As part of a research project on education unions’ child labour projects, commissioned by Education International (EI) and AOb, independent researcher Nora Wintour carried out field missions in Uganda, Morocco, Albania and Mali. She noticed that all the projects have an impressive and effectively mainstreamed focus on the girl child. Working with NGOs in the majority of cases, as part of broader Stop Child Labour programmes, the aim of the education unions’ child labour projects is to get children out of work and into school. The projects are located in disadvantaged urban settlements where there are many recent rural migrants and in remote areas where tradition and patriarchy are firmly entrenched – so keeping young teenage girls in school is the really hard part. There is no doubt, according to Wintour, that one of the key successes of the projects is that communities are reassessing the value of educating girls, and beginning to take action to tackle early marriage and teenage pregnancy.
Education International and AOb are working closely together with Stop Child Labour, Mondiaal FNV and local partner organizations in fighting child labour in different countries across the world.
Please find the full article on the research project at the website of Worlds of Education.
At the facebook page you can also read a short success story from Mali about a girl named Maryam. She dropped out of school at the age of 13 to raise money to pay her dowry. The Malian education union SNEC child labour project helped her to come back to school. Now she is a member of the anti-child work club to convince others not to drop out of school.
