Campaign Against Child Labour 1996 Communication Campaign

Print was chosen as the medium for the communication strategy since it was easily accessible to the middle class and was financially feasible. Print advertisements were released in three leading newspapers in Marathi (the state language), Hindi and English. They focused on areas that the middle class conventionally did not think of as child labour: domestic work, newspaper vending and building construction. Since one of the chief objectives of the campaign was to mobilise community action, the ads provided a contact number where readers could call to get more information about the issue. The press campaign was run over a period of a month, within which time YUVA (Youth Unity for Voluntary Action), the coordinating NGO, received over 2,000 phone calls from readers.

Each caller was led through a brief questionnaire to elicit information about their age and professional qualifications, and the time or skills they were willing to contribute to the issue. A database of the callers was developed and a specially designed kit consisting of reference material on child labour, posters and a description of activities with which they could get involved was mailed to them. Two years later, all the 2,000 callers continued to receive the free CACL monthly bulletin.

Children, Youth, Rights.

Approximately 1,000 of the original 2,000 callers became actively involved with various CACL activities. Volunteers were given a training and orientation for working in the area, and many of them formed their own groups for community action. Students conducted awareness raising campaigns and workshops in their colleges. The campaign had several positive outcomes:

• Confectionery units employing child labourers in Pune city near Mumbai were closed down. All children were admitted to school, and many of them who were migrant children from Tamilnadu state in southern India were reunited with their families, who had been unaware of their child’s condition.
• Several child labourers in Mumbai factories were freed and admitted to schools.
• About 100 children were freed from forced labour

While the campaign was successful in triggering community response, sustaining the interest and motivation of the volunteers proved difficult, with many of them dropping out over a period of time.