The Organisation and its Activities

Movimento de Organização Comunitária (MOC), or the Community Organization Movement, is a civic entity founded in 1970 in Bahia state. Classified as a philanthropic non-governmental organization and registered as being of social utility. MOC acts in the Sisal Region of Northeastern Brazil, currently in 44 municipalities where the federal Child Labor Eradication Program (PETI) has been operating since 1996. It is now concerned with 75,000 children in the 6 to 14 age bracket who worked in the exploitative sisal processing industry and in the quarries. The intention is to extend the range of its activities to all the municipalities covered by the Program, involving a total population of 801.000 of whom 120,000 are children involved in child labor.

MOC’s approach to this problem is to organize the population in order to raise awareness of civic rights and to put them into practice. Thus, MOC defines its institutional mission and objectives as to contribute to the integrated, participative and ecologically sustainable development of society.

It is important to observe that MOC and its methodology transformed the implementation of PETI in Bahia in comparison with the other 26 states where the program is in operation. PETI is concerned with 800,000 children in Brazil but in most parts of the country it plays a merely supportive role: the families don’t know why they are receiving the money (the school grant) or who is giving them the help. They are not aware of the importance of education to their children as a fundamental tool to break the cycle of exclusion in which they are trapped. MOC is responsible for the significant difference in the way PETI is implemented in this region.

Historically, MOC played a fundamental role with respect to the eradication of child labor, as shown by the following aspects of its work. In 1992, based on an agreement with the International Labor Office (ILO), MOC initiated the debate about child labor and its hazards in the sisal region. In Bahia, child labor was considered a necessary evil to ensure family subsistence and, consequently, its eradication could only be brought about with far-reaching social and economic changes. For the trade unions, associations, churches, other groups, and even for MOC itself, it appeared to be common sense that the children of the poor would have to work - in order not to grow up as idlers as well as to contribute to their families’ income.

Reflecting this reality, MOC stimulated the debate about child labor among community representatives: it was accepted that this was a problem which had to be resolved. By 1997, fruitful debate and a search for viable options to target the issue was established in the region. Conferences and seminars were held and several booklets were published in order to feed discussions between mothers, teachers, NGO agents and family leaders. It has to be recognized that MOC dared to revise its strategies publicly, and to carry on the debate about child labor clearly and directly.

MOC identified itself so much with this topic that it was often called in to initiate discussion. This was important, since MOC had acquired a decisive influence owing to its 33 years of active field experience with popular movements in the area. In an attempt at transparency, MOC arranged municipal meetings where the public administration and civil society came together to look for solutions to the problem, whilst the organization itself included debate of the problem on the agenda of all its projects. At the same time, discussion started on the creation of ‘Councils of Children’s Rights’, based on the Statute of the Child and Adolescent and on the new Brazilian Constitution. MOC was the major force in the region to encourage the debate which created the necessary conditions for the councils to be established. Besides that, MOC undertook efforts to educate the delegates to these councils - which turned, in the meantime, into The Project of Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor, a specific action supporting critical civic participation in the federal Child Labor Eradication Program (PETI).

To strengthen its role in the process, MOC adopted four specific strategies:

I- Empowerment of the Family : Facilitating the Participation of Communities and Affected Groups.

The Family Agents Project - training local leaders in rural communities to promote knowledge about child labor and encourage participation in PETI by parents of the children concerned - was guaranteed quality by MOC’s involvement in the program. There are currently 331 agents, all trained by MOC, discussing children’s rights, family violence and schooling, among other things. The agents are volunteers and the project gives them a bicycle or bus tickets to permit them go around and talk to each family. The agents also hear about people’s difficulties and help in finding solutions. MOC trains these leaders to improve participation, monitor applications for funds, supervise the children’s attendance at school and at the Jornada Ampliada (second term activities, which will be explained subsequently). All agents meet on a weekly basis with the children’s families and visit families individually to discuss and stimulate participation.

II- Empowerment of Community

The partnership approach developed for the Child Labor Eradication Program (PETI) in Bahia puts MOC in charge of facilitating and stimulating the participation of the target groups and communities. An activity developed exclusively by the government hardly takes on the characteristics of real participation and involvement of the target groups. MOC deals with capacity building for community organizations in planning, proposing and executing social policies, so that they can negotiate and interrelate with the public administration.

It is social pressure which ensures that the Program is markedly participatory, and this process is largely due to MOC’s coordinating role in the region. To ensure the that practice remains strongly participative, MOC represents the communities on the State Commission of the Program and communicates its decisions through a democratic structure created specifically to coordinate the program:

MOC has the special task of promoting the participation of society, including children, in all these instances. In its day-to-day activities, MOC deals with affiliates of political parties, legislators of various tendencies and members of a range of local groups. MOC is working to transform reality, in order to include the excluded. To make this happen, it applies a methodological approach, educating local groups to relate consistently and systematically with the public administration. This relationship can be expressed, depending on circumstances, as partnership, negotiation, or peaceful confrontation. Emphasizing dignity and identity, MOC provides the incentive for groups and individuals to practice partnership, dialogue and joint actions. There are occasions, however, where dialogue is impossible: where more dramatic actions, like denunciations and other legal instruments or means of pressure, need to be applied to ensure participation.

