Ecuador – Salesians and Jesuits effective in protecting children’s rights

The following comes from the Salesian News Agency:

During the presentation of a study on child labour, held on 24 March at the Salesian Polytechnical University in Quito, the effectiveness of some projects by Salesians and Jesuits emerged.

The plague of child labour in Ecuador involves a million children and adolescents working, about 18% of the working population. According to a report of the Fides Agency, in a country where 54% are suffering real poverty, child labour to support families takes different forms: 67% is in the agricultural sector, 15% in commerce and the remaining 18% in the third sector of unskilled domestic work.

This was the issue considered on 24 March at the Salesian Polytechnical University in Quito, when there was the presentation of a study by Cristiano Morsolin, a consultant from the SELVAS Observatory on Latin America, who since 2001 has been working on projects of international cooperation in Ecuador, Perù, Colombia and Brazil.

Among examples quoted in the book was that of the Jesuit Fr John Halligan. In 46 years, at the “Centre for the young worker” he founded, about 25,000 people have been helped. Every year about 1,200 children are educated in vocational training in courses of mechanics, wood-work, and baking, and for the girls, beauty-care, needle-work and cookery, as well as each day the support of about 800 parents with meals and voluntary work on Sundays helping to build houses for the families who come into the city from the Andes. The results are very satisfying: of the 42% of the children who come to the Centre not having completed elementary school, 85% finish elementary or middle school and 64% continue to study after they completed their training at the Centre.

Along the same lines there is a Salesian project helping about 8,000 boys and girls each year. In the countryside around Ambato the Salesian project which has been in operation for 30 years has a large farm, where the parents are also taught not to ill-treat their children. In the industrial city of Guayaquil the project mainly concerns street children, the prevention of drug addiction and the care of the addicts. At Esmeraldas, with the strong support of the Bishop Eugenio Arellano Fernández, there is the work of the rehabilitation of the “pandillas”, youth gangs. In the large cities such as Cuenca, much is done in the area of providing hostels as an alternative to living on the streets and providing work training with the help of the Salesian University, street theatre and demonstrations making society aware of the rights of children and of good working conditions, as recognised by the new Constitution of Bolivia, which in article 61 permits work by boys and girls in the family and in the country-side.