Young volunteers fight against child labor in Caracas

14 de July de 2016

child labor

SCREAM methodology

Venezuela

SCREAM program for the first time in Venezuela

In a month young volunteers from the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) of Venezuela were trained to become the first implementers of the successful program "Defense of the rights of the child through education, the arts and the media" or SCREAM (for its acronym in English).

Four years ago, when she was still a student at UCAB, Andrea De Ruffino, promoter of this initiative in Caracas, won a trip for academic merit to the ILO headquarters in Geneva where she learned about the SCREAM methodology and the worrying reality of child labor at world level. This experience led her to reflect on the situation in her country regarding child labor and she noted that innovative actions were needed to end the problem and raise awareness in society about it.

What is the SCREAM program?

  • Created by the International Labor Organization (ILO), through the International Program for the Eradication of Child Labor (IPEC), it seeks to promote and strengthen the active participation of young people in the fight against child labor.
  • In Latin America it has been applied in countries such as Paraguay, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Uruguay. 

Andrea, now as coordinator of the UCAB External Projection and Volunteering Area, decided to organize an educational impact volunteering with sociology students for the application of the SCREAM program at the Canaima school, located in the La Vega neighborhood, one of the poorest in the area and where a large number of underage people are working.

To date, UCAB has a group of 11 volunteers who go to a community every Thursday and develop SCREAM modules together with the 70 beneficiaries  . Andrea says that when they got to school and started the program they noticed that many of the students did not perceive child labor as something harmful but as something normal and necessary; However, now they themselves are agents of change in their community and defend the rights of working children and adolescents, spreading the negative consequences of child labor for children and even for the growth of their country.

Andrea highlights that this first experience has achieved great receptivity on the part of the schoolchildren, the school, the community and the UCAB authorities, therefore one of the goals of this committed team is to expand the project to other communities for the second period. university, summoning new volunteers and thus increasing the number of beneficiaries. Also, among the plans is that the beneficiaries of the first experience, together with the advice of the volunteers, become the replicators of the SCREAM program in the new communities. 

To learn more about SCREAM Venezuela, visit their Instagram  here : 

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