I wrote this with Natalia, although she did most of the field work….
http://crcfieldnotes.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/akshays-story-is-20-24-rupees-a-day-the-price-of-childhood/
back in school now and smiling...
From over at “good intentions are not enough” blog, comes this:
http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2009/09/beggars-cant-be-choosers-but-are-they-really-beggars.html#more
Beggars can’t be choosers – but are they really beggars?
Common beliefs on aid are often based on misconceptions
No aid is better than bad aid
The second misconception is that all aid has either a positive impact or no impact on those that receive it, therefore there’s no harm done even if the project is not successful. In truth aid recipients invest in the aid they receive whether it is time, money, political capital or penalties paid for receiving aid. If aid is useless or, in some cases, harmful then the aid recipients are worse off than they would have been without aid.
I was reminded of all the “gift horses” that had been given to Thai villagers after the tsunami. They were not out begging for assistance, and in fact were already planning to rebuild their lives as they waited for the water to retreat. Most had never even heard of aid agencies until hundreds of them descended upon the area bearing an assortment of recovery gifts. Each of these gifts required something from the villagers.
Me: With regards to longer term development projects/programmes, what is normally needed is social capital, commitment and time from communities and if we are talking about very marginalized communities/groups of people then these variables are normally in short supply…. Do communities really have time to take on a rights-based programme, which requires a lot of inputs from them in terms of their time and willingness to advocate for a particular cause? We seem to often be asking the poorest of poor communities do devote time, which they often don’t have since they are busy trying to make ends meet. And do we as INGOs give communities sufficient time to make a rights-based programme work? Do donors give us the time? Everyone seems to be interested in significant impact in very short time frames…. This needs to be re-examined…
“If children have the habit of coming home from school, dropping their books and picking up a sickle to cut grass (for water buffaloes), they will forget everything they learn”
A villager in Sabarkantha district, Gujarat
In rural Sabarkantha—where BT cotton is king—villagers must walk, sometimes for long stretches, to access just about anything. Unfortunately, that also includes the Anganwadi (pre-school) and elementary/primary school. “It’s so far and we’re so busy with our work, one village woman commented, that the Anganwadi is hardly any benefit to us.”
Unlike a lot of other traditional villages in the state and, indeed, across the country, tribal villages in this part of northern Gujarat tend to be spread out over great distances with stand alone, modest houses dotting the landscape surrounded by small plots of cotton and maize. While decently well connected to electricity and potable water from a nearby well, getting children to school is proving to be a formidable challenge for the villagers of Dharoi. “Children in 3rd and 4th standard are big enough to walk to school, but we think the 1st and 2nd standard children are still too young,” another village woman commented.
I had come to this part of northern Gujarat to provide support for the newly formed Child Protection Committee, or CPC, with our staff of our partner organization BSC. CPCs are a core element of Save the Children’s community-based approach to child protection. Villagers and members of the CPC—typically teachers, local leaders, public health officials and concerned and passionate parents and village elders—meet on a regular basis to discuss the status of children and child protection in their village, monitor rights violations, meet with children themselves to involve them in the discussion and decision-making processes and, importantly, develop plans of action to address rights violations and ideas of prevention.
Although new, the Dharoi CPC immediately took up the challenge of ensuring that all children were in school. They vowed to work on making sure that younger children were accompanied to and from school so as not to miss out on the first few critical years, and to become more involved in their children’s studies by doing things such as visiting the school on occasion and checking on the learning of their child with the school’s teachers and, importantly, allowing more time for their children to study outside of the classroom. They also vowed to ensure that mid-day meals provided at schools were of nutritional value and, indeed, were being provided as they should be.
women's group in Sabarkantha
In this part of Sabarkantha, a good 1/3 of families, including children, are migrating to other parts of the district as well as adjacent districts to work in cotton fields during peak seasons as wage labourers. We heard horrific stories of exploitation of both adults and children. “Contractors” of wage labourers were often running away when it was time to pay for work performed leaving no real recourse for wage labourers but to return to their home villages empty handed. Even worse, were stories of Adivasi community members being beaten and subjected to violence by contractors and employers for no other reason than they refused to pay wage labourers for work they had completed. The undeniable plight of many labourers in the cotton sector—and here children are incredibly vulnerable—is one of rampant discrimination, exploitation and violence.
