Eradicate Child Labour
just fifteen years ago, child labor was not considered a problem, although it is a reality that affects nearly 215 million children around the world. Fundación Telefónica, through Proniño works in thirteen countries in Latin America with the goal of eradicating this social scourge. And it does so through schooling and education. Also of communication. His latest initiative, the book's playtime is a look committed to this overwhelming situation presented on 21 March in Barcelona.
Recreation is something sacred for children. Represents the time when you can finally put aside their homework and focus on the tasks of their age: playing football, skipping, counted gossip or play cops and robbers ...
But unfortunately The concept of pleasure is not the same throughout the world. It is not wrong to point out that for some children and girls this time for fun and entertainment is not limited to the short time between classes, but covers whole school day, from when they enter until they leave school, from sitting on the desk to add up to leaving the classroom. For working children, and there are nearly 215 million of them aged between 5 and 17 years-going to school is itself recess.
The classroom is the space and time in which, for the first and possibly last time in the day, let your imagination soar and compant games with boys and girls of her age. Accustomed to long and exhausting working sessions, school becomes a true sanctuary, a magical place where they can forget the other reality: the foul smell of garbage, the clatter of hammers at the mine, the sun scorching the fields. However, this problem today that sneaks through the cracks of the back door of our society rarely calls attention. Rarely, it is true, but when it does burst with a force so great that shakes the conscience and hearts overwhelmed.
Child labor in the world
In April and May 2010, a group of five famous photographers (Carlos Spottorno, Renzo Giraldo, Walter Astrada, Lourdes R. Basoli and Alvaro Ybarra), sensitive to this reality, decided to travel to several Latin American countries to shape the life circumstances of some children in this region. Then initiated a project covered by the Telefónica Foundation Proniño, whose results have just picked up the book now in recess, a work that offers a different perspective, caring, sensitive, also real and respectful to one of the scourges bloodiest of our world: child labor.
Unfortunately nothing of what this book shows is a legend. No photo retouching or empty words. Nothing is less than it seems. In its pages are children aged five to twelve years. Children who work from sunrise to sunset to help support their families, children living and adult children a reality. But No children yet. Children overcome their natural joy and escape miseries of his misfortune with such a small and private sanctuary that is school. Why yes, they are all school children through the program that promotes and encourages Proniño Fundación Telefónica.
Mission: Child Labor Eradication
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), child labor is anyone who deprives the young of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is detrimental to their physical and psychological development. At present, according to figures from the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) of ILO in Latin America is 5.7 million working children, while worldwide the figure is grossly raised to 115 million.
These children mostly work in the agriculture sector, but thousands of them do their work in other high-risk sectors, such as mining, landfills or domestic work. Designated deserve mention cases where they do in the peoresformas of child labor such as slavery, debt bondage, trafficking, forced recruitment into armed conflict, commercial sexual exploitation, pornography or illegal activities.
The dimension of the problem is such that enough to think that only fifteen years ago child labor was not considered or even a concern in the region. Today, although many countries have advanced significantly with the implementation of policies and plans to address child labor, high incidence shows the need to intensify efforts and strengthen the actions aimed at their total elimination.
suffice as an example the case of the Caribbean area, where states such as Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago begin to develop, as recently as 2001, the first actions regarding this specific problem. Of the 35 ILO member countries in the Americas, only 27 have ratified Convention No. 138 concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (missing some significant as Canada, USA and Mexico). Even so, still two-zone countries (Suriname and Haiti) have not ratified any ILO Conventions on child altrabajo, and others like Cuba and Venezuela continue to avoid ratifying Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.
Photographers vs child labor
In Central America and South America today are already implementing programs to resolve this problem, in developing monitoring systems and monitoring of child labor that also involving the social partners. IPEC has not forgotten the case of indigenous children, the poorest among the poor who suffer the worst forms of discrimination and the total lack of access to national social services.
Within this unique setting, agencies and national and international institutions are trying to find solutions to mitigate somewhat the impact of this scourge. For over ten years, Telefónica Foundation contributes to solving this situation in thirteen Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Urguay and Venezuela) through its Proniño, a social action project that is currently in almost 200,000 school children in this region. The ultimate goal is to withdraw gradually from the street, give them full protection and a sustainable and quality education that promotes their integration and to ensure their future opportunities.
To achieve this goal, the program addresses the problem from a perspective of overall performance, not only complying to directly attend to the children, but diversifying their actions towards the families of the children, school, institutions and, in general, the whole society.
Fundación Telefónica and Proniño are therefore one of many examples of entrepreneurial effort and commitment to eliminate child labor through education. However, in an attempt to go one step further, Proniño also addresses communicative dimension, raising awareness of the problem, making it visible to society with the aim of making it sensitize and convincingly take the necessary measures for eradication.
recess Project
is in this context of communication in the society where it was born over a year now the project's playtime, a book of stories looks and coordinated by writer and photographer Fernando Marías famosoCarlos Spottorno. It was they who through a series of short stories anonymous wanted to show the transformative and educational work that Proniño exercised throughout Latin America. Alongside them, photographers Carlos, Renzo, Walter, Lourdes and Álvaro embarked on an initiative called to leave an impression on their lives, both personally and professionally. Contact with children-to those who devoted much time to know, not only through his eyes and gestures, but also through their voice, their ability to succeed and his joy at the misfortune they would reconsider our current scale of values.
As part of the initiative, all involved brought with them a tape recorder. Recorded her various personal stories addressed, the aspirations, experiences, needs. An audio document, a plastic and emotionally overwhelming force, which united the graphic and written testimony, contributing to record a really sad and sorry not insurmountable. Later, returning to Spain, all this material was used by 16 major writers develop a story, a story, a short story from feeling that they were those eyes, those voices of the 16 players.
Hector Abad
Faciolince, Lola Beccaria, Ángeles Caso, Alonso Cueto, Espido Freire, Fernando Iwasaki, Gustavo Martín Garzo, Luisgé Martín, Ricardo Menéndez Salmon, Vicente Molina Foix, Soledad Puértolas, Rosa Regas, Javier Reverte, Marta Rivera de la Cruz , Santiago Roncagliolo and Care Santos. All successful authors, all men and women involved were given photographs and recordings of a particular child with the task of making a diving exercise in their lives, their environment and their dreams. And so, with the help of his imagination and sensitivity, only 16 stories surfaced. Unique in its development, but a cast of thousands other stories that are repeated day after day in the world to our shame. As coordinators tell Fernando Marias and Carlos Spottorno in the prologue of recess, this is a book of glances, a book which "looks at the child photographer with the camera, the boy looks from the pictures the writer and novelist you look at yourself to write. "
