English

Building Child Friendly Villages

kantin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:43:39 -0500

by Bhuwan Ribhu
View full notebook in English. [*note]

This notebook will introduce and share the concept of Child Friendly Villages or Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) which directly address the multi-dimensional problems that generate, maintain and perpetuate the child labour situation. BMGs attack the triangular paradigm, a vicious circle of illiteracy, poverty, and child labour. The BMG is an innovative concept that offers a long-term, sustainable solution to a wide variety of problems such as child labour, trafficking for forced labour, poverty alleviation, and illiteracy, among others. BMGs aim at prevention while understanding the root causes to ensure sustainability and permanent settlement of the child labor problem. Not only does the BMG programme aim to withdraw children from work while enhancing the quality of education, it also aims at a holistic development of villages towards the creation of a child friendly society. Throughout the whole process emphasis is given on child participation, community mobilization, promotion of education, victim empowerment, gender equity and awareness of gender issues, while drawing upon the convergence of various poverty alleviation schemes and programmes, and ensuring long-term sustainability of the initiatives through the creation of sound community organisation and building a resource base.

A BMG village has no child labour. All children receive compulsory, good quality education, and the voice and opinion of the children ar eheard and taken into account. To date there are more than 150 Child Friendly Villages and currently BBA is working in an additional 43 villages to make them Bal MItra Gram. This notebook will outline how the BMG approach is child-centric and ensures participation of children, making it a comprehensive programme.

View full notebook in English.

Providing parents with funds that allow them to send their children to school rather than to work

ahorwart — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:39:17 -0500

The Bolsa Escola program in Brazil provides families with a monthly stipend so that children can attend school instead of work in the streets. The program, which began in the city of Brasilia, was created with the realization that the working children of today are the poor adults of tomorrow. Bolsa Escola was expanded to a federal program in 2001.

This tactic addresses one of the root causes of child labor: families who would like to send their children to school but cannot afford to do so because they need the income.

The Bolsa Escola program is managed by the Department of Education. Qualifying families receive monthly payments and ATM cards (electronic bank cards) that allow them to access the stipends directly. Families must meet the following criteria: The children must be between the ages of six and 15 and cannot miss more than two days of school per month; each unemployed adult in the family must be registered with the National Employment System (SINE) and actively seeking employment; and the family must have lived in Brazil for at least five years. The family receives the stipend for a minimum of two years with a maximum of eight years. If a child does not meet the mandatory attendance rate, the stipend for that month is withheld.

In addition to encouraging children to complete their education and combating poverty, this tactic has significantly decreased the numbers of child laborers and reduced the numbers of school dropouts. To date the Bolsa Escola has helped the families of 8,289,930 children. When the federal program was created, Bolsa Escola became the broadest social program in the world.

Often families are complicit in the abuse of child labor – not because they want to be but because their livelihood depends on it – this tactic provides the incentive and alternative to avoid that. Providing ATM cards that look like and can be used like other ATM cards also helps recipients avoid the stigma associated with poverty and public assistance. This approach of compensating parents through monthly payments requires significant financial resources. The Bolsa Escola program also demanded a great deal of administration and coordination among the various agencies and institutions.

Providing parents with funds that allow them to send their children to school rather than to work

ahorwart — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:38:56 -0500

Using government resources to institute women's human rights education

Lrubenstein — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:41:05 -0500

The Women for Women’s Rights Project—“New Ways” in Turkey, gained the financial support of government to implement human rights education for women. This support allowed the organization to carry their program out much more extensively in communities, reaching many more people in the country.

Even though women’s rights have been protected under Turkish law since the beginning of the Republic, in reality, they felt that the majority of women didn’t know they have rights and were under the control of traditional practices carried out by the men in their lives. In areas such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and work, they saw that many Turkish women experience discrimination and abuse.