MOC promotes periodic meetings between parents, monitors, and teachers in order to analyze the program and to raise the level of participation. Meetings with the children themselves are held, too, to obtain their opinions about the program. Every year, a joint evaluation of the program is organized, with the presence of all groups involved.

An important tool of mobilization used by MOC is the media. In Brazil people still listen to radio quite often, so it is important to support programs made by the trade unions to discuss and disseminate the philosophy and practice of the Program. There are two weekly radio programs that reach all the communities, while MOC has access to about 15 weekly radio programs, apart from a network of community radio, comprising 10 stations, which it helped to establish in the region. These media structures certainly help to maximize political benefit from the issue of child labor.

III- Income Generation

The School Goat Project

This is the most significant difference about PETI in Bahia, in comparison with other regions where it was less successful. Aware that child labor is not merely a cultural, but also an economic question, MOC started experiments in the region to link economic issues with parents’ obligation to send their children to school regularly. This gave rise to a joint scheme with the Trade Union of Rural Workers of a small town, which was called by a very peculiar name: The School Goat. Related to the school grant provided by PETI, the scheme was publicized nationwide by the press. The project gave four goats and a he-goat to a certain family to enable them to increase their income. When the goats reproduced, the family would have to give them to another family. At the same time, the family would make an agreement with the trade union not to allow their children to work and to send them to school instead. Goats were chosen because they are very well adapted to a hot climate, and in less than a year the families were able to sell the meat, drink the milk or produce cheese.

This was the first concrete experiment in linking income-school-eradication of child labor, and it continues to this day. However, with counseling by MOC, the trade union took further steps. It achieved funding to contract an agricultural development specialist who worked out more global and systematic projects to obtain bank credits for goat rearing. Systematic and high-quality advice is given to the farmers, always with the aim of seeking to increase family income. The expectation is that, in the medium term, families included in this project could dispense with PETI’s grants by producing enough to sustain themselves. This could serve as a model for global intervention, with income generation related to the eradication of child labor. The project provides technical assistance, training and enough credit for the goats' acquisition. The families receive the credits through credit cooperatives created in the region. The PFIZER LABORATORY finances this project and there are 120 families involved.

MOC’s Rural Activities Project supports families developing income generation activities with credit, technical assistance and training. When the work started ten years ago, financial backing was supplied by international cooperation, because small farmers were excluded from official sources of credit. Today, 80% of the credits come from national banks and government sources. The agricultural project now reaches about 4,500 small farmers and their families, in a joint action with small farmers’ associations and rural credit cooperatives.

The objective is to develop activities for small-holding families with loans for goat and chicken raising, meat, egg and honey production, sweets made with local fruits and handcrafts. Some products are bought by the municipalities and used as school snacks. Training activities are executed jointly with the State Department of Labor and Social Action, which finances the seminars and activities proposed by MOC and the trade unions.

IV- Improvement of Quality of the Education

Aware that the problem of child labor is compounded by lack of school capacity and low-quality education, MOC invested in teacher training and in capacity-building for trade unions and associations to demand school places for all and higher educational quality from the municipal authorities. The teacher training project currently operates in several regional municipalities and even in other states of the country.

The sub-project to train rural teachers is carried out jointly with the State University and 8 municipal governments of the region, involving 249 teachers and 8,000 students. It seeks to train teachers in methodologies that value the rural environment and emphasize its value, and starts building universal knowledge based on that rural environment. The scheme received awards from UNICEF and the ITAU Bank in 1995, in the field of civil society’s investment to raise the quality of public education in Brazil.

Besides paying a school grant to mothers, PETI also supports second-term activities or the “Jornada Ampliada”, representing additional school activities to complement schooling - coaching, creative arts, sports, cultural activities -for 75,000 children at present. PETI pays around US$7 for each child included in the program and the money goes to the municipality. The Jornada Ampliada is very important to the process of removing the children from work because it guarantees that they will be at school for the whole day. Young monitors conduct these day-to-day activities, generally without any formal teacher experience. They are previously trained by MOC, receiving 88 hours of instruction before they enter the classroom to work with the children. At the moment there are 2,800 monitors already trained. The training process comprises two sets of objectives:

Two basic books provide support to the training process : SABIA-SABIÁ, containing basic instructing texts, and a booklet “Knowing Child Labor Eradication Program-PETI”, explaining its philosophy, through which the monitors acquire a global vision which they can then explain to parents, pupils and their peers in the community.

MOC also acquired some funding at national and international levels to provide school buildings for the Jornada Ampliada to take place. Twenty new buildings have already been erected on school campuses. A basic architectural design was developed to accommodate all the activities.

