Capacity Building

The SWEET project empowers sugarcane field workers in the Dominican Republic to improve their working and living conditions through increased use of formal and informal mechanisms, including legal assistance, social services, and grievance processes.

The Worker Empowerment in South America project seeks to improve respect for labor rights in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru by strengthening democratic, independent workers' organizations in the agricultural, platform (gig) economy, manufacturing, and mining sectors.

This project will strengthen the capacity of unions to organize by legitimizing collective bargaining agreements, supporting internal leadership elections, building partnerships, and providing independent unions with legal support and training for lawyers. The project will operate in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City, as well as Mexico’s northern states by promoting authentic collective bargaining in the automotive, auto parts, aerospace, call centers, electronics, garment, industrial bakeries, logistics and mining sectors.

The Sustentar project aims to increase private sector stakeholders’ accountability to uphold core labor standards consistent with Mexican labor laws and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA) Labor Chapter, with a specific focus on addressing child labor, forced labor, and acceptable conditions of work.  The project will include a focus on states that produce chile peppers and tomatoes, including Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Chihuahua.

This project will enhance the effectiveness of the Government of Mexico to combat child labor and forced labor at the federal level and support specific interventions in the southern states of Chiapas, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo. The duration of the project will be five years (60 months).

The Madagascar Shines project aims to reduce child labor in mica-producing communities in the Anôsy region of Madagascar through community engagement, coordination, and capacity building.

The project will work with civil society and workers' organizations in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to strengthen their capacity and bolster their collaboration with government agencies, the private sector and other stakeholders to protect labor rights and reduce child labor and forced labor. The project will focus on organizations that represent indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Garifuna populations, while promoting gender and racial equity.

The Gender Equity in the Mexican Workplace project works to empower women to gain representation in union leadership in order to strengthen protections, address discrimination and harassment at work, and augment wages.

This project seeks to promote greater compliance with labor law and standards for acceptable conditions of work, including occupational safety and health, hours of work, and wages in the DRC’s mining, distribution, and construction/public works sectors.