A high school student in Canada scootered 100 kilometers in five days to raise awareness on the plight of child workers in the Philippines’ mining communities.
Raine Gutierrez, a 17-year old student, spearheaded the “Scooter For A Future” project, an initiative to help raise funds for child workers in mining communities in the Philippines.
Gutierrez coordinated with Environmental watchdog BAN Toxics in the Philippines to establish a crowdfunding project in December last year to help remove children from mining sites.
Prior to the initiative, the organization was able to withdraw 384 out of 526 profiled child laborers from the mining sector through its partnerships with the government’s social welfare department and the International Labor Organization.
The coronavirus pandemic, however, adversely affected the efforts.
With poor Filipino families losing their jobs due to the pandemic, the former child laborers in the province of Camarines Norte were forced to go back to the mines to help support their families.
A BAN Toxics assessment at the onset of the pandemic showed that majority, if not all, of the identified child laborers have gone back to mining.
To support the schooling and daily sustenance of a child laborer in an urban town, they need at least US$730 a year to keep them from going back to child labor, while those from rural towns need about US$635 a year to keep them withdrawn.
BAN Toxics said that if there are 526 child laborers, 221 of which are from an urban setting while the other 305 are from rural areas, the project needs at least US$360,000 to keep the children from returning to child labor.
