THE story from Costa Rica

I’ve been in Costa Rica for 10 days working with one of our partners DNI (Defensa di Ninos y Ninas Internacional).  I have been commissioned by Anti-Slavery International to run capacity building workshops in Costa Rica, Tanzania and the Philippines over the next 6 months.  I’ve just finished the first of these in Costa Rica facilitating with Children Unite’s Chair, Mariela who also happens to work for Anti-Slavery and is a fluent Spanish speaker.

We were able to visit a slum area in San Jose called La Carpio – where DNI runs a project for child domestic workers.  La Carpio is also called ‘little Nicaragua’ as nearly all it’s residents having migrated from Nicaragua, it is very poor. We were given a tour of La Carpio by Nila – a local community leader who explained all the community activities she was involved in as volunteer, (on top of her 2 jobs as a domestic worker).  Her commitment to her community was inspiring and I’ve noticed that the more I visit grass-roots organisations the more ‘Nilas’ I meet.  I know this sounds like a cliché but they are the real heroes.  They are the ones I think of when people tell me how ‘good’ I am because I work on this issue and I squirm because I know that the Nilas of this world make so much more of a sacrifice than I ever could.  But, this time I made Nila laugh her socks off and I want to share my (slightly humiliating) story with you!!   Nila was showing Mariela and I the dirty black river in the community (which was quite a torrent as there’s been a cyclone over Costa Rica for the past week) and over the river was a rickety old swing bridge.  As we got closer Mariela and I asked if we’d have to cross the river and Nila said no which we were relieved about. So we stood at one end and watched the kids running across it without a care in the world.  Mariela was first to succumb to the  inner challenge to cross it and off she went with two girls who had also been our tour guides with Nila.  So, of course, as Mariela had done it I felt obliged and started crossing…however, half way across I heard lots of shouting (from Mariela) and the bridge started swinging and wobbling as a bunch of 5 or 6 boys were shaking it, jumping up and down on it and laughing at me - the gringa, clinging on for dear life and screaming at them – one of boys came racing under my arms and up the other side.  I eventually made it across the bridge but then had to think about getting back.! Me and the two girls (yep they went across again!) waited for the boys to go a bit further away and then we practically ran back over the bridge shouting ‘rapido, rapido’ in case the boys came to play the trick on me again!!  Mariela was very worried about me but Nila was laughing her head off – it was at that point we found out that she won’t cross the bridge ever and thought we were completely mad!!  But when Mariela questioned me about it I realized I hadn’t been scared, I should have been, but I wasn’t and I rather admired the boys…if I’d have been one these boys I would have done the same.  I don’t really know what the moral of this tale is but Mariela said ‘THIS is the story from La Carpio’ so I guess there doesn’t really need to be one this time!

Cup cakes, rubber gloves & political action

Earlier this month, armed with 200 pairs of rubber gloves I joined a roadshow in Bristol of the Methodist Women in Britain (MWiB). Here I spoke for the first time about Children Unite's campaign on the International Labour Organizations's Convention on Domestic Work.   Although we're not launching our campaign until March 2012 this was a chance to test the waters and see how the whole campaign idea is received. I asked the women at the roadshow to buy a pair of Traidcraft rubber gloves (for the bargain, today only, while stocks last price of £1) and then to sign them and give them back to me.   When we have a mountain of gloves we will organise an event to deliver them to Vince Cable's department of Business Innovation and Skills (responsible for adopting the convention). The President of Methodist Women in Britain, Jill Baker, signed the very first pair of gloves....to start the ball rolling so to speak.