With the help of BSC—experienced and dedicated to working with Adivasi communities for a number of years on land and forest rights issues—the CPC also vowed to work on putting an end to the exploitation of their children by making the situation known to local authorities, who are on record as saying that they are working on the issue. Access to government run and administered social security schemes—such as NREGA—is one way that villagers felt would help them cope with times and situations when wage labourer was unavailable and would help ensure that all children remained in school on a full time basis without long gaps of absenteeism. The CPC and BSC are also committed to advocating on behalf of children, and in conjunction with children, on improving local child protection mechanisms and structures, such as holding labour inspectors and local leaders accountable to ensuring that children are not exploited.
For more on the exploitation of children in BT cotton, see Tehelka’s“Caught in a Sorrowful Yarn” http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne260909caught_in.asp
It seemed almost like a different village, but it was the same place that we had visited the day before. And it was a mere 18 hours earlier that many of the village leaders—all men—had denied the existence of child labour and boldly pronounced that all children were in school. Sure, they said, children may be working during holidays, before school and after, but this didn’t constitute child labour.
We had lengthy discussions about “definitions” of child labour; how “hazardous” means more than just health and safety (although important, of course) as well as the caveat that just “being” in school may not be enough to contribute to the overall growth and development of children. Children, and here we speak of all children up to the age of 18 but especially those 14 and under, need time for social interaction, play and even studies outside of classroom time whether it is tuition or not. Tuition is only one form of learning outside of the classroom and is virtually inaccessible to the rural poor.
Indeed, it seems as if only child labour depicting scenes of children with blackened faces and hands using some large and ominous machine or images of children with stacks of bricks on their heads are seen as being detrimental to the overall growth and development of children. As if wielding a sickle in agricultural fields did not constitute hard and difficult work! Overwhelmingly—both in India and across the globe—children toil in the agricultural sector with most estimates at around 75-80% of all children’s work/labour. Whether it is on the farms of others or in the fields of the family, children are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse as well as difficult and demanding work that often puts their health at risk.
When we met with a women’s self help group (SHG) the following day, the kinds of responses we heard were almost antithesis to the previous day’s session. We heard stories that children were being compelled to work in agricultural fields at almost every given daylight hour that they were not in school as well as, contrary to what we had heard from many of the village men the previous day, that children’s “economic” contribution to the family’s coffers was almost negligible. Indeed, women were almost unanimously willing to admit—at the expense of them having to take on some extra work themselves—that children did need additional time for play, study and social skills development if they were going to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty that has gripped many villages in the Vidharba region of Maharashtra. Women also spoke of mismanagement of family finances by “heads of the household” and in some cases, substance abuse (and the use of much needed funds to get it) as well as physical abuse and violence against women.
Undaunted, members of the women’s SHG vowed to fight for the rights of their children, both boys and girls, and to take into account their children’s best interests in family decision-making processes. One of the practical steps taken by the women in the very short time of our discussion was to write a letter to local administration officials demanding the right of below poverty line (BPL) families to take part in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which offers 100 days of guaranteed work. It was almost universally felt that even modest gains such as those from NREGS would be beneficial in ensuring that not only would all children be in school, but that they would have sufficient time for other activities besides work outside of the classroom. Save the Children’s experience in other communities backs this up.
we are powerful and we believe!
Ensuring strong, dynamic female representation on community based Child Protection Committees (CPC) has been one of the keys of its success in other areas, and there is not reason to doubt that it can make a significant difference in this part of Maharashtra as well. Empowering women is a key aspect of ensuring that not only do girls grow up with equal opportunities for study, careers and decision-making processes, but also as a rallying cry to bring more men into the movement to promote children’s rights.
It is generally accepted that India has the dubious distinction of the largest population of child labourers in the world with even the lower estimates from Indian Census data (2001)—roughly 13 million—abysmally high. The UN and civil society agencies normally put this figure much higher although discrepancies in numbers take into account exactly who constitutes a child labourer—age, hazardous/non-hazardous, out of school, and other variables. Although poverty remains the most often cited “push” factor for child labour, the problem extends far beyond that. Indeed, child labour is equally exacerbated by social exclusion, discrimination, and poor quality education—the latter, perhaps, pushing as many children into work as pulling them out especially in the far rural corners of the country.
