World Education, Inc.

Brighter Futures Program (2005 - 2009)
In Nepal, one of every three children is a child laborer, with an estimated 2.6 million children between the ages of five and fourteen working on farms, in factories, in businesses, or in other people's homes. World Education implemented a four-year project to combat child labor through education. World Education's Brighter Futures Program worked closely with the International Labor Organization's International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor in Nepal. Brighter Futures activities were carried out at two levels: in communities where children come from or where they currently live and work; and at the policy level with government and international agencies.

World Education and its government and nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners used what they learned from project implementation at the community level to help inform existing and new government policies related to child labor. World Education and its partners worked to increase children's access to education, and to improve the relevance and quality of education and training for children rescued from abusive forms of child labor. This included provision of nonformal and vocational education opportunities, the strengthening of community based education, and the strengthening of monitoring and supervision systems used in primary education and nonformal education programs. Brighter Futures engaged policymakers in the continuous review of lessons learned from program implementation and the study of specific barriers to children's participation in order to formulate and improve educational policy on child labor.
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Building Better Futures
Child labor in the brick industry is one of the most harmful forms of child labor in Nepal. Children work more than 10 hours a day transporting heavy loads of baked and raw bricks and usually do not attend school. If they do attend school, their education is disrupted by their families’ patterns of migration, and their learning is stunted by lack of time for proper studying or the inability to concentrate due to exhaustion. Building Better Futures (BBF) works to remove children and families working in the brick industry from exploitative labor by giving them greater access to education and helping families diversify and improve their livelihoods. The project, funded by Humanity United, also collaborates with members of the Brickclean Network to advocate for a cleaner, less damaging, brick industry. Regionally, BBF focuses on the Kathmandu Valley and Terai district of Sarlahi.

Project activities follow the seasonal migration patterns of workers in the brick industry. During winter and spring, efforts focus on motivating and preparing families to get children in to school; helping families manage and save money; and building linkages back to home communities for work to address longer-term livelihood development. Families return to villages for the monsoon and autumn harvest seasons, during which time the project focus is on families accessing microfinance and livelihood development support to build longer term viable livelihood alternatives that will make them less reliant on exploitative labor in brick factories and forced to migrate for work. To date, 124 girls have attended Girls' Access to Education (GATE) classes; 389 people have received financial education, and 119 people have received family livelihood support or skills training
.
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COCOALINK
Farmers in remote locations do not always receive the farmer extension services provided by the local government because of the limited reach of the extension services and inability of these farmers to access the services. In response, World Education – with funding support from Hershey’s and World Cocoa Foundation – developed CocoaLink, which uses mobile technology to communicate practical, timely, and important agricultural and social information to cocoa farmers in Ghana. Through Cocoalink, farmer extension services are delivered to cocoa farmers through a cost-effective and feasible mechanism that enables cocoa farmers to request and obtain timely farming, social, health, and marketing information to improve their incomes and livelihoods.

By December 2012, the program had reached more than 9,700 cocoa farmers across five of the six cocoa-growing regions in Ghana and is estimated to reach over 100,000 cocoa farmers by 2014. Furthermore, the project pilots a mobile phone-based monitoring system to track, analyze, and share improvements and results across communities. This program is also expected to expand to Cote d’Ivoire in Spring 2013.
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Combating Exploitive Human Trafficking through Education and Civic Participation in Guinea (PROTEGE)
Protecting women and children in Guinea from Human Trafficking and Exploitative Labor Practices

