Just another one of those days…

You might not have known it but yesterday, June 12th, was actually World Day Against Child Labour. You know, the kind of day organised to highlight some specific cause or another (in this case child labour) and help some of the various issues relating to it vie for space in an ever-crowded public conciousness. I only realised myself later in the day when I came across this article while looking through the Kathmandu Post. I’ve never really been sure and do occasionally wonder just how effective these ‘world day’ initiatives actually are but, to be fair, I guess they’re better than nothing. That I’ve been spurred into writing these here lines is a case in point – even if it is a day late!

An estimated 1.7 million 5 – 17 year old children work in Nepal today.

While just-one didn’t do anything in particular to mark this year’s World Day Against Child Labour, I am happy to share that within the last week alone we have managed to successfully remove another two young labourers from the sad statistics and are currently in early stages of helping them to reclaim what remains of their respective childhoods. I’d like to briefly share the story of how they came to our attention here, as I feel it will help highlight the stark reality of the situation of child labour here in Nepal.

It was last Friday afternoon that a foreign friend of mine phoned and asked if just-one might be able to help a 12 year-old tea-shop boy from the restaurant under the Nepali human rights office where my friend currently works. Explaining that many in the office were uncomfortable with the irony of a child delivering tea-break snacks and lunches to a human rights office, we were requested to provide urgent intervention as it seemed that steps were being taken to have the boy transferred to the private residence of a local political figure, where he was work as a domestic servant in return for being sent to school.

That this far-from-ideal arrangement was being made between the head of a human rights organisation and a respected political figure, both of whom would, most probably, argue that they had the boy’s best interests at heart, helps highlight the somewhat skewed perception of what’s actually regarded as acceptable by so many here – people who one might expect to know better. While I can understand how the boy’s impoverished parents, struggling to provide for their seven children in a remote village, and their own lack of education may well have contributed to a situation like this arising in the first place, I’m not so sure that I’ll ever fathom the seemingly blind acceptance of such situations by some of the better educated and apparently civilised members of society.

Tea-shops and local restaurants often use young children as helpers.

Thankfully, having intervened upon request, the staff of just-one were able to skilfully mediate an alternative solution that saw us agreeing to facilitate the boy’s eventual return to his family and support his education from there. It was only having arranged for his 18 year old sister to make the 100km journey to Kathmandu to help us arrive at this solution and secure the boy’s rescue, that we discovered that they also had a 15 year old sister working as a domestic servant elsewhere in the city. A few more days of phone-calls and sensitive enquiries meant that by last Tuesday we’d also managed to secure custody of the girl from the woman whose house she’d been working in and offer to support her return to education too. That this woman was the founder of an NGO working to protect the rights children, women and senior citizens, again, speaks volumes on the depth of societal introspection that’s needed here if the issue of child labour is ever to be properly addressed to the point of eradication.

So, while we may not have marked yesterday for the day that it was with any kind of fanfare, our ongoing efforts here helping disadvantaged children access educational opportunities they’d otherwise be denied, do see us addressing the reality of child labour as best we can. Yes, it’s a small-scale, grass-roots effort that’s never going to have a huge impact on the overall situation (it’s quite likely the positions made vacant through our interventions over the last seven days may well already be filled again by other less fortunate children), but today is testament to the huge impact our work can and does have on the individuals involved… You might not have known it but today, June 13th, is actually SLC Results Day here in Nepal and it just so happens that two of the four students just-one supported through their School Leaving Cert examinations earlier this year were also working children when they came to our attention some six or seven years ago.

So, as our two new recruits become accustomed to the sense of security that comes with being part of just-one‘s ever-growing family (security we’re able to provide them with thanks only to the generous support of kind-hearted folks like you), four past graduates also anxiously await the on-line publication of their long awaited results… In closing, I’d like to ask you to join with us in wishing them all the very best for their respective futures. Huge thanks too to all those who’ve contributed in whatever way to empowering us to make these brighter futures possible.

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