Evaluation Learnings Search

Learning Description

Community interaction and awareness, despite its narrow scope, was initiated in some of the project sites. Other complementary means can be envisaged based on the results already achieved.

Learning Description

Discussion promoted by the project, which included relevant stakeholders, initiated a process to define child labor which has the potential to be further developed.

Learning Description

Combining resources is definitely an important efficient feature of the project, and demonstrates its ability to adapt to existing conditions.

Learning Description

Within the monitoring strategy (data collection in the field), the project was able to use various types of contributions, ranging from voluntary and community work to specially hired personnel, which increased awareness and appropriation of the project’s objectives. Participation of different types of community members, depending on their availability and capacity, helped to reach monitoring objectives, produced cumulative effects, and stimulated the process of using monitoring tools regularly.

Learning Description

The system contributes to USDOL’s knowledge base within some limitations. The system should ideally be expanded to a broader labor market analysis and/or be integrated into other instruments of child labor assessments—rapid appraisals, local surveys, and national assessments. In this context, it could potentially be used as a true research valid instrument.

Learning Description

The ONJOI project included a fairly dynamic pool of stakeholders, which can be used as a starting point for data collection and discussion of issues regarding child labor. The project also promoted some studies on child labor and education, which can be used as a basis for future broader assessments.

Learning Description

Improvement of school quality and activities was recognized both by the communities and by the government. However, connections of these activities to child labor prevention or withdrawn is still weak. These activities can be considered a starting point to initiating increased community awareness. Based on the results recognized by the communities and educators, the project should intensify its activities regarding child labor.

Learning Description

Project objectives need to be grounded in solid cooperation with state structures. The first step to this collaboration lies in advocacy efforts and in raising broad and national awareness of child labor issues in order to support locally focused actions. The predicted influence of advocacy training for civil society actors and municipal administration was not achieved given the scope of the project and the incapacity of establishing solid relationships.

Learning Description

Regarding sustainability of interventions, the inclusion of the ONJOI project within ChildFund International’s former and ongoing initiatives and projects in Benguela allowed support of ONJOI activities and may contribute to the extension of its results for a longer period. The Programa Infantil Comunitário (Community Child Program) includes social educators for preprimary education and has been implemented since 2008 in Zona F. ChildFund International also has a sponsoring program that will continue for the coming years and has applied for extra funding from the organization’s headquarters to continue ONJOI activities until the end of the school year.

Learning Description

Funding a child labor project in a post-conflict country such as Angola poses some difficulties with regard to timing and sustainability of actions. As priority is normally given to reconstruction efforts, addressing child labor has been postponed. Acting in the area of education to fight child labor is also a challenge due to the existing conditions of the school system, school infrastructure, and family poverty. An education-oriented project may rely successfully on parents’ and children’s eagerness to access school and return to a normal life but has to count on the extended and profound needs that must be addressed first.