National child labor committee adopts good practices criteria to end child labour

By Ms Jodelen Mitra, Programme Officer for Monitoring and Evaluation
ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)

The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) unanimously voted to adopt good practices criteria in programmes to eliminate and prevent child labour as presented by the ILO-International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour.

Mr Jess Macasil, Senior Programme Officer discussed the primary good practices criteria which include effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, responsive/ethical soundness and sustainability while secondary criteria which are not mandatory are replicability, involvement of partnership, innovativeness and creativity and political commitment.

The Knowledge Management Sub-Committee of NCLC, represented by its Chair, Mr Julius Cainglet of the Federation of Free Workers, strongly supported this standardization practice. It will be the basis of the sub-committee in reviewing and approving good practices shared to the Child Labor Knowledge Sharing System.

Macasil further stressed that having standard set of criteria will also influence programme implementers to improve their practices by learning from the experiences of what approaches work best.

IPEC Project Manager Giovanni Soledad also shared that, “The ongoing work for child labour elimination in the country can learn a lot from successful models that have been developed by the different Philippine Programme against Child Labor (PPACL) partners. With the NCLC’s adoption of this process for identifying and documenting good practices, these models and stories can finally be accessed and replicated by anti-child labour advocates thereby strengthening our overall work as a movement”.

The presentation of the good practices criteria was part of the NCLC meeting held on 18 January 2013. The meeting was facilitated by the Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Recio of the Department of Labor and Employment, with former NCLC Chair and now retired Undersecretary Lourdes Transmonte.