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Tackling Child labour in China
Working with a group of companies to remove children from hazardous work and support them to return to school
In February 2006, Impactt first visited a factory on behalf of a UK client to verify whether the factory had addressed the issue of child labour, which had been spotted by an agent. During Impactt’s visit, children were again found working in the factory. Impactt realised that more than one customer was buying from this factory, and, with the support of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), brought together a group of companies all buying from the factory. Impactt worked with the factory, with the support of UK clients, to address the issue and to make changes to ensure that the factory remained child labour free.
The issue was extremely sensitive and had to be handled carefully to ensure, on the one hand, that children‘s lives were changed for the better and on the other that retailers did not pull out of the factory immediately. Impactt’s work included:
- Verification of the number of children
- Selection of the suitable local school
- Visits to villages of the children to understand the underlying issues
- Liaison with factory management
- Workshops with children, teachers and parents to persuade each party of the benefits of children returning to school
- Monitoring the education programme in school
Concurrently, Impactt also conducted training for factory management, helped to build up internal systems and conducted many workplace inspections to prevent future recruitment of child labour. Due to the large number of children involved and the complexities of the local context, the process was challenging.
New schools were found for the children, support was given to the parents so the children could go to school. The children’s progress at school was regularly reviewed. Despite some significant success there were problems. Many children did drop out of school. Some parents were very supportive of their children’s education. However, others were worried about whether their children were really learning anything or were just wasting their time.