Another important initiative in the educational area is the “Reading Suitcase” Project, an attempt to promote critical reading in the schools. MOC trains teachers and monitors in a special way in processes to stimulate reading and to work with literature in the classroom, emphasizing artistic and written responses to reading, and encouraging the incorporation of ideas in play. It is called “Reading Suitcase” because the books come to the schools in a suitcase and remain for a certain period, after which they are exchanged for another set of books from another school. That way, the books go from school to school and reach the maximum number of pupils and teachers. At the moment, 510 suitcases are in use, reaching about 25,000 pupils and 510 teachers and monitors. The municipality and the state government pay for the monitors and the books and MOC, with the support of UNICEF, is responsible for the pedagogical training project.

Why is MOC Successful?

As indicated, MOC is a model of an enterprise dedicated to the promotion of human rights in general and to children’s rights in particular. Its strategies to combat child labor are based on human rights. The issue is not about just legal prohibitions on child labor or empty statements about its injustice, but to create conditions where, through the practice of rights, the eradication of child labor is promoted.

Thus, one can say that the activities of PETI, where MOC interacts with strong partners to develop and promote an integrated pay-off, constitute a systematic strategy to combat child labor rather than isolated actions. MOC works as a whole, as well as specifically within the Program, promotes equity and strengthens non-discrimination. To summarize:

The Child Labor Eradication Program (PETI) in Bahia is an example of a partnership that develops and grows along with the process. It is a program planned, executed and evaluated jointly by representatives of the civil society and the government, in real partnership, and that is what makes PETI, in Bahia, a unique experience. There are specific responsibilities for each actor/partner, without neglecting the contributions of the other partners. The salaries of the monitors come from the State Government. Part of the funding for the education of the monitors and farmers comes from the state itself, and other actors, including MOC, supply other parts. The municipal mayors have their specific responsibility, too. The civil society carries out tasks like mobilization, critical supervision of the process and the execution of determined tasks. This experience develops a democratic governmental program, with extensive participation by the civil society, aiming at the eradication of child labor.

The Development of a Participative Methodology

This is MOC’s particular strength and its representatives explain its methodology in the following way:

Identifying Obstacles to Implementing the Actions

MOC acted at the national level, together with other institutions, at the beginning of the 1990s to put pressure on the federal government to create a specific program to combat child labor in Brazil. This campaign resulted in the creation of the PETI program. MOC already knew that something had to be done to complement this effort; otherwise it would be a poor program, for poor people, with poor results. From the beginning, MOC’s efforts have not always encountered favorable circumstances:

In this political and economic context, existing structures need to be continuously challenged, and there is a pressing need to learn how to work in unfavorable circumstances. It is important to participate, to be involved, trying to contribute critically to make the process as democratic and participative as possible. This is MOC’s choice, for its philosophy is constructed step by step, with recognition that the reversal of a record of oppression and marginalization will not be achieved by decree, but by the day-to-day struggle of individuals and groups.

It is no simple task to implement this methodology in a region where the governing elite does not have a record of dialogue and respect for society, which, in turn, has discarded, in most cases, the possibility of constructing partnerships with the government. This is the challenge that MOC confronts every day. And it was just this confrontation that produced the results we refer to in the Program:

MOC has an efficient administrative structure composed of 40 employees and some volunteers. All its activities are planned through a 3-4 year strategic plan and detailed at the beginning of every year by the Logical Framework Method, where every activity is allocated funding. That way, MOC has a secure, computer-based financial management of all funds. Accounts are audited in compliance with the demand of various large institutions that support it. MOC acts through replication and partner entities. MOC’s consultant staff act as animators and educators in almost all the processes, whereas the practical execution itself is the task of the animators, monitors or units of partner entities. It is through them that MOC’s contribution is taken to the communities and with their participation that the respective planning is done.

MOC is an example of the democratic participation of organized society in a governmental action. The practical result is the excellent quality of the federal program PETI in this specific region. The effectiveness of the intervention in terms of social and economic rehabilitation of the groups involved is evident. Brazil is going through the process of developing awareness of the issue of child labor and it seems unlikely that the federal government will not continue its funding of this project. In terms of sustainability there is no negative component, at least in the short run. It is possible to replicate the experience in other countries that develop programs of complementary income like PETI does. On the other hand, even if the intervention does not resemble the one related above, it is both possible and important to improve the participation of the community and promote citizenship among populations excluded from wealth production. The most important lesson learned is that ‘child labor’ is not an isolated problem. Action must involve the political, social and economic arenas, otherwise its effectiveness will surely be limited.

Movimento De Organização Comuntiária (MOC)

Address: Rua Pontal, 61 - Cruzeiro
Feira de Santana - Bahia
Brazil
Zip Code: 44017-170
Telephone: (55) 75.2211393
Fax: (55) 75. 2211604
E-mail: moc@gd.com.br

Names of key individuals
João Dias de Araújo - President
Clóvis Ramos Lima - Director of Public Relations.
Naidison de Quintella Baptista -Executive Secretary