Working children's unions and organizations are becoming players on the global stage, thanks to an emerging paradigm shift that encourages children's participation in decision making. Prior to this shift, children had no voice. Child protection was viewed through adult eyes, which regarded the child as vulnerable and dependent.

This month, Changemakers highlights a new direction in advocacy for child laborers, and the conditions from which it arises, with a photo essay depicting activities of Bihma Sangha, an independent union of working children that was organized for and by working children. Located in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, Bihma Sangha was launched with support from a voluntary agency called The Concerned for Working Children (CWC).

CWC's strategy has been to respond to children as de facto workers. Inspired by the idea of a society free from exploitation, it has employed and adapted the same empowering approach with children that it applied to adult workers, encouraging children to discuss their lives, identify problems and formulate lines of action. ¹

This photo essay was produced by photojournalist Janet Jarman, who spent three days with CWC. For more information about Bihma Sangha and CWC, see the November 1999 Changemakers Journal article profiling CWC co-founder Damodar Acharya.

Challenging Conventional Ideas About Childhood

Two of the more advanced organizations of working children in India are Bhima Sangha in the southwestern state of Karnataka and Bal Mazdoor Sangh (Child Workers' Union) in Delhi. In the publication "Working Children Get Organised," ¹ Anthony Swift provides a detailed description of Bhima Sangha.

The following excerpts from Swift's "Working Children Get Organised" highlight the fact that organization by working children presents a challenge to conventional ideas about childhood:

"The children's movements are leading exponents of the participation and organization of children. Most came into being because of the lack of concerted action by the state, or anyone else, to provide the most basic protection or development opportunities to the children of poor neighborhoods.

"What the movements have done is build on children's ability to help protect themselves against the physical and psychological traumas that poverty and social exclusion expose them to. They have gone further, enabling children in varying degrees to become protagonists for their rights and for social change rather than victims of poverty.

"In Brazil, for example, the National Movement of Street Boys and Girls (MNMMR) has played a major role in exposing the killing of children by death squads. The members of Bhima Sangha – a union of working children in Karnataka, India – have taken effective action against employers who exploit and abuse child workers.

"In itself, membership of a movement provides elements of protection, access to information and opportunities for personal development that are generally unavailable to unorganized child workers or, for that matter, children in conventional schools. . . . affirming, if anything, the newly emerging insight that being active participants in society is – more than a right – greatly beneficial to children's personal development. . . .

"Most of the children's movements grow from the localized actions of small groups of individuals who were appalled at the waste of human life and potential unfolding before their eyes. Despairing of the likelihood of the state acting in the best interest of all the people, they voluntarily took responsibility upon themselves. . . ."

Pioneering a New Direction

"Early efforts to help child laborers were "reacting to the failure of existing state and voluntary sector responses to street and working children. In many countries, state policy towards such children was oppressive and often violent and corrupt – administered mainly through the police and courts and directed at protecting mainstream society rather than the child.

"Many church institutions were also disciplinarian and oppressive. Meanwhile, the charitable and welfare responses of the church and the voluntary sectors at best rescued a few children in the multitude. At worst they created dependence, in the children they tried to help, alienated them from their families and communities and failed to equip them to survive as independent adults in the labor market. They did nothing to attack the causes of the social abandonment of children.

"If anything, these approaches revealed that the adult world did not know that what was best for such children. Reluctant to create yet another damaging prescription, the pioneers of the children's movements set out instead to build a relationship of solidarity with children and reinforce their strengths rather than respond to their disadvantages.

"Instead of removing them from the streets and workplaces in which society had abandoned them, they joined them there, developing the role of reliable companion, street educator, animator, collaborator as they are variously called. Through this relationship they planned to enable the children – who were generally treated with disdain – to realize their own value and to demonstrate that value to the society that had rejected them.

Re-Thinking Power Relationships

"Because the work of these movements is founded on the belief that everyone is of value and has a contribution to make and because it is pitched against processes of social exclusion, the movements developed participatory democratic forms requiring the adults involved to review their own power relationship with children and the children their power relationships with each other. Thus the movements have become a means by which both children and supporting adults can explore and define their role as citizens.

"As movements and organizations of street and working children have spread and grown, other adult social actors have become involved. They include activists from other churches and other religions and many from non-church backgrounds – people from trade unions, neighborhood associations, non-government and government organizations and a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds.

"The pedagogy of Paulo Freire became an important reference in the development of the movements in a number of countries, but there were also other influences. Gandhi's ideas, for instance, helped inspire the activists who supported the development of Bhima Sangha. In Africa and India, the movements emerged from the initiatives of secular voluntary organizations, and in one case from the intervention of trade union activists who took up the cause of working children.

"Some of the newer movements drew inspiration from those in Latin America, whose work was broadcast internationally through UNICEF, nongovernmental (NGO) and church networks and through the media. Other movements started spontaneously, with groups of people deciding to take responsibility for the difficulties faced by children in their immediate neighborhoods. . . ."

" . . . What has emerged is more of partnership or alliance of children and educators. In other cases – Bhima Sangha and the African Movement of Working Children and Youth are examples – adult supporters are located in separate voluntary organizations which foster and act as resource centers for the organization of working children. . . .

"What the adults in all the movements try to give children from the poorest neighborhoods is an experience of being valued, respected and included. By encouraging them to reflect on their experience and act together to try to overcome their problems, they also enable them to develop analytical skills, an experience of solidarity and the confidence to take action. Instead of being defined by the values of mainstream society as failures and victims, the children are able in varying degrees to develop a critical awareness of that society, motivating them to seek social change.

Widespread Impact

"The movements have made many remarkable achievements, demonstrating that working children have major contributions to make to social development and to their own development and protection. Some have been key players in the promotion of children's rights, to the benefit not only of themselves but of all children. Some have developed ways to feed their ideas into local and national policy-making processes.

"All have had some impact – in some cases considerable – on public attitudes towards working children. Their achievements are wide-ranging – persuading local authorities to repair bridges and roads used by children, developing and persuading schools to pilot curricula for working children, supporting neighborhood struggles for improved services, negotiating access to health care for street and working children, tackling abusive employers and negotiating better working conditions.

"Children involved in the movements have come to see their struggle as integral to that of their families, neighborhoods and all marginalized people. Asked what he understood by citizenship, Vidal Coco Maniani, then of Manthoc and a delegate at the Amsterdam Conference on Child Labor in 1997, replied without hesitation:

It is to be the subject of rights and know your responsibilities. It is to want to be treated as a member of society, not as a victim of poverty. As citizens we should respected – whether we are very small kids, working children, adults or old people. Citizenship is the exercise of mutual respect.

"Few if any of the adults involved in the movements would claim that their way of working is the only way, or a model for others, or that they get it right all the time. They are still explorers of territory that is very new. Nevertheless, their movements are among the most advanced manifestations of what many people now recognize to be essential to the development and well-being of children but few know how to procure – the active participation of children themselves in determining what happens in their lives."

Other Resources

Please note: CWC and Bhima Sangha are just two of many organizations around the world dedicated to solving the dilemma of child labor by attacking its root causes rather than only its syptoms. More selected Internet resources on child labor are available in the Changemakers Library section.