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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.

Part of the Root Causes of Migration Strategy for northern Central America, the Promoting Safe and Healthy Workplaces in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador (PREP4Change) project seeks to improve occupational safety and health (OSH) conditions for workers in the sugar and garment (maquila) sectors. The project will focus on workplace illnesses and injuries, chronic kidney disease of non-traditional causes (CKDnt), and COVID-19.

Photo by Luis Fuentes Part of the Root Causes of Migration Strategy for northern Central America, this project seeks to improve workers’ rights in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador by supporting workers’ organizations in the banana, melon, palm oil, and pineapple sectors in Honduras; the banana and palm oil sectors in Guatemala; and in the garments (maquila) sector in El Salvador.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

This project helps businesses establish systems to prevent, detect and eliminate child labor and other forms of labor exploitation from their supply chains. It is assembling a powerful coalition of coffee buyers to collectively incentivize compliance among suppliers. In doing so, the project promotes supply chains that are free of exploitative labor and helps to create a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

All economies, whether in the United States or in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), need timely, accurate information to fuel efficiencies in their labor markets. These efficiencies, in turn, help ensure social stability and contribute to economic growth – both within countries and beyond. This project will seek to strengthen labor market information systems in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to create useful labor market intelligence -- helping workers to find jobs, employers to fill the skills gap and economies to grow.

YPCA worked to improve livelihoods for at-risk youth to prevent their engagement in exploitative labor and the worst forms of child labor. The project provided at-risk youth with skills and education directly related to labor market needs in a safe learning environment; helped at-risk youth secure and retain employment; promotes youth employment through business partnerships; and strengthens government and community organizations’ ability to support relevant vocational training and employment opportunities for youth. In the aftermath of hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic, the project began meeting short-term and emergency needs of project participants, including providing supermarket vouchers and in-kind food and hygiene products to children engaged in the project. The project also provided start-up inputs and technical training to support the establishment of home gardens.