Why worry about OVC in energy projects?
When few other energy sources are available, affordable or socially acceptable, communities often choose to exploit the energy of their women and children for menial work tasks.
- Children as fuel collectors. In areas where energy is scarce, poor, marginalized and out-of-school children are widely employed as fuel collectors and carriers. The sale of biomass fuel may be a main source of income for poor women who provide for OVC, and an ever-present opportunity to put children to work and make them net contributors to their households. Among these children, we find many OVC who are either extremely poor or unwanted and thus discriminated against within their own households. Other OVC may use fuel collection and sales as a way to finance their own survival and the survival of younger siblings or other family members, as well as a means to finance their own education.
- Children as transport. In sub-Saharan Africa most energy is costly, in particular compared to the very low cost of having children transport goods. Transport is one of the main activities of working children in Africa. In addition to firewood, in particular rural (but also urban) children spend enormous amounts of time fetching water, transporting equipment and farm products on the farm and to and from local markets. OVC also widely engage as commercial porters in markets and car stations.
- Children performing menial work. The cost of available energy vs. the cost of child labor creates an enormous child labor demand of a sort that would be less common in most other parts of the world. A common and harmful example of this is children’s labor in quarries. Cracking rocks into gravel could effectively and easily have been mechanized, but that requires energy input and machinery. Across Africa, poor children (many of them orphaned) are relocated to quarry sites where they work, and sometimes live, cracking each rock into gravel by hand.
- Children and water provision. A considerable share of child labor in Africa is related to the poor access to water of most African households. Water is crucial to everyday household needs, but also fundamental in agriculture. Where deemed necessary, children of all ages spend significant amounts of their work time pumping the water, fetching and carrying it, and watering food crops.
Overview of Possible Interventions
Because energy projects are generally meant to provide new, cheaper or more effective access to energy, they can greatly benefit children and women by reducing their work burden. But if those women and children make a living by providing access to the traditional forms of energy resources (e.g., selling fuelwood), the project – if poorly designed – may make them even more vulnerable. In addition, energy projects may involve extensive construction (e.g. a power plant ), and this may result in the proliferation of ancillary services that employ considerable numbers of children, especially girls (preparing and selling food for construction workers, washing their clothes, etc.). While some additional cash earned by children may be most welcome, this should not interfere with schooling and should not be done in a way that hurts their development.
Below are some ideas of project design features to consider. But this is a field where attention to social issues, and in particular to OVC, is not common and in the end it will be up to the creativity of the Project Team to find the best ways to integrated OVC concerns on the basis of the results of a social assessment.
OVC Category |
Most Likely Project Design Features – Energy Sector |
All OVC |
- Carry out a social analysis to determine the need for compensatory measures for OVC and their caretakers.
- In project preparation, include a dialogue with relevant ministries, e.g. the ministry of education, social protection, women and families to ensure adequate in-put.
- Give preferential access to jobs and other benefits created by the project to vulnerable people, including OVC caretakers or OVC themselves if they are old enough (e.g., adolescent orphans heads of household). OVC should not loose out as a result of the project: The project should enhance OVC access to economic and social development opportunities.
- Include a special component to support alternative income generating activities for relevant vulnerable groups, including OVC and OVC caretakers who will lose their livelihood as a result of the project (training, micro credit, grants – but be aware of the possible pitfalls for OVC related to such interventions. See the section on Pitfalls for more on this.).
- For projects generating large profits, such as oil projects, consider setting up a special OVC Fund with part of the profits (it’s also good for PR!). Make sure that these funds are used strategically to have a sustainable impact on the well being of OVC in the region and not just to finance a collection of small charitable initiatives, which don’t add up. One option would be to invest these funds in conditional transfers to assist OVC to enroll in school and get basic health care (see the sub-section on conditional transfers). If there is a shortage of classrooms in the area, consider working in partnership with the Ministry of Education to build schools in the affected area.
- If large commercial companies are involved, request whether they have a Corporate Social Responsibility program, and if they would be interested in allocating some of its funds towards vulnerable children affected by the project (for more on Corporate Social Responsibility see The CSR site)
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Children in the Worst Forms of Child Labor |
- Determine strict rules for local contractors to prevent them from employing children under 14, and agree on a fair way to determine the age of children in the absence of a birth certificate (e.g., height).
- Run awareness campaigns in communities close to construction sites to discourage families from taking children out of school for work related to the project.
- Run IEC programs in communities and with project workers to discourage the exploitation of child prostitutes (this can be done in the context of an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, which should in any case be included in the project)
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