Emily Sandall Foundation

Emily Sandall Memorial Grant Award Announcement – Fall 2008
[November 8, 2008] On behalf of the International Initiative to End Child Labor’s (IIECL) Board of Directors and Staff and the Emily Sandall Foundation, it is with great pleasure that we announce the fall 2008 recipients for the Emily Sandall Memorial Grant Awards. A total of five awards are being presented at this time. The selection was a difficult one among all of the worthy applicants. Look for future announcements of applications coming in spring 2009.
The following provides an overview of the organizations and individuals receiving awards at this time and a reflection on how Emily might have viewed these activities to address the needs of children, support their education, and eliminate exploitive child labor:
North America
USA
Aryn Calhoun: An up and coming singer-songwriter musician with 10+ years of experience, hundreds of original songs, six albums, and an awesome voice, Aryn Calhoun will be using her grant to produce a quality song with lyrical depth and musical emotion to help address and raise awareness about child labor issues. As a medium, music helps people rally around important social justice issues. A well-crafted song that is shared and posted on the Internet and used to reach out to the public is a new and innovative way to achieve awareness about child labor. Aryn is currently a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.        Emily’s Impression: Emily would love this proposal. She had just started writing her own human rights’ songs after helping with the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in New Orleans. Music and singing were a huge part of her life and she definitely felt what the power of music could accomplish.
 
Julia Perez: As a former migrant farmworker, Julia is well aware of the exceptions in the US labor laws that do not afford equal protection for children working in agriculture. Some of her earliest memories start at the age of 5 when she was pulled out of school to start working in the fields like her brothers and sisters. Her childhood ended like so many other migrant children—leaving school in April and returning in late October missing many months of school. However, Julia is an exception to the rule. Valuing education, she has achieved a master’s in electrical engineering, 2 patents filed and 15 technical publications to her credit. Julia will be using her grant to develop a booklet with personal writing about child labor in the US, information about the Children’s Act Responsible Employment (CARE) bill, and exemptions under the current Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that leave US children working in agriculture at risk. The booklet will be sent to the 435 representatives and key media personalities.
Emily’s impressions: Emily would be so interested in this proposal. She had worked hard to try and have a placement in a migrant farm schoolhouse and had even envisioned traveling with the migrant farm children as their teacher.
Africa
 
Uganda
Luhwahwa Youth Development Foundation: (LUYODEFO) is a local community based NGO located in Kajwange, Kisinga sub-county, Bukonzo East constituency in Kasese district of the far western Uganda region. Luhwahwa Youth Foundation is using their grant award to reduce the level of child labor by improving the knowledge base for public advocacy. Orientation meeting with stakeholders to design ways of communication, procedures and recommendations for project innovations. conduct awareness raising training for the Community Owned Resource Person (CORPs) from 15 villages of Kisinga sub-county, are some of the activities to be achieved. A total of 60 CORPs members will be trained.
Emily’s impressions: Emily would love this application. She worked tirelessly to empower disadvantaged youth through education, health and life skills. She also worked tirelessly to educate people about the importance of ending child labor.
Asia / Near East
India
LEVERAGE: LEVERAGE Trust is an NGO formed in 1994 by a group of women social workers with NGO/voluntary organization experience and addressing women’s issues. LEVERAGE will be using their grant to eliminate child labor in the stone quarries in five villages of Pudukottai District through intensive awareness and education campaigns among the stone quarry workers’ families using school student volunteers. These volunteers will be trained and supported by LEVERAGE staff.
Emily’s impressions: Emily would love the idea of empowering the children to be the educators against child labor.  She would also love that it is an active idea—having a bicycle rally. She had lived and worked in Nepal, using a bike as transportation, and had always wanted to work in India to help stop child labor.
Pakistan
Rural Development Organization (RDO): RDO will be receiving a second Emily Sandall Memorial Grant to further their work in the rural agricultural areas in the Faisalabad Region in Pakistan. With this grant, they will be organizing and conducting a full week of celebrations and activities centered around the World Day Against Child Labor during the week of June 11-17, 2009. To accomplish their objectives, they will form Thinkers Groups, conduct speech competitions, on-air balloons, develop and distribute pamphlets and sponsor debates as part of their activities to gain community support to end child labor and raise awareness among authorities and the general public to end child labor and pursue parliamentarians to formulate law for the protection of affected children and their families.
Emily’s impressions: Emily would love this project for World Child Labor Day. She would also like supporting an organization that she had worked with before, as she did this in her own life. We can imagine that she would love to enter a speech competition like RDO is proposing and would write an impassioned speech