The US Department of State awarded World Education a 2-year grant to contribute to the fight against global trafficking in persons (G/TIP). In Guinea, human trafficking, especially of children, prevails in several forms due to extreme poverty, porous borders and poor basic services provided in education social affairs, security and justice. Focusing primarily in the prefectures of Kindia and Forecariah and Guinea's capital city, Conakry, PROTEGE worked towards and achieved the following results: 1) Improved access to quality education for vulnerable children and victims of trafficking, 2) Increased awareness of grassroots organizations, local elected officials, and religious leaders about the importance of education and the negative effects of child trafficking, 3) Strengthened capacity and collaboration of partner organizations to fight against child trafficking, 4) Strengthened documentation and dissemination of lessons learned and results of action-research on child trafficking, and 5) Establishment of female domestic workers' association for protection and awareness raising in favor of female domestic workers. Through its participatory approach and partnership with the grassroots structures and local leaders, PROTEGE identified 853 children who were either vulnerable or victim of child trafficking. Among the identified children, 225 of them were successfully integrated into schools, second chance centers, or village-based child protection centers.
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Combating Trafficking in Persons
Trafficking in persons (TIP) is a serious and widespread problem in Nepal, characterized by high rates of cross-border, international and internal trafficking of women, men, and children. While most attention is focused on the exploitation of women and children, cross-border and internal trafficking of men and boys is also a growing concern. Men and boys are often recruited to migrate for work in Gulf States, but are then trafficked into forced labor in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of those trafficked are met with wages and conditions considerably below that which was promised and as a result become victims of debt bondage or worse. With funding from USAID and in collaboration with the Asia Foundation and 11 local partner organizations, the Combating Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) project is designed to prevent TIP, protect and provide for victims, and prosecute traffickers while producing measurable results.

The protection component provides shelter-based services for migrants who have been victims of trafficking and works to improve the policy framework and procedures for victim care and protection. Under the prosecution component, anti-trafficking laws and policy implementation are strengthened as well as implementing victim-centered approaches in prosecution. World Education has taken the lead role in the prevention component, directly implementing awareness-raising and safe migration activities with six partners in six districts of Nepal. World Education also increases the capacity and commitment of government, civil society, schools, media, and the private sector by conducting trainings in topics such as resource mapping; safe migration, trafficking, and reintegration practices; and providing vocational skills and financial planning packages to at-risk populations. In year two of this program, World Education has supported the formation of Safe Migration Networks, built the capacity of local partners, and provided trainings in entrepreneurship to 147 men and women, and skills training to 128 people.
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Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Trafficking in South Africa: Towards the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (TECL) Project   (2004 - 2005)
In today's South Africa, young people face a range of educational, physical, and emotional risks due to factors including the country's high HIV/AIDS rate, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, domestic and sexual abuse, violence, and stigma/discrimination -- along with a corresponding lack of effective social welfare support and advocacy for children and their families.

World Education, in partnership with Khulisa Management Services, managed the implementation of the research and design stages of the TECL Project. Work included in-depth research, analysis, and design of interventions to address these two worst forms of child labor.

The TECL project emerged out of consultations between the South African Department of Labour (DOL), other government agencies, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The project was implemented under the Department of Labor with ILO financial support. A key project objective was to enhance existing knowledge and evidence on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) and Child Trafficking in South Africa. Additional aims were to develop a deeper understanding of causes and incidence of CSEC and trafficking, and to design relevant pilot programmes and models that could be replicated nationally or regionally.

World Education successfully implemented TECL for the U.S. Department of Labor from 2004 to 2005. For further information about this project's activities, please contact wei@worlded.org
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Education First: Combating Child Trafficking Through Education   (2003 - 2007)
Benin received significant international press in late 2003 due to the high incidence of Beninese children trafficked to Nigeria to work in mines. World Education and Terre des Hommes, partners in a consortium led by Catholic Relief Services, worked with local organizations in Benin to prevent child trafficking as well as to reintegrate victims of child trafficking in the Education First: Combating Child Trafficking Through Education Project. World Education's role was to build the capacity of local stakeholders, especially parents associations, to develop awareness campaigns and initiatives to reduce child trafficking. Community plans were also developed to guide the successful reintegration of victims into their communities of origin and ensure access for these children and other at-risk youth to formal and non-formal education. Other stakeholders, such as national institutions and government agencies, were involved to promote proactive policies supporting past victims of trafficking and the prevention of future trafficking. This four-year project was funded by the United States Department of Labor.
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Empowering Cocoa Households with Opportunities and Education Solutions (Phase III)
The World Cocoa Foundation Empowering Cocoa Households with Opportunities and Education Solutions (WCF ECHOES) Alliance is a public-private partnership between the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) and WCF member companies. The alliance aims to strengthen cocoa-growing communities by expanding opportunities for youth and young adults through relevant education in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

