| Elimination of Child Labour at Small Farms
The Future is Now!
The Future is Now! was created in 1998 from a pact signed by tobacco companies – among them, Souza Cruz – to raise awareness about child labour and irregular working conditions for adolescents in tobacco leaf farming in southern Brazil.
The programme is the result of an initiative by the Tobacco Industry Union (Sindifumo) and the Brazilian Association of Tobacco Farmers (Afubra), with the support of the Abrinq Foundation for Children’s Rights, and was implemented in four stages. The pilot project occurred in the municipalities of Santa Cruz do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul), Araranguá (Santa Catarina) and Rio Azul (Paraná), and was later expanded into other municipalities in southern Brazil, where family-run farming predominates.
Read below about the main actions of the programme The Future is Now!:
Protector of Children and the Earth
Its objective is to raise awareness among parents and prevail upon them to take on a commitment to ensure that their children complete, at the very least, elementary school. Local farmers are asked to sign an Acceptance Form pledging to stop their children from working in the fields and to keep them in school. The project monitors their children’s school attendance and also supports technical training for adolescents.
School Partner Companies
Companies agree to support state schools in the countryside to enable the children of local tobacco leaf farmers to get an education, by conducting community services in partnership with the government and non-government organisations.
A Happy Child is a Child Who Studies
A public advertising campaign on the need to stop under 16s from working and on the need for children to attend school. It aims to prompt the mobilisation and organisation of society against child labour and irregular working conditions for adolescents and in favour of public schools.
Read about the implementation stages of the programme The Future is Now!:
Stage one: The pilot project
This stage lasted from November of 1998 to March of 2000 and established a group strategy for all those involved. All the tobacco leaf farmers from the towns of Santa Cruz do Sul, Araranguá and Rio Azul participated, a total of 2,142 families, independently from the companies they are under contract to sell to. The project was implemented under the supervision of Sidifumo and Afubra.
The assessment made in February of 2000 revealed that the best way of expanding the programme was via the individual actions of each company, not as a group. Each company, therefore, became responsible for implementing the programme with the farmers it buys from. A board led by Sidifumo and Afubra was set up to supervise the joint initiatives of the companies.
Stage two: informing the farmers
Souza Cruz and, from June of 2000, the Souza Cruz Institute carried out a series of actions during stage two of the programme The Future is Now!, primarily to raise awareness of the problem of child labour among tobacco leaf farmers.
With the introduction of the Protector of Children and the Earth project, some 40,000 leaf growers from 396 municipalities participated in awareness-raising campaigns, learning about and discussing several aspects of the Child and Adolescent Statute. Information booklets were distributed to both the farmers and to the Souza Cruz area managers and farm consultants ( Reading Material), who act as change agents. A first draft of the programme’s Acceptance Form was also presented at this stage.
As the success of this programme depends on the combined actions of the many different players in the communities, several meetings were held during the course of 2000, bringing together community leaders, representatives from the Church, Guardianship Councils and government departments, mayors and town councillors, teachers and headmasters, as well as the media. Discussions over the guiding principles of the programme helped motivate the participants in their joint actions
At the same time, the Vox Populi polling institute carried out a
Census of Tobacco Leaf Farmers and their Children a Survey of Value to gather information on the use of child and youth labour on family-run farms. The surveys revealed the need to create educational opportunities for youngsters in the countryside, particularly technical training, in order to offer them a better personal and professional future.
A technical report was also made to identify the arduous and unhealthy tasks in tobacco leaf farming – and which may not be performed by anybody under 18 years of age. This report was submitted to the Ministry of Labour and provided helpful information for the publication of Constitutional Amendment no. 20 (English Version) in 2001. The same type of report was made on small, family-run farms that grow beans, corn, cotton, or raise poultry.
Stage three: support for schools and technical training
The awareness-raising campaign continued with the production of a second video: “A Commitment to the Future II”. Standing out among the actions supported by the Institute during this stage at 48 schools in the countryside, for the benefit of nearly 11,500 students, were the training courses offered for the children of local farmers by technical training institutes (Sindifumo-SENAR partnership), the monitoring of children’s schooling by state-level departments of education, and the visits made to local farms to continue to promote the programme and clarify any doubts farmers may have.
By October 2001, 85.3% of farmers that sell their tobacco leaf to Souza Cruz had joined the programme. The goal is to secure 100% acceptance, and several activities have been developed to achieve this. Farm consultants held five workshops to discuss the best ways of expanding the programme and making people more familiar with the Labour Ministry’s Constitutional Amendment no. 20. At this point, a booklet was prepared containing details of the Amendment and explaining how it applies to family-run farms and tobacco leaf growing.
Stage four: ensuring legislation is observed
At the end of 2001, Souza Cruz included a clause in its Tobacco Leaf Supply Contracts to be introduced at the start of 2002 allowing the company to break the agreement if it discovers that farmers are not observing the Child and Adolescent Statute and other laws governing child and adolescent labour.
Also, when contracting their leaf crop, farm consultants are instructed to ask farmers with children at a school age to present a Declaration of School Attendance signed by a teacher or the headmaster of their children’s school. They must also sign a new Acceptance Form, in which the farmer takes on four responsibilities:
1. Not to allow under 18s to take part in any unhealthy, hazardous or arduous work on their land or on the land they live on, particularly those activities listed in the Ministry of Labour and Employment’s Decree No. 6/2001;
2. Guarantee their children the right to attend school, at the very least until they complete their elementary education (the first 8 grades), and encourage, support and facilitate their participation in technical training courses;
3. Notify the Municipal Guardianship Council or, in its absence, the Farm Consultant of any reasons that may prevent them from honouring the signed agreement, so that any difficulties may be resolved and children may complete their studies;
4. Facilitate access by members of the Municipal Guardianship Council and the Ministry of Labour and Employment’s inspectors to check on their children’s schooling and the work done on their land or on the land they live on.
Farmers who do not adhere to the programme will not be registered as suppliers by the Farm Consultants. The same requirement extends to tenants/sharecroppers and to existing supply contracts.
Each year, a group of farmers are symbolically certified as Protectors of Children and the Earth, under the supervision of Sindifumo and Afubra.
Also in the first half of 2002, a new Survey of Values poll was conducted for comparison with the previous one.
The next stage of the programme The Future is Now! is to arrange an external audit to check that farmers are sticking to their commitments.
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