COVID-19 India Project #48906

COVID-19 Emergency: Prevent Return to Child Labour

by Action against Child Exploitation (ACE)

COVID-19 Emergency: Prevent Return to Child Labour

Project Report | Aug 11, 2022
Children at Increased Risk of Child Labor

By Mizuki Mori | India Project Manager

Home visits by project staff

Hello everyone. Thank you very much for your warm support for ACE's activities.

ACE, together with its local partner organization SPEED, is conducting the "PEACE India Project" in a cotton-producing rural area in Telangana State, India, to protect children from child labor and support their education.

Children at increased risk of child labour due to the loss of education

The spread of the new coronavirus has resulted in the loss of educational opportunities not only for children engaged in child labor, but also for children who had previously attended school.
At the end of summer break (June) in the project sites, 100 children out of 1,364 children attending public and private schools, who had not previously been identified as engaged in child labor, were found not attending school regularly.

In some cases, children were refraining from going to school because they were anxious to attend school due to the corona, but there were also children whose parents' income had become unstable and they had fallen into poverty, unable to afford the tuition for the private schools they had attended.

In addition, the rainy season, when the busy season for cotton seed cultivation has begun in June. In the past two years, employment had been drastically reduced because of the COVID-19. But this year there was an increase in work in the cotton fields, and parents were taking their children to work, increasing the risk of child labor.

SPEED has intensified its patrols of such children, encouraging them to transfer from private schools to public schools, informing them through assemblies and patrols that they can coexist with coronas through appropriate measures, and continuously working to help them return to school.

Children's thoughts

In public schools, classes are taught in Telugu, the local language, while in private schools, all subjects are taught in English. Although Children attending private schools speak Telugu in their daily lives, they have a great deal of anxiety about Telugu classes because they take all classes in English at private school. Also, some children were hesitant to move to a private school because of the after-school activities and other activities offered in private schools compared to those offered in public schools. Changing school and related environment can be very stressful for children.

What we can do?

The busy season of cotton seed cultivation and increased income for parents was an opportunity for children to return to school. SPEED continues to make daily rounds of the village to persuade children and their parents to attend school.

In addition, children hold meetings as an activity of "child club", where they think about the problems and issues they face and solutions to the problems faced by other children. We are focusing on the empowerment of children's relationships by encouraging more interaction among children of various backgrounds than ever before. We hope that by creating an environment where children can talk about their problems and feelings, we can help alleviate some of their concerns about language and activities at school,

Thanks to these activities, over the past two months, 90 of the 100 children who were not attending school regularly have started attending again.

The PEACE India Project is continuing these steady activities, but we have yet to reach a fundamental solution to the problem. It is very frustrating to think about the children who have been caught up in the Corona disaster, and we are constantly searching for activities that can have a significant impacts so that all children can go to school.

ACE will continue to work effectively with SPEED, staying close to the voices of children and local people.

Your continued support would be greatly appreciated.

Making the rounds of the cotton fields

Studying together at child club

Back to all project reports

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.