The Beginning

Responsible business

No Child Left Behind: A Retrospective Series on the Progress Made and What’s To Come

In this four-part series, we’ll take a look back at the No Child Left Behind program, the progress that’s been made, and also explore what’s on the horizon.

Part 1: A Beginning Filled with Hope and Uncertainty

To begin a project like No Child Left Behind was a daunting proposition. It meant walking into Budhpura, a village rife with challenges and steeped in tradition, with the goal of creating significant change. For the team involved in getting the project off the ground, there was no shortage of emotion – from hope to fear and everything in between.

Budhpura. A semi rural Indian village highly vulnerable to Child Labour.
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Mapping the Supply Chains. The Complexity of Foreign Supply Chains

Responsible business

I’ve travelled to India on numerous occasions over the last 10 years and it’s fair to say that on each visit, I gain further insight into the supply chain. Since leaving the ETI and joining the CLFZ (Child Labour Free Zones) project London Stone’s visits to India have been solely focussed on working with the local community to make child labour a thing of the past in Budhpura.

Whilst being extremely rewarding the project has also been a huge challenge for everyone involved.  Now 3 years in we are starting to see real, on the ground progress, none more so than after a recent visit which has left me feeling inspired and given me a deeper understanding of the community, its social structures, the problems it faces and of course, the solutions.

How did I get this deeper understanding?  By walking.  Walking the supply continuously until all the questions in my mind were answered.  Such a valuable exercise, I had spent time walking the supply chain on my previous visit but this time, I delved a lot deeper. It was while walking and mentally mapping out the supply chain that I realised of the tiers within a tier. Let me explain!

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Embroidery Courses Empowering the Women of Budhpura

Field updates

Manjari have just organised 5 days stitching training for a group of 20 local young women and girls.  The stitching training was carried out at the Manjari headquarters in Budhpura .

The feedback for the participants was that they enjoyed the training and are very keen to learn more.  The participants have been asked to practice the skills that they have learnt in preparation for some advanced stitching training which is again to be organised by the Manajri team.

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Gender Equality will play a huge role in creating Child Labour Free zones

Stories

There’s nothing better than an unexpected windfall, an added bonus, a surprise victory. This is exactly what we’ve seen in Budhpura, the village at the centre of our project to create Child Labour Free zones.  A deep rooted cultural issue and one that we didn’t expect to see changing for a long time is all of a sudden getting tackled.

Gender equality, or more accurately, the complete lack of it is a real issue in semi-rural Indian villages like Budhpura.  Let’s face it, gender equality is an issue in all societies. Huge progress has been made in “western societies”, and while we still have a long way to go, in places like rural India, the process has barely begun.

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Leading the Fight against Child Labour. The Cobble Traders Union.

Stories

In less developed countries who are still fighting social battles, unions are an important part of society. Even though I understand the need for unions in developing countries like India, I was not entirely comfortable when I heard that the cobble traders of Budhpura had formed a union to support our project to create Child Labour Free Zones (CLFZ).

It felt fishy. A group of cobble traders whose norm was child labour coming together to help eradicate something that had supported their family’s standard of living for generations.

That’s where we were 2 years ago, when the cobbles Traders Union began to play a role, a role that’s now looking very decisive, in our project to create child labour free zones in Budhpura. I can vividly recall being sat under a veranda in a small cobble yard with the CLFZ project team, a handful of Indian stone exporters and the Budhpura cobble traders union. It was an awkward and uncomfortable meeting and not just because of the plastic chairs we were perched on. Looking back, it was new ground for everyone and at that time, nobody was really sure who was friend or foe.

A fragmented supply chain is difficult to manage
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