I went to the event with my mum, a longstanding member of MWiB and the whole event was both familiar and surprising. It was very Methodist: lots of Wesley's hymns and prayers and a bible reading (I was brought up a Methodist so am used to this) but it also surprised me. For a start, there was the most beautiful display of cupcakes I've ever seen (all we ever got at our church was a rich tea biscuit and some weak orange squash).  But what surprised me more was, I suppose, the solidarity and the feeling of 'sisterhood' I found for women in Zimbabwe, Korea, Samoa - women all over the world.  The quiet excitement that in many developing countries the movement of Methodist women is powerful and growing.   I had a good laugh on my stall, joking about what to write on the gloves, how to deliver them to Vince Cable...the cup cakes went down a treat too!

But there was also a more serious side to the event – perhaps motivated by a sense of injustice at ‘a woman’s lot’, it wasn’t quite articulated as anger but there was definitely something there.  It was there when I spoke about child domestic work being seen as commonplace (and therefore ignored) because it is judged as good training for girls who will only go on to become wives and mothers.  Domestic work is something all women have a responsibility towards, even if they don’t do it themselves.  It therefore felt quite natural talking about domestic work, rubber gloves and political action.

Anniversary Q & A

It's exactly a year since I started blogging, since I gave up my job and started working full time for Children Unite.  So, time for a little reflection which I think will be in the form of an interview with myself ...courtesy of The Guardian newspaper's Q & A which I read religiously every weekend.
So, the following answers concern my last year...

What is your most embarrassing moment?
Putting my hand up when I was part of a 'panel' at a meeting in rural Nepal to say that I needed the toilet (rather than having some interesting comment to make to the group of 50 people attending).  I was pretty desperate by then though. 

What would your super-power be?
Being able to sync my mobile phone calendar with my computer calendar without every appointment coming up twice and others disappearing altogether.

What is your greatest fear?
Having to pay an enormous tax bill because I worked out my national insurance contributions and tax wrong.

What is your favourite word?
Clarity (NB not charity!)

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Quite a few of those...watching Downton Abbey (TV drama in the UK that follows the lives of domestic servants and their masters/mistresses at the turn of the century).  Also planning holidays around my work trips (trekking in Nepal for example).

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
The cast of Downton Abbey to discuss which of them would like to speak at Children Unite's launch event.

What skill would you most like to have?
To be able to make a decision and stick with it instead of constantly re-visiting it and wondering if it's the right one.


What words do you most overuse?
Since August (when I went to Scotland) I've been saying 'ah thunk ut's time ah poot ma perrrrsonal stereoh ohn' (which is supposed to be 'I think it's time I put my personal stereo on' in a Scottish accent).  Very irritating to listen to more than once I'm sure.

Forgive me, it's been a whole month since my last post

This feels like the start of a confession - Followers forgive me it's been a whole month since my last blog post - and that's not because I've been sunning myself in Spain or camping in Suffolk (although I did spend a week doing both of those). It's because at Children Unite HQ (shed in garden, cup of tea at hand) we're gearing up for the start of our first campaign so I've decided to write a monthly post instead of a weekly one. Ironically, the more I have to report, the less time I have to report it!

But I've also been busy because - WE GOT IT! We won the final of X Factor (see last post!) so I'm in the middle of the equivalent of signing record deals (completing application forms and finalising budgets - sounds a lot less interesting doesn't it!). I've had to halve the budget for the project in Nepal which has been quite a feat, but we got it!! We will be co-ordinating a year's research project with our partners in Nepal, CWISH, that looks at the issue of the sexual abuse of child domestic workers. I'm particularly pleased that there's a strong participatory element to the research, two of the researchers will be young people (former child domestic workers), there will be an advisory group of young people that will be consulted throughout the project and, in an exciting twist, some of the advisory group members will be turning the research findings into a 20 minute film that will be broadcast to the community. I particularly like this last element because I've been involved in turning boring UN documents into 'children-friendly' reports (written in children-friendly language) so that children can understand them. But what do you do when you want to feedback your findings to children (and adults) who don't read? You do it in film!

As for the campaign - it's shaping up. We will be launching it in November, we will be targeting the UK Government who have been shamefully unsupportive of the ILO's new Convention on Domestic Work, we will be using rubber gloves. I'll say no more at this point. But we will have a website, a Facebook profile and I’ll start tweeting again as we get closer to November (so I’m working on those things too).

