Darlene Adkins
Child Labor Coalition
Regional Coordinator of North America

Could you tell us a bit about your background? How did you get involved with the child labour issues?

I come from the education background. I used to be a junior high school teacher for several years. That was my first introduction to child labour because I started receiving the impact of ‘after school job’ on the academic performance of my students. This really got me interested in the domestic child labour issues. And then at the same time I was active on the Ohio State University Campus with a group called Frontlash. It is the youth arm of AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations), the organised labour federation of United States. We had several speakers who would come together to talk to the students about international child labour. It was an eye opening experience for me, and I got involved with unions all the more. So I joined as an executive when I heard about the job of coordinating the Child Labor Coalition in Washington. That’s how I got interested in child labour.

What was Frontlash’s role mainly?

Frontlash was very much involved in child labour issues. They worked on several campaigns. They were involved in Bangladesh initiative trade awareness and a large retailer in US called Wal-Mart, which I think, is now the world’s largest retailer. Frontlash was very much involved in trying to push that company to take a stand against child labour and try to eliminate the child labour problem among their suppliers. Frontlash was also involved in domestic child labour issues like delivery of goods, driving thereby causing a high incidence of death and injuries among kids.

"I think it was in an international arena where I came across stories of children working in Bangladesh, which really touched my heart. There I heard about a little boy by the name of Ali who was working in a garment factory. I saw a picture of him standing outside the gate of the factory. In fact the factory gate was locked and he was looking through the gate outside. In the story he has indicated that he has worked there since he was 8 years old and never been to school. That really struck my heart as an educator." "We are strongly in favour of compulsory education and ensuring that there is quality basic education for all children. I feel very strongly that until there is compulsory education worldwide there will continue to be child labour problems because children are bound to do something in absence of education."

Do you recall any incident or story that led you to become particularly interested in child labour?

I think it was in an international arena where I came across stories of children working in Bangladesh, which really touched my heart. There I heard about a little boy by the name of Ali who was working in a garment factory. I saw a picture of him standing outside the gate of the factory. In fact the factory gate was locked and he was looking through the gate outside. In the story he has indicated that he has worked there since he was 8 years old and never been to school. That really struck my heart as an educator. I realised that there are children who want to go to the school but are unable to do so and have to work instead.

How far is education important to eliminate child labour?

Child labour and education - they are completely linked together. In my own country’s history, I don’t think child labour would have been eliminated if compulsory education hadn’t been enforced around the same time. It wasn’t until the government forced parents to send their children to school that the parents complied. We had poverty too. During our industrialisation, every member of the family needed to work in order to survive. We had very severe problems especially among our immigrants during the last century. Children were working for two reasons - they were working to help support their families and also because they weren’t being enrolled in schools.

We are strongly in favour of compulsory education and ensuring that there is quality basic education for all children. I feel very strongly that until there is compulsory education worldwide there will continue to be child labour problems because children are bound to do something in absence of education. And if they are not going to school, they will be working because of poverty, which is a quite a good reason for them to work.

Can you tell us about your present organisation and their latest achievements and activities?

Child Labor Coalition is a coalition of more than 65 NGOs in United States and we have been around since 1989. We worked on a variety of issues. Most current issues that we work upon are based on the domestic front. We are trying to raise awareness and action to strengthen the laws and enforcement and protection for children who work in agriculture as migrant and seasonal farm workers (in US that is one of our most pervasive child labour problems - there is about an estimate of 800,000 children under the age of 18 who are working as hired farm workers). One thing that we are working on is trying to raise awareness among consumers and start asking whether the products that are harvested include child labour or not.

What we like to see is eventually a label on fruits and vegetables to indicate that they were harvested under decent labour conditions. That is going to be a long process and we are still in the initial stage of trying to find even one commodity within agriculture that will be willing to work on this issue. It is the priority for us. We are also working on youth peddling issues quite a bit. This is another problem in US, not so much what you hear about the huge number of children involved with very exploitative and very dangerous hazardous work. These are the kids who are selling candy bars, newspapers or going door to door in neighbourhood selling products and there’s been a long history of exploitation and abuse involved in such activities. That’s part of our primary domestic issues.

We are also working on the cocoa issue in West Africa and we have been very successful in working with industries, labour unions, and other NGOs to come together to first identify the scope of the problem and the nature of the problem in West Africa and then to work together to create solutions. And so we are really excited about that and Kailash has agreed to be on the International Cocoa Initiative Board through our recommendation because we felt very strongly that there should be a southern voice on this board and an expert on child labour from the South. And we could not think of anyone but Kailash to fit that role better.

What are the activities at the regional level?

Now the major activity that is coming up is the Children’s World Congress on Child Labour. So I am getting ready to start working on that. We have to do a lot of coordination, especially with our counterpart in Canada. One area that I would like to see us working on jointly in the future is trafficking because there is a lot of trafficking between Canada, US and Mexico.

How did you meet Kailash Satyarthi?

It must have been through the Rugmark campaign because that was one of our first campaigns. It was the one close to my heart because it had all the perfect elements. It had the identifiable commodities where you can show a complete direct linkage to the worst forms of child labour involved in it. There is a consumer label that helps the other end considering the conditions under which products are manufactured. As for monitoring component, our organisation doesn’t support any projects or initiatives, which cannot create an alternative for the kids because we are not interested in just rescuing children from work and then leaving them with nothing to do except to maybe going to worst situations. We are very committed in providing educational component and rehabilitation components. And so Rugmark has been really important to Child Labor Coalition and I think that’s how I first met Kailash. He certainly is the heart of child labour movement today. I think him as the leader, an impressive leader, which is really the heart of the movement.

How does corporate social responsibility play a very important role in such issues?

The whole idea of labelling is a tremendous battle, at least in US. I don’t know how it is being played in Europe. Back in the early 90’s, we were pushing for corporate code of conducts. More significantly, once you got that, companies wanted to stop at that. These companies didn’t follow the issue. There wasn’t any monitoring involved and so that was our second battle trying to get these companies to agree to independent monitoring. So that was the second battle, which really was a major point of discussion with the corporation in the latter part of the 90s. Now I think the very next battle is the labelling.

We are seeing on the surface that they will be open to that but they are not. There is a feeling among some of the retailers that if some rugs have label for example and some don’t have a label, then are we telling consumers that those do involve child labour. They don’t like a label that compares.

So I think it’s our next battle. When we have won the first two battles, we can win the third battle too! You know it takes a while because of the struggle with them until they realise they have to do it.

What is the role of Internet in an NGO world?

Thanks to the Internet, communication among advocates is much easier. In my own organisation, within the Child Labor Coalition we have moved from single mailing. Communicating is now faster through the Internet. And now communicating through letter writing to the presidents or a congressperson, or companies is much easier and it helps us being timely in our campaigns also. So in this respect Internet is really helpful for us.

What’s amazing is that how the young people have caught on to this technology. If you ask me what’s been the most rewarding thing that I have seen in these 12 years of working on this issue, I would point out the fact that many students around the countries have become activists on this issue. The credit goes to a lot of teachers who have taught child labour lessons within their classrooms and not only taught it but also allowed the kids to organise, take initiatives and feel empowered. I have seen the young people in action in dealing with politicians and companies and they are far more effective than adults.

It’s probably because they relate to kids around the world, and what they are experiencing. And we couldn’t have done all these without Internet. The Internet enables the students to be advocates and communicate all round the country. During the Global March, they did an online march because so many of them could not participate in the physical march. But they were able to feel a sense of participation in the march by doing a virtual march online. There’s a lot of energy there, a lot of passion and these youngsters are indeed a force to be reckoned with.