The ECHOES III Project enhances the components of basic education, youth livelihoods and innovative activities. The basic education component provides teacher training in early grade reading instruction and evaluation, formal school re-enrollment support to out-of-school teens, functional literacy training for adults, and resource centers to cocoa farming communities. ECHOES III includes an inter-generational literacy program in Ghana, as well as after-school reading support to primary school students in both countries. Under the youth livelihoods component, both in-school and out of-school youth participate in a vocational agriculture and youth leadership education program.
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Girls Access to Education in Bihar (GATE-Bihar), India   ( - )
The GATE-Bihar program worked with three local NGOs in Bihar to improve life options for adolescent girls from tribal groups, other scheduled castes, and more conservative communities in Bihar through educational, health, livelihood and policy interventions. Each aspect of the GATE-Bihar intervention included girls, their families and their communities as central players in the design and implementation of the program. The three partner NGOs were members of the Bihar Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) Network.

The GATE-Bihar curriculum included basic literacy and numeracy, extensive information on health and sanitation, as well as information on child rights, trafficking and, safe migration. The GATE-Bihar Program model was implemented at the grassroots level by local NGOs working closely with communities to carry out a village orientation programs that build awareness of girls' education and trafficking issues across the community. NGOs worked with each community to establish class management committees that recruited girls to participate in the meeting and then assist with the on-going management of the classes. Each GATE class was taught by a local facilitator who is trained and supervised by the local NGO partners. The class management committee worked with local education officials to help girls who graduate from the GATE Program transition into primary school. If girls did not go to primary school, the GATE Program provided them with training in appropriate and viable livelihoods.

World Education's GATE-Bihar Program built on program efforts started in 1998 in districts on the Nepal side of the border where World Education Nepal and its local partners developed the highly successful Girls Access to Education (GATE) Program for out-of-school girls. In Nepal, the GATE Program reaches over 6,000 girls per year. In the first year of the GATE-Bihar project, our three partner NGOs adapted the GATE materials in classes for adolescent girls from border districts of Bihar with Nepal, and reviewed and revised the materials for wider use by other NGOs in the region, over time.

The three-year GATE-Bihar program was part of a larger World Education initiative in Bihar that included working with NGOs involved in the DFID-funded PACS program that focuses on poverty alleviation strategies in the state. GATE-Bihar was also linked to a similar initiative taking place between World Education India and four NGOs in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh which began in February 2006 and built on four years of preparatory project work in the region.

World Education successfully implemented GATE-Bihar from 2006 to 2009 For further information about this project's activities, please contact wei@worlded.org

Read the following success story about the project: Using Knowledge Learned to Save Others
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Nepal Human Anti-Trafficking - Human Liberty Initiative
To address the root causes of intra- and internationall trafficking to the sex industry and exploitative child labor, the Geneva Global-funded Human Liberty Initiative (HLI) works to relieve poverty, increase access to education, and build communities’ capacities to engage in prevention efforts. HLI work targets the Tamang communities in Nuwakot and Makwanpur who have historically been exploited and trafficked to India for commercial sexual activity; the Muslim communities in Rautahat and Sarlahi who are trafficked to India and the Kathmandu valley for zari work; Janajatis who are trafficked for domestic labor; and Tharu and Dalit communities who work in the brick industry.

