And so, to work!

Siaka came from VSO in Ouagadougou this week with good news – the Australian funding has come through for the project and we are fit to start.  All is now pell-mell to get things in place by September. 
I am doing communications and media for the project, working closely with a VARENA colleague, and we are working in a team with Simon the Canadian and Kadi doing training and finance on a proposal to work intensively with 10 villages from which children – particularly boys - are sold into work and/or trafficked.  The Aussie funding provides for awareness-raising, publicising the negatives of child labour – as if the parents didn’t know! - then identification, general education, working with young people providing training places and access to start-up funding for small enterprises, and providing training within families to enable them to extend existing earning capacity, and thus keep their children. 
The aim is to try and prevent 13-year-olds being  sent to cities to work as domestic servants (abused), or sent to ‘private’ gold mines or cotton farms (slave labourers) in appalling and dangerous conditions or worst of all trafficked to neighbouring countries to be lost pretty much forever. 
A small start, but with the right coverage and support, scalable into a more long-term project.  I shall be doing some PR on VARENA itself;  as VARENA is the NGO in the boondocks, it has poor national recognition and loses out in the battles for resources.  Ouagadougou is located in about the centre of the country, and the spheres of influence weaken the further away from the capital one gets.  Onwards and upwards, folks.