Gujarat ranks 9th among India’s 28 states in child labour. A particular aspect of child labour in the State—and one which brings great revenue in many ways—is children working in the cotton and cottonseed farming sector. Estimates of the exact number of children working in agriculture and the cotton sector vary although given the State’s burgeoning BT cotton and cotton seed production, the number is bound to be in the hundreds of thousands. Despite this, children working in the agricultural sector—what many organisations believe to be approximately 80% of all child labour in the country—fails to receive the same attention as the so-called hazardous occupations and, importantly, detracts from what should be the most significant variable in child labour debates: should not all child labour—especially children aged 14 and under as per Indian national laws—be seen as hazardous if it impacts a child’s overall growth and development opportunities? Indeed, some jobs may pose real health and safety risks for children and these are not to be tolerated; however, all work that does not allow children to attend school on a full-time basis, or to have play and social interaction time with friends, can be equally damaging to a child.
Despite advances in the fight against exploitative child labour and a plethora of well intended legislation, considerable effort is still required. Governments and social actors often fail to take a holistic approach to planning development initiatives and formulating government policies on child labour and at the same time, focus arguments on the minutiae of child labour legislation instead of establishing or strengthening a robust system of implementation. Laws in and of themselves will not protect children from exploitation, but the effective implementation will, at least as a start.
More also needs to be done in bringing in the voices of children in this debate. When children’s rights are incorporated into national poverty alleviation action plans, for example, or when the aspect of rehabilitation of former child labourers suffers due to the overriding concern with big headline grabbing rescue operations, rights are often never realised during implementation. Only by embracing the rights of children, and not just simply acknowl¬edging them, will governments and other actors be able to truly address the underlying causes of child labor and respond to the needs of marginalized and vulnerable children. To gain a true understanding of this problem and develop solution-oriented responses, the experiences of working children themselves must be taken into account.
Gujarat does have an ambitious state plan to eliminate child labour. In a move which is to be recognised, the State plan lists the “willingness to exploit children” as being among the causes of child labour—it even goes so far as to say that this is the “root of the problem.” This is a bold move in a country that has been dominated by debates on process and procedures of legislation regarding child labour rather than taking long, hard looks at underlying social and cultural acceptance of children as labourers in society. Widespread intolerance of child labour on myriad levels of society in combination with more robust implementation of existing child labour laws and restrictions, India and Gujarat will be able to make significant strides in eliminating child labour. It will take more than just duty bearers, though—we are all culpable.
i’ve always enjoyed the simple pleasures of travel and living overseas with market walks and wanderings being one of my favourite things to do. Feeling quite stressed at the moment with a lot of work, i forced myself to take the time off and reconnect with my surroundings–what better way than with the people in the markets… This day courtesy of Pune–it’s not all IT boom this and that…..:
there's always chai for the weary...
meditation on potato
meditation on paan
meditation on flowers
banana wallah
end of day...
When I worked in Sri Lanka in 2006-2007 we all knew this was happening. In the small and large IDP camps that dotted the landscape around the towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, receiving firsthand accounts from wailing mothers of their sons and daughters being taken away by LTTE or Karuna cadres was an almost daily occurrence. The police and army offered no resistance; indeed, it was a fairly common sight in those days to see child soldiers—rifles slung over their soldiers—keeping watch in front of opposition “political party” offices or tooling around town in pillion on two-wheelers. I remember receiving threats; the thought was that insurgents had somehow infiltrated the interagency forums of INGOs, but no one really knew for sure….
Testimonies and accounts are now beginning to trickle out of Sri Lanka—what was assumed to be happening was indeed happening on a rather large scale. Batti and Trinco perhaps pale in comparison to some of the other former strongholds of the LTTE further north…. Communities themselves always felt trapped between the wrath of those claiming to be fighting for their rights, but were damned for helping either side in the conflict although what most wanted was to simply be left alone and get on with their lives.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/31/sri-lanka-children-tamil-tigers
Here’s a link to a short documentary on child trafficking with a (near the end of the film) a focus on some of the community-based work in child rights and child protection. The story features a child protection committee member–sort of the focus of a lot of my work over the past couple of years–recounting how the group was instrumental in preventing an incident of trafficking (couched as a child marriage) in the flood devastated regions of Bihar state. I heldped train and set up a lot of these committees in Bihar and I am really proud to see a lot of what is normally unsung work gain recognition–they are true civil society groups!
