“Before Somos Tesoro arrived, we had a very different life,” says Mercedes Cárdenas, the female leader of the Guantó vereda, in Gámeza, Boyacá. “Each one of us was doing her own thing. Today we are group; we are five women, and we created our community market garden, which has given us a lot for our sustenance.” Now, as the closure of the project in Boyacá is underway, Mercedes feel confident in the future of her group and her garden. “Somos Tesoro leaves behind the strengthening of our family for building our future.”
Just like Mercedes’ group, 43 productive initiatives in Boyacá, the Northeast and Antioquia’s Bajo Cauca – most of them mining households – have gotten a significant push toward the improvement of their families’ sustenance and a better protection of their children. Yanine Calderón, in Bajo Cauca, says as much: “Now, thanks to the training sessions given by Pact, we have woken up and realized what we are doing with our children. Whether they are working, what future we will leave to them.” Among these training sessions Yanine mentions, Pact offered and organized over 2,000 training events for 30 thousand people.
Accounts like these can be found in the project’s closure events organized by Pact, the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM), Fondo Acción and Fundación Mi Sangre in the three regions where they have worked to reduce child labor.
During these five years that the project involved, ARM trained 2,680 miners; Pact reached 4,312 homes with livelihood initiatives; Fondo Acción supported 226 public officials in charge of preventing and reducing child labor, and Fundación Mi Sangre generated better educational opportunities for 13,000 children and teenagers.
Out of the miners trained thanks to ARM’s efforts, 280 were certified by the SENA in courses that improved their working and safety conditions. Through periodic visits to the mining units and their workers’ training, significant advances were achieved in the implementation of the Workplace Safety And Health Management System, which puts artisanal and small-scale miners in the road toward formalization. Through their good practices in mining, miners now feel more satisfied with their work, and accidents are reduced. And thanks to the workshops on child labor, now they are flag bearers of adult-only work.
Putting their “because the treasure is not the mineral, but the people living off it” maxim into practice, Somos Tesoro reached the mining population as a whole, in a way that broke away with myths and prejudices. Miners participated in Family Economy workshops, spoke about their childhoods in the perception study and were able to review their role as parents and employers. ARM also bridged the dialog gap between small miners and national authorities, so as to nurture public policy with real experiences.
“Somos Tesoro taught us to believe in ourselves. It taught us that we have rights, and we no longer let anyone come to mistreat us. The authorities came with ARM, not to supervise, but to listen to small miners,” Henry Amézquita, from the ‘El guiche’ mine, Morcá sector, Sogamoso, says. “We shared ideas with miners from other regions, topographical surveys were made, and we took significant steps within the Management System. A lot can be said about all the good things that we have received from Somos Tesoro,” Amézquita says.
Now we see child labor differently
One of the sceneries where the presence of Somos Tesoro was more strongly felt were educational institutions. 216 teachers from various educational institutions in the three regions received training and support in the classroom of Fundación Mi Sangre to put into practice the gaming and artistic tools of the Pazalobien methodology. With this formal education labor, in conjunction with the initiatives involving the creative use of free time and the training in leadership, Somos Tesoro reached 13,000 children.
Teacher Alan Oviedo from the El Real School, in El Bagre, says that thanks to Somos Tesoro they succeeded in getting children to attend school regularly. “Thanks to this project, the kids have increasingly fallen in love with their studies, and have been made aware of the usefulness of what they learn,” the teacher says. “We have also managed for parents to have a greater commitment to the children, and now school dropout here is minimal.”
The children and teens who have participated in the strengthening of youth initiatives by Fundación Mi Sangre have also experienced great accomplishments. Through the foundation, Somos Tesoro has trained and supported them in regard to Communication, life skills, actions for change and leadership.
“Before starting this process I was really shy,” says Wilson Benítez, from the “El Cocido Boyacense” group in Sogamoso. “With Somos Tesoro we have participated in many singing activities, wall paintings, dances and sports. We have increased our physical training, and children have started mingling more with others. Now I am more expressive; I like doing many things and, well, I realized that children should not work.”
The work carried out with the children has also aimed to open up their future opportunities. To accomplish this, vocational orientation workshops were given to 500 teenagers, vocational workshops with an emphasis in responsible mining were given to 862, and specialized courses in vocational activities saw 865 children certified.
In addition to the transformation accomplished in each of these populations, Somos Tesoro leaves behind its greatest legacy for Colombia: the integral strategy necessary to obtain a significant impact in the effort toward reducing child labor. The fourth component of their strategy has been the work carried out with public officials, who have the responsibility of caring for children, and therefore, to prevent and eradicate child labor.
Fondo Acción generated valuable spaces for dialogue and training between 226 municipal, regional and national public officials for the refinement of child labor public policies, and created the Integral Territorial Management Method for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor. This tool helps municipal officials in the diagnosis of this situation, the detection of population at the highest risk, the outlining of strategies and the focalization of their intervention for an effective reduction of child labor.
As part of this public movement, the problem of child labor was explicitly reflected in ten municipal development plans. Remedios, Antioquia Mayor Lucía Carvajal finds that one way of fighting for children’s rights is to respond with education, health, recreation and sports: “teach the children to dream, to think and to develop,” she says.
With the satisfaction of seeing the goals that have been accomplished, Somos Tesoro continues its process of ending its activities in Boyacá and Antioquia. The communities and their authorities receive Somos Tesoro’s legacy and intend to continue with these processes as per the maxim “We will Always be a Treasure.”