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World Day Against Child Labor 2008 - Education: The right response to child labor
WASHINGTON, DC (June 12, 2008) -- World Learning joins the international community in standing behind the World Day Against Child Labor (WDACL), an annual event hosted by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Education: the right response to child labor as the theme for this year strikes at the core of World Learning’s work in removing children from the worse forms of child labor. There are about 165 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are involved in child labor, often working long hours and in hazardous conditions. For these 165 million children who are involved in child labor today the answer to their future is access to adequate education.
World Learning has a long history of combating child labor through education. Our projects aim at providing children with access to quality and relevant education as a means to remove them from the worse forms of child labor. Maria Gloria Barreiro, Project Director for Wiñari, World Learning’s Child Labor project in Ecuador, stressed the importance of education in removing children from the worse forms of child labor when she said "providing children with accelerated education programs, like what we are doing in Ecuador, is what keeps them in school, providing new opportunities for out of school and overage children and eventually pulling their family out of the cycle of poverty."
When asked about WDACL Azra Kacapor, World Learning’s Director for Children and Youth Programs said that 'the key to breaking the cycle of poverty is by creating opportunities through quality education for relevant and contextualized economic empowerment and job skills training for children and youth.' World Learning’s Wiñari project in Ecuador bridges this gap between educations, economic empowerment and life skills training by providing indigenous youth with a specialized agro-technical high school programs. To date World Learning has removed over 3000 children in Ecuador from the worse forms of child labor through enrolling them in education based programs. World Learning implements projects combating child labor through out the world.