6. Protecting Children Currently in Servitude

Model Neighborhoods

The Campaign recently began work in four neighborhoods, two in the city of Port-au-Prince and two in the town of Jacmel. These are neighborhoods where many children living in servitude can be found. We are working in these neighborhoods to identify local leaders who are receptive to training in children's rights and willing to engage in an effort to improve the treatment of all children living in their neighborhoods, especially children living in servitude.

When the commitment of local leadership around this issue of child servitude has coalesced enough, we will conduct a survey of each neighborhood to determine the number of children in the neighborhood and gather information of children currently living in servitude. We will also support their efforts to organize awareness-raising activities and community-wide training in children's rights. To the extent possible we will engage local and national government authorities in this work and will attempt a registration campaign in each neighborhood so children living in servitude can be officially recognized by the government and cases of flagrant child abuse can eventually be prosecuted. 

We will help local groups organize clubs and other non-formal educational opportunities for children in the community in a way that invites the inclusion of children in servitude. Through local groups we will push for families using these children to treat them more and more like their own children, help them reestablish or increase contact with their families, and move closer to the model of formal foster care and/or adoption. We will also push these families to honor commitments to enroll children in their service in school.

We will no longer provide free formal schooling to children living in servitude. Our experience has been that while children in these schools or centers can benefit greatly from the education they receive, offering this education to children in servitude for free encourages and empowers urban families to recruit and lure more children into servitude from rural communities. Given our limited resources, it is better to provide education in under-served rural communities, so children are less likely to be sent into servitude in the first place.

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