The Women for Women’s Human Rights project believed human rights education among women would help them to claim their rights. The group concluded that their education program would need to be sustained and promoted in a more institutionalized way to have a significant impact on women’s lives. As a result, they moved to collaborate with the government to implement the human rights education through government social workers and community centers and has now been able to provide group facilitator training to 94 social workers in 28 cities, and has involved over 1,300 women in the program. The organization provides on-going consultation and support to the trained social workers through letters, phone calls and site visits.

There were a number of important steps taken that were essential in gaining government support to supply the personnel and community center resources. The group researched the appropriateness of utilizing the government community centers and the social workers who run them. Because the vision of the community centers was based on a horizontal model of administration—run and supported by the community itself rather than a “top-down” model—this was very compatible and made it possible for the women’s human rights program to be implemented in these Community Centers.

The organization then determined that they would need support from high levels in government to carry out their plan. They believed the General Directorate of the government’s social service department, which had created the community centers, would be a potential ally in implementing their pilot education program. They arranged to meet with the head of the department to present extensive research on women and law, human rights violations against women, and the program they developed. The group gained the support of the General Directorate of the government social service department to implement the program in its entirety, including an agreement that the sixteen modules would be taught without changes. Additional modules could be added and would be welcomed to address specific regional issues identified by the women themselves but the core program would remain the same.

In order to maintain the support of the government, the group equipped the General Directorate with detailed information about pertinent human rights abuses and the women’s rights education program. This allowed the General Directorate to defend the agreement to offer government financial support to the program, if confronted with opposition to this decision.

Women’s for Women’s Rights ultimately signed a protocol with the government community centers to train the social workers as group facilitators to provide the women’s rights program. The social workers participated in the 16 module program themselves as well as receiving facilitation training. They then implemented the program as facilitators with a group of women in their own community center with support from Women for Women’s Human Rights. This process ensures that the personnel at the centers maintain the integrity of the program. They understand the program and they can provide it to others.

This tactic can provide ideas and insights into the utilization of government resources to promote human rights endeavors in a wide variety of arenas such as education, health, and victim or special population services to name a few. In implementing this tactic, it is important to identify potential allies in government and take the time to understand the agency that will be approached for funds. Other considerations include the risk that government priorities will shift, or that supporters within the targeted agency will leave, affecting future support for the program.

Using street theater to inform the public about social issues

Lrubenstein — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:27:31 -0500

The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) stages informance plays—performances meant to inform—on social issues ranging from women’s rights to children’s rights across the Philippines to educate the public. With its mobile theater, PETA uses informance plays as tools to engage the public to confront important social issues that remain unaddressed. In doing so, PETA indirectly forces individuals to seek solutions to their own problems.

Today, one-third of the Filipino population lives below the poverty line. As a result, a majority lacks education. This lack of education is seen with social problems such as family planning, domestic abuse, marital rape, and child abuse. A majority of the Filipino population have come to accept silently these social concerns, relying on tradition to justify the use of violence in families or the growing number of children in impoverished households. PETA’s work has sought to reverse this situation.

PETA was established in 1967. It is committed to social change. For thirty-three years, PETA has presented educational and developmental performances on various issues, from domestic abuse to family planning. PETA has given mobile workshops for marginalized communities as well as for an array of audiences to promote a “culture of peace, social justice and sustainable development” (“Histoire récente du Théâtre,” Online). Through informance plays, PETA has sought to achieve this mission.

Communities, villages, or organizations first request PETA to perform. These requests usually ask PETA to stage their plays around specific issues affecting the community. For example, the Commission on Population asked PETA to stage its informance play around the causes and consequences of unmet needs. PETA then gives the issue a human face by incorporating everyday characters with whom the audience can relate. This may include a male-chauvinistic husband and a desperate wife. In addition, PETA stages the setting of the play in accordance with its audience’s situation. The informance play lasts around seventy-five minutes. The play, however, portrays a social issue without giving any solution to it. PETA’s intent in doing so is to give the audience something to think about. PETA’s work, though, does not finish there. After each performance, actors hold a discussion with the audience. If the audience is small, they discuss the impact of the play in a circle. The actors ask for the audience’s reaction to the play. In many cases, individuals relay to the actors their connections with a specific character. To the actors, this indicates that a connection was made as intended. During this debrief session, PETA listens to the audience’s feedback, personal stories, and initiatives for action. PETA may recommend or provide ideas for the audience to act upon; however, PETA mostly acts as a supporter. PETA wants the audience to find their solutions on their own.

