Lidia Fernández, member of COPRETI Buenos AIres
A mapping of child labour risks and the collective possibilities to eradicate child labour
Lidia is an operator of the action node of the Comisión Provincial por la Erradicación del Trabajo Infantil (COPRETI) of the province of Buenos Aires in El Peligro (La Plata). Together with the families of the neighborhood, she participated in a social mapping process carried out to prevent child labour in the area.
25 April 2023
BUENOS AIRES (OIT Noticias) — "I work so that every day there is one less child in productive units", said Lidia Fernández, operator of "Germinando Sueños", one of the 39 action nodes of the Comisión Provincial por la Erradicación del Trabajo Infantil (COPRETI) of the province of Buenos Aires.
The node where Lidia participates is in El Peligro, a town located outside the city of La Plata, a few streets away from provincial route 2, in the heart of a horticultural area. Reports gathered by the Commission's team show that there are risks of child labour or exposure of children and adolescents to the use of agrochemicals around the area.
In this context, COPRETI accompanies "the care and protection of the children so that they are not inside production units, but are at school and, once or twice a week, doing activities in the node," explained Lidia, who also participates in the El Guadalquivir Family Producers' Association.
Her story is part of a series of six audiovisual testimonies presented by the Country Office of the International Labour Organization (ILO) for Argentina, which were produced as part of the project "Offside: ¡Marcando la cancha!" (Offside: Making the difference!). These stories make visible the problem of child labor, which in Argentina affects 1 out of every 10 children and adolescents under 15 years of age. This figure doubles in rural areas of the country, where poverty and vulnerability levels are higher.
"There are families that did not have the chance to go to school and some mothers do not know how to read or write," said Lidia, for whom this situation illustrates the generational dynamics that they want to transform.
Lidia participated in the process of building social cartographies to feed a child labour monitoring portal promoted by COPRETI of Buenos Aires and the Offside project of ILO Argentina. In parallel with five other nodes (La Capilla, La Armonía, La Gloria de la Peregrina, Los Olmos, Oliden), collective mapping workshops were held to systematize information from the point of view of those who live and produce in the area.
In this way, they socialized and processed first-hand information on access barriers to educational centers, health centers, recreational and sports spaces, the availability of public transportation, the state of the streets and neighborhood infrastructure, the presence of organizational and public policy actors, among other aspects.
They also cross-checked this information with family trajectories and statistical data from sources such as, for example, the Modelo de Identificación del Riesgo de Trabajo Infantil y Adolescente (MIRTI) developed by the ILO and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
"We started touring the sites for this project," said Lidia. The information built collaboratively also helped the families to collectively recognize the community's problems and to have a common view of the main needs. With the participation of children and young people, for example, the initiative to develop a public space for recreation and free time for children and adolescents was conceived.
Lidia celebrated the fact that farmers' families are increasingly committed to children being in school, enjoying their free time, sharing in caring spaces and not in the farms. "I would like all this we are doing to be multiplied in many, many places," she said.