Yesterday, I finished my orientation and learned more about
the research that is being done by the Cheerful Hearts Foundation. Both child labour
and trafficking are a problem throughout Ghana. Many poor fishing villages
force children to work on the boats pulling or mending the nets, or in the
village collecting, drying, and selling the fish. Forcing children to work and
restricting education only perpetuates the cycle of poverty. The village that I
am focused on has some child labour similar to surrounding villages, but due to
minimal boats and coastline, it is more known for child trafficking. Because of
to the large population and excessive poverty, Senya is a source for many
children to be trafficked across the country as well as internationally.
In order to better understand the problem, my organization is
working on interviewing children and families throughout Senya. The first types
of interviews are with the children. When doing child interviews, it is
important to talk to the fishermen first. The fishermen watch over the children
and you must obtain their consent before any interview. Children discuss their long
work hours and minimal pay as well as the dangers they face in the poor working
conditions. Fishermen often feel that they are helping the children by
providing them food or money so that the kids can survive and possibly support their
families, but rarely see the disservice they are doing not allowing school and
risking the children’s health and safely. Even though children will be working
long hours in a dangerous job, their situations are often better than the
children who have been trafficked to other parts of the country such as the
Lake Volta region.
We also interview families and have different questionnaires
depending on if the family has children being trafficked, who have been
trafficked, or who are not trafficked. When a child is trafficked, most parents
are involved in some way. Often parents will receive money upfront when the
child is taken, and then have minimal contact with the child. Selling their children,
normally to a family member or friend, is a quick source of income and parents
rarely think about the future consequences of their actions. Even just a few
dollars is tempting to short sighted parents living in extreme poverty. Parent
will often have an idea of where their child is going and will possibly see them
if they are allowed to return home for holiday at the end of the year, but they
rarely know the true story. Most children are passed from one individual to
another until they arrive at the trafficker with a number of other kids who are
set up with a fisherman in need of cheap or free labour. Most of the time, the
parents only know the first people in this long line of trafficking. After a
one year contract (or possibly longer or indefinitely) it is not uncommon for parents
to prolong the trafficking contracts for additional money. Sadly when children
are asked, many do not know that their parent or caretaker was given money in
exchange for their “employment”. One trafficked child who is now sponsored by
Cheerful Hearts to attend school but trafficked from age 7 to age 17 and did
not return home for 10 years. Children
are also trafficked internationally, because many Ghanaian fishermen travel and
fish internationally. Because of language barriers and a preexisting personal
relationship with the kids, local children are often targeted by traffickers
who work in Togo or other neighboring countries.
It is important to be deliberate in the use of terminology
during interviews and make sure to tone down the issue of trafficking when talking
with parents. Interviewers must ask about how many kids are in school and how
many are not, trying to stay away from directly talking about “trafficking”. Parents
could get in trouble if they talk about trafficking their children to law
enforcement and interviewers need to get the most accurate and unbiased information
possible. It is interesting when asking if the parents who traffic children
should be prosecuted during the interviews, because responses correlate very
closely with the education level of the interviewee. Most feel that the parents
should not be prosecuted, but many feel that parents need to be educated about
the consequences of their actions. Community education has become focus for
Cheerful Hearts due to the information they have heard from interviewed parents.
One child that I worked with in school today was named Kow.
He is a 15 year boy, but is currently at a kindergarten grade level. When he
was 6 years old, he was sent 450km away to Yeji (a dangerous area for child
labour on Lake Volta) to work helping to pull nets. He stayed there for 5
years, working seven days per week without earning any money. Kow didn’t like
his work as he had to start at 6am in the morning, working until 7pm in the
evening. He stated that it was very tiresome and that he often his hands got
hurt by pulling the nets. Now he has returned to Senya and is sponsored to
attend school by my organization. There
are many other stories of children either working in Senya or being trafficked
to other fishing villages, all of which are not allowed to go to school and
create a future for themselves. Some are paid generally less than a dollar a
day and many are injured or have friend that are injured due to poor treatment,
abuse, or the dangers of getting caught in the nets when diving to untangle
them.
I will have more information about child and family
interviews as I start conducting them along with a Ghanaian national over the
next few days.
I also learned a little about some of the other projects that
I will be helping with during my stay. Cheerful Hearts is conducting and
publishing research as well as sponsoring children to keep them out of labour
trafficking, but obviously, sustainability and address the poverty issues is a
key concern. Sustainability and was first addressed when interviewing a little
girl who wanted to continue in school, but asked how can the organization help
her mother to allow her the opportunity for school and a future. Agriculture,
microfinance, water projects, refrigeration center and general job creation are
all being debated. Two projects are underway including a refrigeration center
which would allows food to last when harvests are small and create jobs, but
the most the most important project is a poultry farm which is currently
undergoing the fundraising stages. Agriculture is difficult because it takes a
lot of time to set up, but a poultry farm would be a new food source other than
fish and provide a new industry in the town. There will still be challenges for
workers to manage money which would require education and classes to the farm,
but these classes have been planned and are ready for implementation. Many
parents do not understand how to manage money which is why they would sell
their children for only a few dollars, living in the present and not thinking
about the future. Families of sponsored children would be hired to work the
poultry farm in order to address the source of the trafficking issue instead of
simply sponsoring and educating individual children (which is also important). There
is so much going on that it is exciting to be a part of the solution the one of
Ghana’s largest human rights issue.
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