PETA’s work has made the company evolve into a prestigious theater in the Philippines and in Asia. PETA has performed more than 300 productions attended by thousands of individuals. Examples include “Tumawag kay Libby Manaoag,” plays on domestic violence, and “the Libby Files.” The success of informance plays has been so tremendous that requests for PETA cannot accommodate any more performances. PETA’s tactic has left its mark most significantly on its audience. As a result of these performances that touched the heart of many of the spectators, local communities, individuals, or groups have taken action to solve their problems. Issues no longer remain unaddressed. For example, after an informance play on marital rape, a woman went back home and said no to her husband when she did not feel like it. PETA, in other words, has challenged its audiences to re-think conventional, deeply rooted beliefs about issues such as man and wife, gender roles, and population control.

In thinking about how to implement this tactic in another context, i.e. child prostitution or HIV/AIDS, it is important to keep in mind that 1) criticism to one’s theatrical approach may emerge, 2) participation from communities, villages, and organizations is necessary, and 3) funding for the tours is important.

Giving people the information and skills that they need to claim their rights

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:29:51 -0500

Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg educates conscripts, army recruits and family members of Russian soldiers about their legal rights so that they can effectively exercise them. This approach gives people the information and skills they need to claim their constitutional right not to serve in the military or not to return to units where they have suffered ill-treatment.

In Russia all young men are required to serve in the military. While a 1993 law exempts men for reasons of poor health or hardship (e.g. their parents are retired or ill, or they are still in school), inscription commissions regularly violate this law. Soldiers' Mothers has documented cases in which young men with physical or psychological problems that should have exempted them from military service have been forced to serve. Inscription commissions have even known to conduct round-ups with the cooperation of the police on the street, in schools and in dormitories, even going house to house. Once in the military, the young men are subject to terrible conditions, including degrading and substandard living conditions, nightly beatings and torture.

At the school for human rights run by Soldiers' Mothers, known as 'Let Us Protect Our Sons,' students are taught how to make use of the laws that protect their rights. They are also encouraged to trust that the law can protect them and to support each other and help each other deal with their fears.

Training sessions are held once a week and last three hours. They include specific instruction on how to write statements to the authorities, as well as role plays and discussions about the law and human rights. A guidebook is also published annually.

Most people are able to get documentation from civilian physicians that they then take with them to the military physicians. Soldiers' Mothers, which has a staff of ten as well as many Russian and foreign volunteers, follows up on the success of the participants with questionnaires and keeps a file for each person and a file fore ach district. Participants who succeed in their petitions for exemption are asked to speak to later groups. About 120,000 people have participated in the training sessions over 12 years and about 90,000 have protected their legal right not to serve in the army. About 5,000 people who were tortured in the army successfully petitioned not to return to their units.

While, in theory, constitutional protections do exist in Russia for young men who fear abuse or who have been abused in the military, lack of information and fear of using the legal system (a system that has not been commonly used by individuals) keeps them from taking advantage of those rights. Soldiers’ Mothers provides not just information about those rights but also skills like letter-writing and guidance through the legal system.

