In Spring this year, Ardea International sumbitted an action pledge to Alliance 8.7 and UN Global Compact to support the ‘Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.’ Stakeholders are invited to pledge specific actions to contribute towards the fight to end child labour worldwide. We committed to developing educational tools that raise awareness and provide resources that guide businesses into reducing their impacts on the estimated 152 million children in child labour. 

Since our pledge was made, Ardea International hosted a webinar for over 150 attendees titled ‘STOP Child Labour: how to address child labour in supply chains’ on the eve of World Day Against Child Labour. Experts from UNICEF, the Rainforest Alliance, JDE, Ardea International and V.E. spoke to help our audience understand the global standards on child Labour, the draft Dutch Child Labour Due Diligence Law and the direction of travel for human rights due diligence legislation in the UK and across Europe that impacts U.K. companies in their global supply chains. Key takeaways from the webinar included the positive legislation coming after the development of the new Dutch child labour law, and the strong urge to act now and implement positive business and cultural change in companies. 

Alongside awareness raising, Ardea committed to educate businesses on child labour and the huge responcibility on business to act to reverse their impacts. We have since developed a 6 week online and training programme, ‘STOP Child Labour,’ to be piloted with high risk sectors more exposed to child labour in the new year. The training is designed to include information for directors, managers and operational teams on how to identify and understand the risk of child labour and take the necessary steps to prevent, mitigate and eliminate it from their operations and supply chains. We believe the responsibility businesses have for the staggering numbers of children in child labour is paramount to their understanding of their actions in remediation and thus, elimination. 

Following on from the development of this programme, we have developed both a 30 minute e-learning course and a 10-minute e-learning course (which will be available for free) to make our resources more accessible to smaller businesses, students, and individuals. These courses will focus on spotting the signs of child labour and educating participants on risks and the steps necessary to prevent risks. 

We hope that our work will have an impact, not only on those we educate, but further unto the children we hope to be free from child labour. When joining our webinars, training programme or using our e-learning tools, we hope to engage stakeholders and businesses, individuals and students on the issue of child labour, which is the first step to education for elimination. We seek to equip them with tools and resources to make the elimination of child labour feel closer and realistic, we seek to be a catalyst in implementing change. 

#EndChildLabour2021