Do Charities That Help Children’s Education Keep Children from Child Labor?
Charities that help children’s education are essential to keeping children safe from exploitation and child labor. This is especially true in communities with extreme poverty.
According to the International Labour Organization, child labor is work that “deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”1
One of the best ways to keep children out of the workforce is investing in children’s education.
Parents who are struggling to feed their children are often lured by individuals wishing to exploit them with the pretense of their children working to help provide for the family. They may be promised that their children will receive an education, nutritious meals, job training and wages. However, many of these children will be severely mistreated, receive no education and earn very meager, if any, wages.
When children stay in school, they learn valuable skills that will help the family in the long run. In fact, literacy has been labeled a great miracle cure for poverty.2 Why?
“The ‘multiplier effect’ of literacy empowers people, enables them to participate fully in society and contributes to improve livelihoods. Literacy is also a driver for sustainable development in that it enables greater participation in the labour market; improved child and family health and nutrition; reduces poverty and expands life opportunities.”3
In school, children learn how to stay safe from predators and traffickers. They learn the warning signs and have caring adults looking out for them.
GFA World is committed to children’s education. Through their child sponsorship program, children and their families receive essential resources such as tutoring, school supplies, nutritious food, access to clean water and more. These resources are instrumental in relieving financial stress from families, which enables them to keep their children in school and makes it less likely they resort to sending their children into the workforce.
Join us in this mission of supporting children’s education in some of the poorest communities in the world.
Learn more about girls’ education charities
1 “What is Child Labour.” International Labour Organization. Accessed 2 February 2022. https://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang–en/index.htm.
2 Mains, Karen Burton. “Literacy: One of the Great Miracle Cures.” GFA World. September 3, 2019. https://www.gfa.org/special-report/literacy-miracle-cure-illiteracy.
3 “Literacy.” UNESCO. Accessed 12 July 2019. en.unesco.org/themes/literacy.