Phasing out child labor in the garment industry and providing education for ex-workers

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:23:00 -0500

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers’ and Exporters’ Association (BGMEA), in collaboration with the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, developed the Child Labor Project to eliminate child labor in factories that belong to its 2,500 members, and to provide an alternative to former child laborers in the form of an education program. In 1995, the ILO, UNICEF, and the BGMEA entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which required, among other things, (1) a fact-finding survey to determine the extent of the use of child labor in the Bangladeshi garment industry, (2) the establishment of an education program for child laborers phased out of the industry, (3) the establishment of monitoring and verification systems, and (4) the provision of a monthly stipend to phased-out child workers and their families. The MoU served as the basis for the implementation of the Child Labor Project, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The first component of the Child Labor Project is the provision of three years of informal education for ex-child workers with the goal of mainstreaming them into the formal Bangladeshi educational system. Through the course of the project, UNICEF and two non-governmental organizations created 353 schools for this use in which 9,740+ children had enrolled before May 1998. The BGMEA also undertook to offer employment to qualified family members of ex-child workers. In addition, the project provided the families with access to micro-credit systems so that families can increase their income, resulting in less dependency on wages earned by child workers.

The second part of the project, the monitoring and verification system, was established to gain an understanding the extent to which child labor was used in Bangladeshi garment factories and to monitor progress toward the elimination of child labor. The ILO trained inspectors to advise factory owners and managers about the benefits of the Child Labor Project and the need to get rid of child labor. Since the inspectors were not trained as “police” force, their factory visits engendered some level of trust between the inspectors and factory owners. The inspectors focused solely on the use of child labor and did not address working conditions, wages, or other employment issues. During its first survey in 1995, monitoring teams visited about 2,100 factories and found that child labor was being used in approximately 42.5% of garment factories. By 2000, the percentage had been reduced to 4.5%. The goals of the project also included ensuring that ex-child workers were able to return to their positions in the garment industry once they reached 14 years old.

The success of the Child Labor Project in Bangladesh has led to the implementation of modified versions of this project by the ILO in Pakistan, East Asia, Africa, and Central America. Similar to the BGMEA version, the new applications of the project all combine social protection programs for ex-child workers and families which are implemented by local NGOs with a monitoring system run by the ILO. The new projects focus specifically on the coffee and commercial agricultural industries. The lessons learned by the organizations involved in the Bangladeshi project have led to the elimination of the monthly stipend payment for ex-child workers because of the cost involved and the related lack of sustainability of that component of the project. Instead, ex-child workers in the modified versions of the project receive access to vocational training and micro-credit for their families.

The Child Labor Project in Bangladesh faced a couple of challenges in its implementation. First, once children reach age 14, they can legally work and thus, there was a need to continue providing a stipend after that point to encourage them to stay in school and not go back to work. This increased the costs of the project and there were questions about the sustainability of such an approach. Another important consideration in implementing this type of project is the importance of the role played by employers in this process. The BGMEA and ILO stressed the significance of having employers’ cooperation in order to develop a successful and sustainable project. A third, and related, consideration is the pressure that the Bangladeshi garment industry was facing as a result of a bill proposed by Senator Tom Harkin in the U.S. Senate in 1993. The bill proposed a ban on imports from countries that used child labor at any stage of production. It did not pass, but the resulting negative publicity and the threat of a ban on selling its garments in the U.S. played a part in the industry’s willingness to cooperate with the project.

Training minorities to produce and direct community-based television programming to break down prejudices

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:16:02 -0500

Based in Hungary and Romania, the Black Box Foundation works to improve attitudes towards the Roma minority by helping them produce television programs for local channels. The Foundation creates production teams, trains them in video production, secures airtime, and sees that programs are exchanged between teams.

The Roma minority is the primary subject of prejudice in Hungary and Romania. The general public’s overwhelmingly negative attitude toward the Roma is strengthened by the mass media’s portrayal of them in a context of poverty and criminality, and their inability to access the media has effectively left them without a voice in which to address their image in the majority culture.

To address the public’s lack of knowledge about Roma culture and daily life, in 1997 the Black Box Foundation began a project to train people in television production and to help them acquire airtime in which to inform local viewers, both Roma and non-Roma, about issues affecting their community.

The Foundation solicits applications, and from the chosen applicants creates five-person teams. As the teams are meant to be models of cross-ethnic cooperation, members are Hungarian, Roma, and Romanian. Foundation staff members first work to build trusting relationships with and among team members, discussing individual viewpoints, and addressing the sensitive issues that will be brought up in the program. Teams then participate in a training program in Budapest where, in addition learning the fundamentals of television production, they are able to consult with experts on minority issues.

