Awareness-raising on child labour Awareness raising campaigns help children, parents, caregivers and communities understand the negative impacts of child labour. Awareness raising involves educating and sensitizing about the dangers and detrimental effects of child labour on children’s development, education and wellbeing. It plays both a curative and preventative role, aiming to shift attitudes and behaviours towards supporting children’s rights to education and to a healthy childhood. Awareness raising covers a range of themes, such as child protection laws, children’s rights, education, the health implications of child labour, the definitions of hazardous work and related issues of child wellbeing. Awareness raising occurs at different levels and different moments of the broader remediation process. When a case of child labour is detected, Community Facilitators always provide initial awareness-raising support, discussing concepts and impacts of child labour with the families. There is also community-level awareness raising. Public campaigns, broadcasts, posters, screenings and other media aim to build a collective understanding surrounding child labour, which can help children and adults more readily identify and remedy child labour themselves. This can lead to children being empowered to speak up for themselves and to parents making different choices regarding their children’s tasks. It can catalyse changes in the attitudes and behaviours of households towards the involvement of children in child labour activities and has been found to gradually reduce the prevalence of child labour in communities. Additionally, it can also shed light on the importance of education for children. Awareness-raising on child labour was found to be the second most prevalent remediation approach, with 75% of households in Ghana and 66% in Côte d’Ivoire participating in these activities.6 In both Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, 9 in 10 respondents reported that the awareness-raising activities had a significantly positive influence on their attitudes and practices. Across all partner cooperatives, a substantial majority of respondents considered awareness-raising to be a highly effective intervention in changing attitudes and practices related to child labour. The partner cooperatives’ multi-stakeholder approach, combined with context-specific messaging and continuous engagement, has contributed to significant positive influences on households’ understanding and behaviours. While its impact on reducing child labour has been less direct compared to other remediation activities, awareness- raising creates the enabling environment in which other, more targeted remediation activities will have a greater impact as they are able to build on the systemic change in attitudes.
“I think to a very large extent the knowledge about child labour has been very beneficial. Both my wife and I have been part of the sensitization. We have also imparted knowledge about child labour to the children. So, when they find themselves on the farm without any of us present, they know what to do.” (Caregiver, Ghana)
6. Researchers noted that this perception is likely to be distorted by the fact that people are not as likely to remember this type of support as they would material support. In fact, when prompted or asked specifically about awareness-raising, most respondents confirmed they did in fact receive this, which might indicate it is in fact the most common activity.
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