Blog author: Lucy Rolington, International Grant and Projects Officer
On Monday, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) Secretary of State Penny Mordaunt MP announced a range of new initiatives which will improve understanding of the factors that drive modern slavery and the worst forms of child labour, and innovative interventions to counteract them. The Consortium for Street Children (CSC) welcomes the UK government’s commitment to tackle modern slavery and child labour, and is proud to announce its role in the following upcoming project.
The programme “Tackling the drivers of modern slavery and child labour: A child centred approach” will be funded by DFID and led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), who will be working with partners across the sector to identify ways in which we can increase children’s options to avoid engagement in hazardous, exploitative labour. The programme will focus its work around three target countries – Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal.
IDS will be leading this work and CSC will be working alongside core partners Terre des Hommes, ChildHope, the Ethical Trading Initiative, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. CSC will be working on two of the four work streams, including supporting positive family dynamics and social norms, and building children’s agency and child-led coalitions.
Caroline Ford, Chief Executive of Consortium for Street Children* commented on the launch
‘The inclusion of street children into this project is really exciting. We are years into the Sustainable Development Goals, and despite the commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ street children are continually invisible on wider international development agendas, and – as a result – not included, counted, or consulted in the many brilliant programmes that really could benefit them as an inherently vulnerable population.
This project not only recognises the nuances and interconnectedness of child labour, modern day slavery and street children by focusing on the ‘invisible’ and the ‘informal’, but goes a step further from inclusion into active and meaningful participation. This is a leap in the right direction for street children, and we are excited about the impact that this consortium and participatory approach will bring.’
This work will build on a growing body of research that CSC is undertaking on these issues – to find out more about the links between street connected children and modern slavery see here.
Please get in touch with Lucy Rolington at lucy@streetchildren.org for more information on this project. If you are a CSC member working in the target area (either geographically or thematically) please email network@streetchildren.org
*Caroline Ford – CSC Chief Executive, Jan 2017- Feb 2021