During the last three days of training, teams produce their first films. They are then provided with a camera, lights, microphones, and other necessary equipment, which they use to produce their own monthly programs at local television stations. Team members act as writers, camerapersons, reporters, directors, editors, and presenters of the programs. The Black Box Foundation supervises and regularly monitors the project for six months following training. The Foundation negotiates with local broadcast companies to secure regular airtime for monthly television programs; production teams, however, work independently and are required to find their own resources in their respective communities. Completed programs are broadcast at the crew's local television stations, and are also exchanged between the teams of each country.

The Black Box Foundation has trained approximately 150 people in twelve locations in both Hungary and Romania. Outcomes among the production teams have varied. A number of teams still broadcast regularly on local television, and members of one crew were hired by a local station. Although other teams no longer broadcast on their television stations, they now use their skills and equipment to record the activities of their human rights organizations.

Although it involves a long and complicated process, the program has helped change the way minorities are viewed and treated in the region, reducing ethnic tensions and prejudices. It has also helped to show how human rights activists, with training in only the most basic video skills, may use television as a powerful medium for exploring and promoting discussion of human rights issues.

Edited 16 February 2003

Training grassroots human rights groups in video and communications technology

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:09:08 -0500

WITNESS empowers human rights organizations around the world to incorporate video as an advocacy tool in their work. Rooted in the power of personal testimonies and in the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, WITNESS and its partners’ videos have been used
as evidence in legal proceedings;
to corroborate allegations of human rights violations;
to complement written reports to international/regional organizations that provide a counterweight to official versions of a country’s human rights performance;
to stimulate grassroots education and mobilization;
to provide information for news broadcasts;
to promote human rights via the internet; and
to produce documentaries for broadcast on television worldwide, among others uses.

Founded in 1992, WITNESS has created partnerships with more than 150 groups in 50 countries on a variety of issues, ranging from the “social cleansing” of street children in Central America and sexual abuse of women/girls during Sierra Leone’s civil war to sweatshops in the United States and the plight of people displaced in Burma.

WITNESS chooses partners who seek to build a long-term capacity to use video effectively and also seeks specific campaign opportunities where video can tip the balance between success and failure. Once a partnership is established, WITNESS provides the group with video equipment and training, then follows up with workshops in camera techniques, intensive instruction in using video for human rights work, systemic evaluation of video footage, post-production assistance and constructive feedback to create powerful documentaries.

WITNESS and its partners then create video advocacy campaigns around these videos. These campaigns are built around strategies with many components, including broadcast and distribution platforms, collaboration with other organizations and networks, targeted screenings before key audiences and opportunities for individual viewers to take action. These campaigns may be as targeted as using video to influence a small group of key decision-makers or as broad as trying to mobilize youth around a particular issue. Footage is also kept in the WITNESS Archive, where it is available as a unique resource of human rights information to the global community.

WITNESS’s recognizes that depending on the local context, a human rights advocate may be protected or endangered by using a camera.. WITNESS uses the experience of its staff and partners to help others create policies that are safe and appropriate for their situations. They also stress the importance of the relationship of trust between the person filming and the person being filmed, including a clear explanation of the risks and benefits of speaking to a camera.

One example of a strategic and savvy use of video advocacy is WITNESS's work with Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) to document the deplorable conditions in a Paraguayan psychiatric hospital.

“Julio and Jorge were two adolescent boys being kept in the hospital along with 458 other people – naked, in bare cells without access to bathrooms. The cells reeked of urine and excrement and the walls were smeared with feces. The boys spent approximately four hours every other day in an outdoor pen, littered with garbage and broken glass.

In December 2003, MDRI filed an emergency petition before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) at the Organization of American States (OAS), asking the IACHR to intervene on behalf of the boys, as well as the others in the hospital.

