The United State Ambassador to Peru, J. Curtis Struble, recently joined Peruvian government, business, and community leaders in Lima to formally launch a major new initiative aimed at helping to eliminate child labor in that country. The program, entitled “Preparing Ourselves for Life,” or Prepárate!, is a project of the International Youth Foundation and is funded through a US$5,090,000 cooperative agreement with the US Department of Labor. Peru has one of the highest rates of child labor in Central and South America, with an estimated 2.3 million children between the ages of 6 and 17 who are working.

 

Underscoring the commitment of the United States to work with all sectors in Peru to address this “grave problem,” Ambassador Struble said, “I can’t think of any other objective more important than the education of children, especially children at risk.” He saluted his colleagues at the Department of Labor and the many implementing partners in Peru for “tackling two of the fundamental challenges facing this country – the elimination of child labor and the improvement of educational opportunities.”  Walter Twanama, IYF’s Project Director in Peru, adds: “Prepárate! will have a real impact on the quality of lives of these young people, by keeping them in school and giving them concrete alternatives to working and being exploited.”  Before joining the program, Twanama worked at the Peruvian Ministry of Education and served as head of the education office at USAID-Peru.

 

Over the next five years, Prepárate! will benefit 10,500 children, ages 11 to 15, half of whom will be prevented from entering the labor market before legal working age through enhanced educational opportunities, while the other half will be withdrawn from hazardous and exploitative jobs such as street vendors, garbage collectors, domestic workers, and prostitutes. The program’s activities will target youth living in four urban areas across the country: Lima, Callao, Trujillo, and Iquitos.