Despite a few summer hiccups (our accountant went AWOL & my computer died), Children Unite is thriving; autumn is looking busy. Over the summer I’ve been swinging between a week of holiday, then a week of frenetic budget writing etc, another week of holiday (although camping ain’t much of a rest), then another week of designing our website and more budgeting...and so on. To be honest I’m a bit worried about the autumn, when everything is supposed to be starting and I’ll need to be at full throttle...but at some point in the next 6 months I’ll be going back to Nepal and the thought of the Himalayas always calms my nerves. That and a nice cuppa tea (with biscuit of course!).

The X Factor of partnership

One of the benefits of running your own organisation is that you don't have to take part in job interviews anymore.  I've done quite a few job interviews in my time and I hate them - a couple of years ago my summer holiday was ruined by a phone interview that I had to do on the second from last day!  Last week I took part in a phone interview to secure funds for a project Children Unite has applied for.  I guess this is the closest thing to a job interview I have these days.  When I explained what I was doing to my daughters they said it sounds like the final of X Factor (a TV talent show that grips the nation every winter when we've got nothing better to do)!!

But this ‘job’ interview was so much more enjoyable than any other I have been involved in.  It was partly because I didn't do it on my own.  Children Unite has developed a proposal for a research project in collaboration with one of our partner organisations in Nepal (CWISH), so two of the staff from CWISH, Writu and Milan, were at the interview too.  I was, of course, still nervous about the interview but it was a well organised 'discussion' - the funding agency sent out questions a week beforehand.  And Milan, Writu and myself were relatively well prepared (having emailed each other about our answers).  I definitely felt part of a team as we answered the questions.  

The other factor in my 'enjoyment' of the interview was that I think our research project is great!  I have a lot of confidence in it and believe it is well thought-out and achievable...I know this sounds a bit like I'm blowing my own trumpet but as I read through our proposal in preparation for the interview I felt confidence and excitement about the project rather than trepidation and nerves.  I think this is because Jonathan and I visited Nepal in March, met with Milan and Writu and discussed at length how Children Unite and CWISH would like to work together - and this project is the result!  The development of this project is the perfect example of how we would like to build partnerships through Children Unite.

So, here I am, waiting for news on how we did....does our proposal have the 'X' factor!  But whether we are victorious or not I am confident that the experience of partnership and collaboration I have had throughout the process has been beneficial and rewarding

But fingers crossed anyway!  

Review of BBC Drama: stolen

Damien Lewis as DI Carter in Stolen

Jonathan and I forced ourselves to watch ‘Stolen’ a BBC drama about the trafficking of children to the UK last night.  We tend to avoid ‘work’ related TV in the evenings - I go for costume dramas, he goes for Top Gear (shamefully gender stereotypical choices I know! Jonathan adds: and in case you are wondering, I detest Jeremy Clarkson, but I like the witty banter of the show!).  Our two daughters ended up watching it too.

Everything around the issue of trafficking feels sensational and usually focuses on the sexual abuse of children. However, we were nicely surprised by this drama piece.

We were, of course, more interested in whether the drama would highlight the issue of domestic servitude.  And it did! Rosemary, an eight-year old girl from ‘Africa’ was trafficked into domestic work.  I thought her story was told very well. They highlighted her desire to go to school and the way she was punished for wearing the school uniform of one of the children she was working for – told she was bad and stupid and shoved out on the balcony.  In particular, I liked her rescue – by the cop with a heart DI Carter - she was not a grateful recipient to her saviour, she wouldn’t hug him and pushed him away - it not your typical Hollywood ending!