Along with a legal brief, MDRI submitted a video that they had shot and edited with WITNESS. The video was structured according to the specific articles set forth in several international human rights instruments to which Paraguay is bound. Using images that clearly demonstrate how Paraguay had failed to fulfill its obligations, the video put a human face on the issue. The video was specifically presented within a human rights framework to argue that these patients are legally entitled to a minimum standard of living. This led the IACHR to establish jurisprudence on the rights of those in mental health facilities, a legal precedent that can now be used in other countries in the region.

In December 2003, for the first time, the IACHR approved urgent measures to protect the lives and physical integrity of those in psychiatric institutions. MDRI and WITNESS subsequently brought the issue to the general public by streaming the video over their web sites and by collaborating with CNN en Espanol on a follow-up story. The president of Paraguay and the minister of health personally visited the hospital, after which the hospital director was fired and a commission was formed to investigate the issue.

By reaching a broader group of people, MDRI and WITNESS garnered further support for change By exposing these conditions to a broader public, they called attention to the situation of mental health facilities in Paraguay, and the press played a pivotal role in the unfolding of events that brought about significant changes.

Although Julio and Jorge’s ward is still in the process of being renovated as this book goes to press, they have access to showers and clothes, as well as 24-hour nurses. The Paraguayan Health Ministry is working with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to bring conditions up to the most basic standards of human rights.

The collaboration between WITNESS and MDRI has now produced system-changing results, but the challenge lies ahead, in ensuring that human rights advocates pick up the momentum created by the video and follow up on the case to ensure that conditions are improved for all psychiatric facilities in Paraguay. While this case has relied upon strong visual evidence of a violation, it is also important to note that WITNESS partners have successfully used video without relying upon filming such graphic images. For instance, many have created powerful videos by collecting testimonies and telling the stories of those most directly affected, which can have just as a powerful impact within a human rights campaign”

Offering community education and developing alternative rites of passage to discourage Female Genital Cutting

ahorwart — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:57:15 -0500

The NGO PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, Kenya's largest women's organization, have collaborated to offer alternatives to Female Genital Mutilation. They combine community education for young girls and parents with alternative rites of passage that preserve many traditional aspects of the coming-of-age ritual, while prohibiting physical harm to girls.

In recent years the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), endemic in Africa and surviving in many transplanted immigrant communities, has been a focus of international discussion and condemnation by medical and human rights organizations worldwide. If women in nations where FGM is practiced hope to make gains in the area of women's rights, it is essential that they learn there are alternatives. However, eradicating FGM is proving to be a more tenacious challenge than external pressure can achieve. This tactic is a response to objections often raised by communities claiming that the West does not understand the cultural significance of a practice, rooted in centuries of tradition, which marks a girl's transition into adulthood.

The program began in August 1996 with an aggressive, yet sensitive approach to community education in the Masai community. Kenyan women, many of whom had experienced the procedure themselves as children, spoke to schoolgirls and frankly informed them of FGM’s physical effects. At the same time, parents of young girls were approached by educators with a different angle: discussing the effect of FGM on their daughters’ economic future (typically, a girl drops out of school following FGM and is married, with little personal earning power).

The alternative, non-FGM centered coming of age ritual preserves many of the traditional features of the old version—seclusion, family life education, celebration and gift giving. Thus, parents and their daughters are able to choose to honor cultural traditions without sacrificing their rights to health and economic opportunity. From an initial class of 28 girls participating in a week-long ceremony, the program has grown considerably: by late 1998, more than 1,100 girls had 'graduated' in a dozen ceremonies in several communities. The program has achieved success in that none of the girls who have 'graduated' have given into societal pressure to be circumcised.

This educational tactic has potential for impact far beyond the African continent. FGM has also become an important issue in Australia, the UK, Canada, France and the United States due to the continuation of the practice by immigrants from countries where FGM is common. These nations can learn how to deal with the issue of FGM in a way that is sensitive to the immigrants' native culture, but which protects the interests of young women.