Rwanda Education Alternatives for Children in Tea-Growing Areas (REACH-T)

Intermediate objectives include:

• Supporting Government and tea industry efforts to combat child labor in the production of tea;
• Developing a child labor monitoring system and improving enforcement of labor laws relevant to child labor;
• Providing direct educational and livelihood services to targeted children and households;
• Increasing opportunities for decent and productive employment by youth;
• Performing research and collecting reliable data on child labor and developing effective strategies to address such issues;
• Raising awareness of exploitative child labor and its root causes in tea growing areas; and
• Ensuring active local ownership and long-term sustainability of efforts.

Summary of Activities:

• Develop a mobile-phone child labor monitoring system that links community-based monitoring to the Ministry of Public Service and Labor;
• Conduct a baseline survey and an endline survey on child labor prevalence in all tea producing regions of Rwanda;
• Establish a Roundtable on the Elimination of Child Labor and Sustainable Tea to develop a code of conduct for the Rwandan tea industry;
• Provide scholarships to children to attend formal primary schools and non-formal Catch Up program;
• Improve access to and quality of education through the provision of improved learning environments, including school infrastructure rehabilitation, and teacher training and peer mentoring;
• Support youth with agricultural vocational education and improved employment opportunities, including through linkages and advocacy with tea companies, establishment of Model Farm Schools, and provision of occupational safety equipment;
• Provide training and technical support to district labor inspectors to strengthen the enforcement of child labor laws on smallholder farms;
• Improve sustainable livelihoods of target households through the provision of entrepreneurship and life skills training;
• Raise awareness on child labor, the benefits of education, and hazards found in the production of tea among cooperative members and tea companies;
• Conduct an assessment of Rwanda’s labor inspection system and research on occupational safety and health in the tea sector; and
• Build the capacity of the Government, tea industry, child protection committees, and community activists to address child labor