Community Engagement in Combating Child Labor and Child Trafficking

Child labor awareness raising and sensitization are major catalysts for social change within communities.

Community Welfare Committees established by communities are major catalysts in bringing people together and providing common goals for child labor interventions, community development projects, and income generation schemes.

Effective leadership of community members is a powerful tool towards gaining community respect, motivating communities into participating in child labor interventions.

Economic empowerment through training in best practice business skills and effective implementation mobilizes communities towards income generation, self-sufficiency and sustainability, if followed-up and continually encouraged, which may mitigate the likelihood of parents engaging in child trafficking.

Basic functional literacy skills enables community members, particularly youth and women, to converse, write their name, record measurements (i.e. carpentry and tailoring), and document simple requests, for empowerment and change.

Basic functional numeracy skills enables community members, particularly youth and women, to prepare budgets, keep account of income and expenditure, and manage finances, for empowerment and change.

The capacity of communities can be greatly increased through training in child labor, education, healing classroom practices, health, economic development and community development. Multiple trainings that are repeated continuously over the life of the program, in order for messages to be fully absorbed and applied, are preferred to one-off training sessions.

Community to local government initiatives empower communities to engage with their local government and advocate their needs, and pressure them to respond to programs that combat child labor, child trafficking and promote the return of all children to schooling and vocational training.