To support access to education, the HLI establishes non-formal education programs for working and at-risk children; supports madrassas by mainstreaming them to the national curriculum; and provides vocational training and Self-employment and Economic Education Program (SEEP)classes for adolescent girls who are too old to enroll in school. In working towards poverty alleviation, HLI trains families in microfinance and livelihood development. The HLI also supports protection for victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation by forming child protection committees and supporting drop-in centers that provide psycho-social counseling and referrals for medical care and legal services. As of 2012, HLI has put 4,120 women and children innon-formal education classes, provided 847 trafficking victims with access to rehabilitation services, and reached 18,444 people through Safe Migration Campaigns.
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New Path New Steps/Naya Bato Naya Paila
In Nepal, the worst forms of child labor (WFCL) are a significant problem. Nepal’s lack of compulsory education, low minimum working age, and inadequate enforcement of labor laws all contribute to this problem.

Naya Bato Naya Paila (NBNP), or New Path New Steps, is a project funded by the US Department of Labor and aims to eradicate child labor in Nepal by working within school systems to provide alternative vocational opportunities; engaging the government to strengthen policy and capacity for involvement in child labo
r issues; increasing access to case management systems for children; and increasing public knowledge on child labor-related issues. It is one of the largest anti-child labor projects currently being implemented in Nepal.

Building on the DOL-funded Brighter Futures Project, NBNP takes on key gaps in existing child-labor programming by drawing on World Education’s thematic expertise in prevention and removal, and regional experience in districts with some of the highest rates of child labor. Where the Brighter Futures focused primarily on removing and protecting children, NBNP picks up with a more holistic approach that includes partnering with government organizations to strengthen policy implementation and existing child protection systems. NBNP targets the brick making, domestic labor,mining, portering, and zari/embroidered textile industries, as well ascommercial sexual exploitation of children.

To date World Education has achieved the following cross-cutting results:
· 14,905 beneficiaries, including both children in WFCL and Children at Risk, have received educational services;
· 8,688 children have been withdrawn from WFCL;
· Over 682 families have received family livelihood support;
· 1,051 children of working age have participated in vocational education or practical skills training including apprenticeships,use of skill training centers, and the Self-Employment and Economic Education Program (SEEP).

NBNP also engages the government to strengthen policy and capacity for involvement in child labor issues. In response to the upcoming government school reforms which will include vocational orientation in basic education (Grades 1-8), NBNP team members are working with local schools and the Department of Education as well as the Curriculum Development Centre to develop an integrated pre-vocational education curriculum for school students. The pre-vocational curriculum places emphasis on learning the soft skills needed to make a vocational choice viable.

The project has also conducted action research and rapid assessments on specific program issues which contribute to the monitoring and evaluation of the project. The MIS Tracking system has been an integral part of tracking beneficiary progress and the system contains individual data on over 130,000 beneficiaries from child labor projects alone. The research and data from these efforts strengthens larger information systems that provide more reliable information and data for use in planning.
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OPTIONS: Combating Child Trafficking and Exploitation through Education   (2003 - 2007)
Cambodia serves as a country of origin, transit, and destination for both domestic and international trafficking networks. Girls and women are easy targets for traffickers, unaware of the dangers that lurk behind promises of good employment. They are a living testimony to the link between lack of education and vulnerability. The OPTIONS program worked to reduce the number of children, especially girls, who fall victim to trafficking and exploitation. The immediate objective was to ensure that children removed from or at risk of trafficking and exploitation were educated in programs relevant to their needs.

From 2004-2007, the OPTIONS Program was implemented in the rural districts of Banteay Meanchay, Kampong Cham, and Prey Veng Provinces, and in the municipality of Phnom Penh, which is the destination for many youth who migrate blindly, and as a result, are vulnerable to trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

OPTIONS provided direct education services to 18,353 children (14,351 were girls) in 126 primary schools, 24 secondary schools, and 76 village-based non-formal education classes. In addition, at least 50,000 additional children (siblings, friends, and peers) received indirect benefits from OPTIONS through peer-to-peer outreach, mainstreamed life skills classes, awareness raising activities in schools and communities, and improved parental attitudes towards education. Other indirect beneficiaries included parents, village and commune-level leaders, teachers, school directors, and district- and province-level government officials representing the Ministries of Education, Social Affairs, Women's Affairs, and Labor and Vocational Training.