Here’s the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/may/16/india-child-trafficking
We have been tinkering with the idea of providing small seed grants to child protection committees and for them to come up with their own action plans after doing a thorough vulnerability mapping of their communities. This seems to have paid off: committees came up with a host of novel ideas from providing accompaniment services for girls on their way to school (where they are often sexually harrassed) to mobile awareness raising programmes to simple construction projects (like toilets for girls in local schools, which helps prevent school dropout) linked with child protection initiatives.
I’ll be writing more on community-based protection and the work of CPCs in the future.
The Impact of Safety Net Schemes on Children: Coping, perhaps, but Where’s the Sustainability?
It’s mid April. By 9 AM the heat beats down heavily on one’s head in the arid and rocky villages and townships of Dungarpur district in southern Rajasthan. I’ve come to this part of Rajasthan to conduct focus group discussions and assessments with three colleagues on social protection, or, more specifically, child-sensitive social protection: Have social security, safety net and livelihoods schemes had a significant impact on the lives of children in this area, and if so, how? It is a region, after all, noted for very high rates of child labour as well as migration to the northern districts of Gujarat.
Villages in southern Rajasthan seem mostly deserted of young men and adolescent boys this time of the year. As a shocking case in point, one primary school I visited had no boys in both 3rd and 4th standard classes. Could this mean that boys as young as 7 and 8 were missing school, had already dropped out or never attended? Worse yet, were they toiling in the factories and eateries of Ahmedabad or the cotton fields of northern Gujarat?
The other students were coy with their explanations—“perhaps they are out in the fields today,” was a common refrain. This phenomena is partly due to the fact that there are no crops in the field; equally, however, young boys and men migrate to other districts and to nearby Gujarat for work—some stay for long periods of time and send money back to their families; others work for shorter periods of time—a month or two—as a coping mechanism from the loss of revenue from small landholding farming and lack of other opportunities.
India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREG—a guaranteed 100 days of work a year at 100 rupees a day) is being utilised by many villagers in the district; however, it was common to hear of bureaucratic red tape regarding registration for the scheme, getting paid in a timely fashion, getting the full 100 days of employment and even favouritism in selection criteria. There were other issues as well: many older women pointedly stopped us on our walking tour of the villages to inquire about receiving their widow’s pension in a timely manner. Many told stories of travelling long distances to receive their pensions and in the end being rejected; others mentioned how the amount was never as much as it should have been—the long arm of the government taking bits and pieces here and there.
Access to the NREG scheme seems to be only one variable in determining whether small increases in family income lead to significant changes in the lives of children. For example, in some villages that had experienced two consecutive growing seasons of drought, access to NREG was purely a means by which families could cope with the shock of lost farm income or subsistence. Canals built for irrigation purposes in the villages were bone dry. An elderly gentleman—the long, hard years of farm labour etched on his face—commented that they were still dependent upon rainfall despite the canal. While it looked nice, it was mostly symbolic of the largesse and poor implementation of agricultural and in this sense livelihoods assistance programmes.
Panchayat Raj Institution (PRI) members that we spoke with in the villages came across as lethargic—often unsympathetic—and spoke little of any solutions demonstrating a dearth of ideas on how to uplift the economic status of villages in the region. One member poignantly and frankly commented that “100 or even 200 days of guaranteed employment wouldn’t make a difference in the livelihoods of people.” One has to wonder, then, if access to NREG even serves the purpose of helping families cope with loss of farm or other income? In another tribal village, the local Sarpanch is an illiterate tribal woman. Other tribal members in the village complained that she was indifferent to their trials and tribulations and that very little, if anything, had changed for them.
While many of the local schools in the area had support from SSA and their facilities were decent, our assessments indicate that roughly 60-75% of the children in the area have dropped out of school and/or are not attending on a regular basis. Most were said to be in Gujarat state, primarily in Ahemedabad, working in hotels and dhabas, although some were said to be doing seasonal work in the cotton farming sector. Girls may attend school up to the age of 12 or so if the family has the means, but afterwards, most are married young and begin a life of domestic work.