However, the key figure in it was of course, the cop with a heart, who was investigating the trafficking cases.  Too much of the ‘drama’ was focused on his personal life – some of which seemed completely implausible which started with bringing his daughter to play with a trafficked child (what? When he knew the ‘traffickers’ were trying to find her).  And our two daughters thought his daughter was just ‘too nice’!! The trafficker then threatening to harm DI Carter’s daughter and wife, left ‘things’ (couldn’t figure out what it was in the plastic bag on his car windscreen) and just seemed incredibly blasé about being questioned.

 Gloria Oyewumi plays child domestic worker 'Rosemary'

Two other storylines of trafficking were also told – of a boy from Vietnam who was trafficked to work in a cannabis factory and another boy from Eastern Europe who ended working in some kind of warehouse (which people slept in?). I was pleased that other situations of exploitation were shown.  And particularly pleased the drama showed that children are trafficked to WORK not simply that they are trafficked to be ABUSED.  I really liked the splitting of the screen occasionally to show where everyone was bedding down for the night – this highlighted the very different situations children can find themselves in.  However, there were a lot of question marks for me around these two storylines – who stabbed George (the boy from Eastern Europe) and why?  Which of the two boys from Vietnam was the one who escaped – the new boy or the old boy?  As a result their stories felt incomplete. It felt a little bit like the drama was originally about Rosemary, then they tagged on two other examples of trafficking but this obviously wasn’t quite enough so they added a big chunk of work-life balance tension from the cop-with-a-heart.

Having said that the acting was very good from all the cast – our hearts were with Rosemary of course – and I think we both saw children we have met reflected in her performance.

GUEST BLOG: Jonathan Blagbrough, Co-Founder and Programme Director of Children Unite

I have just returned from Toronto, participating in a workshop on modern slavery.  As the only practitioner in a room full of academics I began the meeting feeling rather out of my depth - overawed by the eminence and sheer brainpower of my fellow contributors. As time went on, however, I realised that I did have something important and valuable to say.

The focus of my presentation was 'listening to child domestic workers', which, in an earlier incarnation I had titled 'what child domestic workers have taught us' - but you get the idea. I had guessed that, amidst the complex theories and intricate critiques (not to mention some seriously big words), the voices of those people actually living the exploitation we were discussing would get lost, and it was this gap that I wanted to fill. The point I made, mainly through the words and images collected from child domestic workers over a number of years, was that we owe it to them to better understand their situation, and that we must do so by listening to their experiences and perspectives - not because we like to be nice to children but because it is their right to be heard.

My talk was greeted by an interesting mix of reactions. It was encouraging to find some that had found the practical emphasis and focus on children's voices a refreshing antidote to other more scholarly presentations. But the lack of feedback following what I had to say - which had been plentiful for others - indicated that something had not quite hit the mark. Was it the subject matter? Hardly; while literature on child domestic workers is not vast, it is not a new topic. Was it my critique of current theories, such as the trafficking framework? Unlikely, given that many of the workshop papers critiqued the creeping use of 'trafficking' as a catch-all for contemporary slavery practices. Was it my style of practical analysis? Possibly. However, as virtually the only person in the room who was explicitly talking about children and their rights, I came to the conclusion that this was the main source of the 'disconnect'. I was surprised. As someone who has lived and breathed children's rights during my career, I assumed that a group of scholarly lawyers and sociologists were similarly aware and engaged. It reminded me that much of what I take for granted - the assumptions I make and my understanding of the world - is not as intuitive to others as I had thought. I was also reminded that we still have a job to do to explain why children's rights is so important.

I ended up enjoying this meeting hugely, not only because it challenged me intellectually but because it gave me an opportunity to reflect. While so many of us see time for reflection as an unaffordable luxury in our time-pressed world, I began to truly understand its value. Listening to people - really LISTENING to what they have to say - whether they be inspiring scholars in Toronto, or child domestic workers around the world, is equally important and benefits us all. As one child domestic worker from India puts it: "I am happy they ask us. I have much to tell about my struggle.


click here to view Jonathan's presentation slides


click here to view Jonathan's presentation notes