used to finance the training. The other half will be used to support small programs or contributions for prevention of drop-out of specific at-risk children.
Emily impressions: Emily would love the “prevention” aspect of this project and supporting the importance of education. She felt so passionately about this with her work with street children in Mexico.