By Michael L. Tan

Around my parents’ home in San Juan, I have watched through the years street child vendors grow up. I remember one of them very distinctly because he has a congenital condition in his eyes that always made him look like he was half asleep. He survived selling cigarettes, year after year. I watched him as he grew into adolescence. Then he disappeared from the streets, only to pop up again, now a young man driving a pedicab. He’d made it in his own way. We need to hear from him and others like him. We know what goes wrong. What we need to know is what went right -- the difference that allows the children not just to survive but to thrive in a society that’s only now beginning to accept childhood.

Media publicity and documentaries about child labor are important for waking people up. But there is, too, the danger of denial and hopeless despair. Problems are so clearly related to poverty, indebtedness and social justice, but it would be defeatist to say nothing can be done, even if a small way. Here are some suggestions...

First 
Start with your own backyard. A little kid came to our door one day. He was the child of one of our neighbors’ household helpers and had been sent to borrow our coconut grater as well as to have me look at his sick cat. The kid looked even tinier because the cat was so huge, its hindfeet almost touching the ground as he carried it. Seeing him reminded me there are so many kids like him in our own homes and those of our friends and relatives. Make sure these children are not trapped into vicious cycle of becoming another generations of domestics. (I have actually met people whose household help are the grandchildren of their grandparents’ helpers.)

Second

Educate yourselves about this problem. We’re talking about 3 to 4 million Filipino children here, not just the street kids we see in Manila but many more in the sordid conditions of farms, mines sweatshops. By a copy of the documentary Minsan from the Ateneo Center for Social Policy (Tel. No. 924-4601). Part of the proceeds goes to child labor welfare funds. (An earlier documentary by Carolino, No Time for Play, is also available at Bookmark.) Arrange to show these films at a community or neighborhood function and discuss the issues.

Third

Find some way to help support the children, not through one-shot charity donations but through a more sustained program of support. Child labor is not just a symptom of poverty. It also traps children in this vicious cycle of poverty. Education offers a way out of this trap. But let’s not forget that we do in fact have free (and supposedly, compulsory) education up to the high up to the high school level. Tuition is free but there are all kinds of other expenses for books, for meals and the usual ‘donations’

Even more important is the social support to encourage impoverished youth to stay in school, rather that succumb to the temptation of working to help the family out. Public schools are over burdened and teachers do not have time to give the one-on-one guidance that young people need.

Fourth

Help to educate parents. For most of human history, children have been seen as extra labor. The notion of childhood as a time for leisure, play and schooling is a product of recent modern history. Many parents – and not just from the poor – have yet to come to terms with this newer concept, as well as that of children having rights.

Fifth

Set up support services for child laborers. Recognizing that child labor will continue for some time we need to at least find ways to ensure more humane and safe conditions.

Sixth

Coordinate with the groups that are in here for the long-term. Child advocacy groups are a peso a dozen these days. The problem are so complicated so I would be careful to avoid traditional “charity” approaches here. The International Labor Organization have launched a global campaign against child labor. You can contact them and find out what long-term programs they have. This would be ILO-Ipec (Tel. No. 894-3928)