A significant number of children were prevented from being exploited by having the opportunity to attend formal and non-formal education programs, and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that can protect them from exploitation. Communities are now more aware of the dangers of trafficking and blind migration, and village and commune leaders reported that community members are more responsive to the needs of vulnerable children in the community. OPTIONS helped to increase local capacity to respond to the education and social support needs of children who are vulnerable to trafficking and commercial exploitation. The OPTIONS program was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, with additional support from the McKnight Foundation and UNICEF. The program was implemented in partnership with Kampuchean Action for Primary Education, CARE International in Cam
bodia, and the Asia Foundation.

Read the following success story about the program: Using Education to Combat Child Trafficking in Cambodia
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Peace in the Casamance
After 29 years of internal conflict, Senegal's Casamance region experienced a brief cessation of violence with the fragile 2004 Peace Agreement. In 2010, this period of peace was interrupted by a new outbreak of violence reflected both in attacks on travelers on main highways and in villages, and in clashes between the Senegalese army and combatants from the opposition group, Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance. While underlying unemployment, poverty, poor social services and land tenure issues challenge the realization of long-term progress, community-level antagonism and inequalities remain the largest obstacles to reconciliation in this region. The latest attacks and clashes signal the urgency of renewed efforts for appropriate and targeted peace interventions to guard against intensifying conflict and sustain ongoing peacebuilding activities.

Peace in the Casamance is a two-year USAID-funded initiative aimed at reducing the threat of conflict and promoting peaceful resolution of differences among and between communities in the three regions of the Casamance: Ziguinchor, Sedhiou and Kolda. To achieve this goal, the program supports collaborative community initiatives that bring people together to promote mutual understanding and reduce risk of violence; strengthens the capacity of civil society and local authorities to plan and problem-solve using conflict transformation techniques; and harnesses mass media and key opinion leaders to influence attitudes and perceptions about forgiveness and reconciliation. A central strategy of the program is to establish and train Peace Committees in target communities to strengthen social cohesion within and between communities and support peace and reconciliation activities. Peace Committees will work to foster relationships between groups and between individuals that are built upon consensus, dialogue, cultural norms, and non-violent resolution of differences values largely destroyed during the conflict. Social cohesion is often one of the first things to disappear during conflict and one of the last and most difficult things to reconstruct. The Committees will play a vital role in this process by assuming responsibility to facilitate and supervise targeted forgiveness and reconciliation activities between mandated community and opinion leaders and village leaders, religious and traditional authorities. In addition, the Committees are supported in organizing various community events, such as community cultural weekends; traditional rites ceremonies for peace; trans-border dialogues; and an international youth festival that further foster social cohesion and contribute to the restoration of peace.
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Pre-Industry Life Skills Program
Chronic socio-economic problems Prey Veng Province, Cambodia, such as food insecurity due to annual droughts and flooding, force many young girls and women to migrate to other areas of Cambodia in search of better livelihood opportunities. Many of these individuals seek work in garment factories in urban areas. This migration is often blind: They migrate without a pre-arranged employment opportunity. Among these migrants, girls and women are most vulnerable. They must earn an income, but they are often uneducated and inexperienced: They are the easiest prey for those involved in exploitative labor industries.

The Pre-Industry Life Skills (PILS) Program, implemented throughout 2011, was designed to provide opportunities for vulnerable young women (aged15-24) who were potential economic migrants to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to engage in safer migration and result in improved work and life outcomes. Supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the PILS program addressed these women’s needs to acquire the skills necessary for job readiness. PILS also exposed them to important social and health messages delivered through a capacity building program and developed a peer support system among young women leaders in the target communities.

