Better educated kids grow into more productive and better paid adult workers. Senator Tom Harkin, USA, speaking at the May 17 Washington Conference on Action against Child Labour.
Education is recognized as one of the key solutions to the elimination of child labour.
An IPEC project, launched in 1995, identified the best practices worldwide on promoting education as a major strategy in the elimination of child labour and on how to further mobilize teachers, educators and their organizations. There is an overwhelming consensus on the right to education as a basic humand rights and as the only viable alternative to labour. IPEC Action Programmes involving education are numerous. Central America, in the coffee industry, the model used in Bangladesh is being replicated to provide education to children of coffee picking families Thailand, to prevent child trafficking and prostitution through the award of scholarships. The Ministry of Education s Sema Life Development Project has provided 145,000 scholarships to girls at risk of being recruited into prostitution between 1994 and the present.