Slavery, servitude and committing sin (NGO style)

Us NGO types have an aversion to using emotive language when discussing our issue.  This week, however, I found myself talking about ‘domestic servitude’ and ‘slavery’ in efforts to explain what I meant by ‘child domestic work’.

I had to make an ‘elevator’ pitch on Tuesday for Children Unite.  This supposes you are in the ‘elevator’ with someone you want to influence and you only have the time it takes to get from the ground floor to whichever floor this person is getting out to ‘pitch’ your idea – no more than a minute for most people.  So, I had one minute to explain what Children Unite does (and squeeze in a bit about why) to a room full of social entrepreneurs and finance industry staff.  I also had to do a bit of ‘speed networking’ where you have 4 minutes to chat to the person next to you (about your organisation) before you move on to the next person.  The whole event was organised by UnLtd (an organisation that promotes social enterprises) and Actis (a private equity investment firm) to match up social entrepreneurs (me and 20 others running small organisations that benefit the community in some way) with business mentors (from Actis).

When I listened to all the other elevator pitches, mine sounded the most like a ‘charity case’…it didn’t feel like a business idea in comparison.  (Paradoxically, setting up Children Unite over the past eighteen months has felt much more like setting up a business than a charity.) And, it took a while for people to realise that I wasn’t talking about children who just do a few chores around their own house.  In the speed networking – by the time I’d got to the fourth person, I was bypassing the description of the conditions in which children work (i.e. living with their employers, their vulnerabilities to abuse by employers, long hours, no pay) and went straight to saying it was a contemporary form of slavery!

So, I committed the ultimate sin for NGO types (in terms of damaging your credibility) of using sensational language.  Forgive me! But when I compared child domestic workers’ lives (thinking in particular of children I met Togo this year) to the other beneficiaries being talked about in the room – I realised child domestic workers do live in slavery-like conditions; trapped and in servitude.  Also, that there is a danger when trying not to be seen as a scare-mongerer – that you down play children’s exploitation too much.  The situations in which I saw children working, in Peru and Togo this year, when I visited two of our partner organisations, were intolerable.  So, I’m going to allow myself to use appropriate language to explain why child domestic workers deserve to be empowered.  To borrow a phrase developed for a cosmetic company – because they’re worth it.