While most of the individuals we spoke with in Dungarpur villages were happy to be recipients of the NREG scheme and to have at least some access to paying work, only a few claimed that it was enough to have much impact on the lives of their children with the exception of being able to provide basic foodstuffs for their families. According to our discussions, access to the scheme tended to have little effect on decisions to send children to school, especially for the most destitute of families. Even for children in school, working in the fields or in the house after school hours and even during recess periods is common. When asked if they had any decision making participation in their house about working or spending time on studies or with friends, most children commented that their parents would hit them if they did not work as instructed. While we did not undertake a through analysis of the quality of education in schools in the district, many parents thought that starting work at an early age was better for their children than completing their studies, which indicates the low perceived value of an education in the area.
Child rights messages and slogans crudely scrawled across houses and buildings in the villages, such as “the girl child is the future of the country” seem to be nothing more than empty promises; indeed, one has to wonder if anyone in the village really took notice.
A lot of villagers also felt as if the work they were asked to perform under the NREG scheme brought them little satisfaction and no opportunity to acquire new skills that could sustain them and their families post-NREG. Indeed, many NREG participants were visibly engaged in unskilled labour, such as filling in dirt on top of already unpaved roads, with many more wanting opportunities to learn new skills so that they could start a small business of their own or at least have opportunities for year round work.
Adding vocational and other skills trainings to the NREG scheme does seem as if it would be a good idea for both adults and for young men and women who have completed school but will not go on to higher education. Opportunities within their own districts would most certainly stem the flow of migration—primarily among men—out of the area and would have the added benefit of stimulating the local economy. Indeed, the villages we visited were mostly sparse places with few if any businesses of any kind. Coupled with opportunities for youth to engage in vocational programmes and an overall focus on improved quality of education in schools would certainly prove to be a protective factor for children. Access to safety net schemes may have served from pushing some families over the edge, but it has had little effect on preventing the exploitation of children by pushing them into work at an early age.
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After I wrote this, I found this article by P. Sainath. You can find it at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath05312008.html
In the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day
A Guaranteed Day’s Work
By P. SAINATH
He says he is not 70 but is, in fact, “quite a few years older.” “Anyway, how can I tell exactly?”
But age has not stopped Gadasu Ramulu from doing hard physical labour in searing temperatures well above 110F in Nalgonda. There have been nearly 60 heat wave deaths here in two months, the highest for any district in Andhra Pradesh this year. His passbook shows he has worked 39 days at the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act site since such work began at his village of Tatikolu. At the other end of the age spectrum are many in their early teens trying to pass off as adults in order to get some work and help out their families.
Hunger and rising prices are driving the old and the very young to the work. In this time of crisis, “NREG work” is their lifeline.
Gadasu Ramulu thinks it’s a good programme. “It should be there,” he says. His wife Anjamma insists: “Listen, it’s essential. We won’t eat without it.”
Then why does the record show he only worked three days at the site in the past 10 days or so? “Look at me,” he says. “This is hard work and it is very hot. So typically I work four days and rest four days. I cannot do it continuously for a week. Sometimes I find other work that might pay less but is lighter. I’d like to do both, actually. In truth, you do what you get — and what you can manage physically.”
His household includes a daughter — and her children — abandoned by her husband. All the adults do “whatever work we can find.” Including Anjamma who is past 65.
“He’s burning the energy he has,” she says of Ramulu. “Which is bad when we are eating less. But what is the option? That’s why he has to take a break every few days.”
The family does not have an Antyodaya card (that is meant for the poorest of the poor) that would make their food cheaper. At the NREG site he can make “up to Rs. 80 a day.” In the lean times, that makes the difference between “something and nothing.” She adds: “Without it, we’d be in far more trouble.”
More than three million people have found some work at NREG sites across Andhra Pradesh. Nobody here calls it by that name, though. It’s nooru rojula pani (a hundred days’ work), or “government work.”
Here, in Devarkonda mandal, the average daily wage at such sites is around Rs. 84. It is possible, though not easy, to get private work that is higher-paid than that, on some days. As a neighbor puts it, applying an old Telugu saying: “Rather than running to drink milk, better to stand still and drink water.”
It might seem an odd analogy, since the work that she, Ramulu and others do at the NREG site can be, and is, very heavy. “But at least it’s there,” she says.
