Including Children as Key Stakeholders in Child Labor Prevention: The EduFuturo Experience

Published by World Learning for International Development (WLID), this monograph describes advantages and challenges of the inclusion of young people as stakeholders in development projects. In the gold mining country of the Peruvian Andes, World Learning's EduFuturo Project empowered youth to become active participants in the design and implementation of programmes aimed at reducing child labour in the gold fields. The project strengthened the capacity of Peruvian youth groups to improve education in their communities. Youth groups were supported with technical assistance and small grants to create and carry out their own education-related initiatives.

According to the monograph, the model of involving young people directly in their own development is a direction that is finding increasing support in participatory project planning and management. However, there is a need for documentation of strategies to strengthen the role of youth as agents of social change. The results of EduFuturo's projects yielded advantages and challenges described in the monograph's 'lessons learned' section:

Advantages include:

• Ensuring increased project relevance for youth;
• Developing youth awareness of the issues involved in child labour and of alternatives;
• Building a sense of partnership between project managers and youth;
• Enhancing youth ownership to empower them to bring continued changes to their communities;
• Helping adults comprehend the potential of youth; and
• Developing future leaders and citizens in their communities.

Challenges to youth participation include:

• Lack of adult understanding and support for youth participation;
• Need to foster understanding among adults of children's communication style and developmental stages;
• Need to broaden involvement of family, teachers, community and school leaders, and authorities to promote youth participation; and
• Need to overcome gender bias and lack of understanding of democractic processes in transitional societies where authoritarian rule has been the tradition.

EduFuturo concludes by suggesting that development practitioners should consider the ideas of alternative stakeholders, especially children, in designing local development interventions that are sustainable in the long term.