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 labour 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 labour, but also for children who had previously attended school. At the end of summer break (June) in the project areas, 100 children out of 1,364 children attending public and private schools, who had not previously been identified as engaged in child labour, 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 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 labour.
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 environments can be very stressful for children.