Across several worksites in the districts of Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar are others who are well into their sixties, actively seeking such work. We also ran into at least three others close to Ramulu’s age returning to labour in order to eat. Being malnourished makes the work that much harder.
Things are bad at home, too. “All the children here go without milk,” says Anasuya in Tatikolu. “This year, with the costs shooting up, the chance doesn’t arise of their having it.” Her husband is the field assistant at the local NREG site.
“At least 40 children have had to be turned away from the work site,” says her neighbour in this Dalit colony. “Families are terribly hungry. Yes, the rice at Rs. 2 a kg is there for some, but it has only just come in.” And milk which was around Rs. 12 a liter is now between Rs. 16-18 a litre. “And those with bigger families, or widows with orphans, are having a bad time of it. Some days, people borrow money to buy food.” Often, girls of 12 or 13 wear sarees and try to appear more mature than they are, in order to get work.
“What can people do?” asks Lakshmamma, a widow herself. She gets work now and then at the site. “My job is to pour water over the spot to be dug to make it less hard.”
Young Damodar, who first tapped NREG work when he was 15, dropped out of school after his father died. He goes to work on some days with his mother. “A widow has to be accompanied by someone,” she says. “Otherwise, getting work can be difficult.”
Villagers complain that the work they get is often too hard. “Try digging for hours in this heat.” And the price rise is making things a lot worse with people being hungry and eating less.
“What we’re doing is going downwards in steps,” says Krishnaiah. “First, people change the type of food and go in for poorer quality which is cheaper.
They move to the cheapest vegetables, then no vegetables at all. Then they give up milk. That’s how the changes come.” Amongst the changes is that older people, particularly older widows, get much less to eat within the household.
Krishnaiah is among the more fit and fortunate ones, who also goes out to do stone-breaking work at a higher rate of wages at private sites. “But that doesn’t come always and it is even harder to do. The stones are terribly hot. The tools also get very hot. Your feet are burning all the time.”
That, say the others, is the case with all of them. “We work to meet our hunger, but we burn up the food we eat with that work.”
The complaints are many and often justified. People are sometimes exasperated by the way the NREGA system works. But there is unanimity on its worth and value. It’s hard to find a single poor person here who says the program is of no use, that it ought to be wound up.
“It keeps us going,” says Gadasu Ramulu. “What’s more, it’s right here, in our village. We need this.”
P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, where this piece appears, and is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.
A lot of people like to give gifts this time of the year–be they sacred or secular–and INGOs and other community groups and nonprofits have come up with a whole plethora of ways to contribute to causes in some fairly innovative and enterprising ways. I won’t tout my own organisation this year; instead, i’ve selected a few of my favorites this year. As always, however, do a bit of organisational research on your own before giving.
HeroRat (hot rats! sorry Frank…): http://www.herorat.org/adopt
(from the website)
Every 20 minutes, someone is hurt or killed by a landmine and every second, someone new contracts Tuberculosis. These are daunting numbers, but a local, cheap, and efficient solution exists: HeroRATS! One herorat can clear 100 square meters of a landmine field in 30 minutes equivalent to two days work for a manual deminer. Another can evaluate 40 TB samples in 7 minutes, equal to what a skilled lab technician, will do in two days!
5€ per month is all it takes to adopt a HeroRAT! You can be a part of eradicating the dangers posed by landmines and curbing the spread of Tuberculosis.
And if you worry about the rat’s safety: “The rats are trained to detect and pinpoint the location of the landmine. Their small weight makes it highly unlikely they would set of a pressure-activated mine by scratching or pointing. It is a misunderstanding that the rats are trained as Kamikaze to destroy the mines in the field. Trained animals are far too precious to loose to landmines. On the contrary, the rats used by APOPO are treated with great care and attention, in order to optimize their physical and mental condition.”
Ziko in action!
Oxfam Unwrapped (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/unwrapped/mygift/index.aspx)
Oxfam is a great rights-based organisation, but also understands the value of emergency relief and provision of more tangible aspects of development, which leads to greater sustainability. You can support everything from bicycles for eco-friendly transportation which allows people to get to work, markets and schools to beekeeping paraphenalia to health checkups to bags of seeds.
Best of the season