Women leaders in the community were selected t
o attend Training of Trainer (TOT) workshops and receive on-going technical and monitoring support on Pre-Industry Life Skills topics and facilitation skills. These women leaders in turn facilitated a ten-week course to young women in their communities who planned to migrate for work. Through the development of a pre-industry life skills curriculum, PILS also provided a replicable model and valuable materials for pre-industry life skills programs in other communities beyond this project. Through this program, World Education worked closely with Community Support Groups (CSG) and Women’s Leader Groups (WLG) to conduct 32 classes in 29 villages, thus reducing the vulnerability of the 576 youth participants who completed the course.
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Reaching and Educating At-Risk Children (REACH) - India
Child vulnerability in India stems from a variety of causes, including low family income, social marginalization, and limited access to health care. Often, vulnerable children do not have the opportunity to gain a basic education. From 2003 through 2008, World Education worked with American Institutes of Research (AIR), Juarez and Associates, and the University of Michigan in India on REACH-India, a five-year initiative funded by USAID. World Education was a part of a team that provided technical assistance to improve current alternative education programs for at-risk children in rural and urban areas of India. The program strengthened the service delivery capacity of Indian NGOs. REACH was implemented in six areas: three megacities - Kolkata, Dehli, and Mumbai - and three rural areas - Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and the northern part of Karnataka.
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Reintegration of Children/Youth formerly Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (CAAFAG) and Children Affected by Armed Conflict
After ten years of conflict from 1996-2006, the communist party of Nepal (Maoists) agreed to enter into the peace process with the government, leaving an estimated 10,000 children formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups (CAAFAG) in the wake of the violence. These children originally joined Maoist forces to escape poverty and unemployment,but faced many of the same problems after the end of the conflict. As a member of the CAAFAG Working Group, World Education promoted the rights of children and youth by supporting the reintegration and rehabilitation of CAAFAG, children affected by armed conflict (CAAC), and verified minors and late recruits (VMLR) in 11 districts across the country. Since 2007, World Education has identified over 1,200 CAAFAG, of whom around 1,000 and another 450 CAAC andVMLR have received or are receiving educational support to attend formal school, vocational training, and economic literacy to start their own business initiatives.

The identified children received educational support packages of admission and school fees, school uniforms, stationary, and a monthly stipend. Schools also received structural support through in-kind contributions of books, furniture,and sports materials. To address cross-cutting issues such as gender, the program provided nutritional and diet support, child grants, and structural support through children’s centers to female beneficiaries, especially those with children. World Education also provided capacity building for NGOs and staff working with CAAFAG, CAAC, and VMLR including trainings for psycho-social counselors, trainings on outdoor and experiential learning, and support to youth and child clubs for community-based peace building. Over 50community-based groups and 10,000 community members received orientations on social reintegration and support. Other services the program provided include food support, formal community sensitizations, and strengthened district and local-level child protection systems.
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SELECT (Stop Exploitive Labor and Education Children for Tomorrow)
World Education surpasses expectations while combating exploitative child labor and trafficking in Guinea

One of the most pressing issues facing Africa is exploitative child labor and child trafficking. In 2010, the Ministry of Planning in Guinea estimated that 66% of rural children aged 7-14 and 91% aged 15-19 are engaged in some form of labor. Since exploitative child labor and trafficking are interlinked problems, trafficking is pervasive in Guinea. The US Department of Labor awarded World Education the Stop Exploitative Labor and Educate Children for Tomorrow (SELECT) program to combat exploitative child labor and trafficking in Guinea. World Education, as the prime, led a consortium that included two other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and six local NGOs to identify and withdraw at-risk and victim children, place these children into educational programs, mobilize communities to promote child protection – specifically relating to exploitative child labor and trafficking – and galvanize national efforts to address exploitative child labor and trafficking in Guinea.

By project end, SELECT successfully achieved projected objectives, identifying and withdrawing 5,322 at-risk children and 4,497 victim children, and indirectly benefited more than 12,000 students through school infrastructure projects. SELECT’s mid-term evaluation, which was conducted by an US Department of Labor-hired external evaluator concluded that SELECT was a successful program despite the political instability of the country beginning in the program’s first year of implementation.
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