1,400 ALBANIAN CHILDREN GO TE SCHOOL THANKS TO TECHERS’ UNIONS

In Albania, a union project supported by the FNV-Mondiaal has made it possible to get 450 working children back to school and to prevent another 950 from dropping out. This success is down to the motivation of the teachers' unions, which encourage their members to visit children’s homes to convince their families to send them to school.

Child labour is not an inevitable consequence of poverty. In Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe, the trade unions are proving that teachers’ energy and motivation can be enough to get the most disadvantaged children into the classroom. What they do is simple: when children don’t show up at school, the teachers visit their homes and talk with their parents about the reasons for not going to school. They often have to persevere, returning several times to a family in order to ensure that the child goes back to school, but their moral authority in the eyes of the families generally helps convince the parents.

It takes guts for the teachers to visit families they don’t know well outside working hours, but they are generally well received. “When I arrive at a family home, I always start by asking them how they are, what their current situation is like, and so on" says Dilaver Lena, a 58-year-old teacher who works in the suburbs of Tirana. "They generally offer me a coffee and then we start talking about school. Parents understand that I'm not doing this for my own sake, but for the welfare of their child, so they are positive about my approach. I find out about the family before visiting them. I try to find out whether it's the parents or the children who scorn education. This is useful, because if the lack of motivation comes from the children, then I ask one of the best pupils in my class, Asqeri Peshka, to go with me. It's easier for him to find the right words to convince a kid of his age to go back to school."

Parents often use their poverty as an excuse for not sending their children to school. "It might well be a bogus excuse, but it is a factor that should not be underestimated", Dilaver Lena explains. "School is free, but some parents are ashamed that they cannot buy their kids decent clothing. They're afraid that their kids' classmates will laugh at them". The Roma families, who are generally worse off financially than other Albanians, often hesitate to send their children to school because of these kinds of inequalities, especially during the cold winter months. Teachers cannot afford to provide poor parents with financial aid, but they can come up with some tips for making ends meet, for example by giving them schoolbooks from previous years.

Awareness-raising seminars organised by unions

While some teachers have always been motivated to take action of this kind, seminars organised by Albanian teachers' unions (with the support of the AOB and FNV-Mondiaal) to raise awareness about child labour in four of the country's districts have made hundreds of others aware of the issues involved. “These seminars have allowed teachers to better understand the framework surrounding child labour and the international conventions on child labour. They have also made it possible to develop concrete action plans for teachers" says Lavdosh Llanaj, the person responsible for this project in the Fieri region. "I have noticed greater motivation on the part of teachers since the end of the seminar, because they now have a better understanding of the importance of their role. They see the direction we want to go. We have created outreach groups at schools in case of prolonged absenteeism by a pupil. They immediately sound the alarm and visit the parents' home. The statistics that we collect on truancy and dropouts also give us greater credibility when we lobby the authorities to help these children".

All in all, more than 100 member teachers of the FSASH and SPASH unions have been directly trained at these seminars. They then organised meetings in their respective schools in order to raise the awareness of hundreds of others. The project, which started two years ago, has enabled 450 Albanian children to return to the classroom and 950 others not to drop out. The latter group were in a situation that was likely to lead to their dropping out of school, but their teachers intervened with their families to encourage them to continue their education.

Stavri Liko, Executive Secretary of FSASH, is the coordinator for this project. He is pleased with the contribution by the Dutch unionists. "Representatives from the Netherlands' AOB were present at each seminar. They shared their experience with the Albanian teachers, emphasising a teaching approach that views the pupil as a participant in his or her own education, not just an object". The Albanian project is also inspired by a trip Stavri Liko took to Hyderabad (India) in 2004 to attend an international conference on child labour co-organised by FNV-Mondiaal in connection with the Stop Child Labour. School is the Best Place to Work campaign. "The conference gave us a chance to examine - in the field - the activities undertaken by the MV Foundation, whose work in Indian villages has enabled tens of thousands of children to go to school. That helped me understand that we cannot effectively combat child labour without getting directly involved in the schools and without involving all players potentially concerned (teachers, local authorities, police, etc.). Like the MV Foundation, which supports refresher courses for former child labourers before integrating them into the traditional education system, we have also put pressure on the authorities to create these kinds of course, especially for Rom children because they are generally subjected to the greatest discrimination".

7 times more Roman children at school in Fieri

The region of Fieri, around 80 km south of Tirana, has one of the highest numbers of Rom communities in the country. Refid Dule, president of the Rom association Amarodrom, says : "Out of 400 Rom families living in the suburbs of Fieri, we only had around 10 children who attended school regularly in 2002. That number has now risen to 74, thanks to the second-chance courses given by teachers to Rom children who are too old to attend the same classes as children in the first and second year of primary school. The local education authorities created the courses, under pressure from our association and teachers' unions".

Just like when they visit children's homes to convince the parents to send them to school, the teachers who give these second-chance courses are not paid for working overtime. "Even without being paid, I think it is worth it to devote a few hours per week to these children because they are so keen to learn. I really feel like a great teacher when I am able to give them this opportunity", explains Adriana Mema, a 26-year old teacher from Fieri. Her colleague working in the Tirana region, Dilaver Lena, also draws motivation from the essential help he is providing for children: "I do not receive any financial benefit from this. My monthly salary is still set at 20,600 leks per month, but I feel that child labour is unacceptable and children who drop out of school generally end up working (selling cigarettes in the street, washing cars, working in the construction sector or garment business, etc.). Moreover, I get a great deal of personal satisfaction when a child I convinced to go back to school gets good marks."

Samuel Grumiau