Jared T. Kelly- Second YearNor Sud and NAYJT (Bolivia)

Apart from insisting that people referred to me as ¨Je¨ when I was conducting my revolutionary activities, here is a brief synopsis of what transpired in Sucre, Bolivia:

The thousand pages of indigenous land rights materials I secured in TO prior to my departure steadily gathered dust upon my arrival in Sucre before ultimately finding the recycling bin. My NGO, Nor Sud, did not quite have the indigenous rights program that I expected, nor on my arrival did they have a concrete plan as to what to do with me. I quickly realized I would need to adapt to how work gets done in Bolivia – in a word, slowly. Not having the patience or temperament to sit in an office all day waiting for a computer to become available, nor to have a schedule built around marathon meetings, I devised a project that would free me from the bureaucracy and put me on the streets, working at a grassroots level, while still maintaining all critical ties to Nor Sud (which in the end has been of great help to me.).

I therefore ended up working with two organizations, with Nor Sud in an administrative and consultative capacity, and with Niños, Niñas,

Adolescentes, y Jóvenes Trabajadores (NAYJT) on a day-to-day implementation level. Unique to my experience was the opportunity to work with NAYJT, as it is an association exclusively composed of child workers. The children have

written their own statute, hold local and national meetings, and do not directly depend on outside assistance. Their mission is to improve the working and living conditions of child workers, as well as to give a more powerful voice to children through the mobilization of their members.

To aid them in their mission, I initiated a project that filled several voids critical to the success of their objectives. Using the Convention of the Rights of the Child (the ¨Convention¨) and Bolivia’s State Reports (to the Committee on the Rights of the Child) summarizing their compliance to the Convention, I created a 65 item questionnaire that was designed to satisfy three main objectives. First, the questionnaire served as a census tool of child workers in Sucre, as extremely little, if any, real data currently exists. Secondly, the questionnaire’s items corresponded directly with articles from the Convention, including such topics as access to health care, cost of education, child abuse, and drug use. With the results, NAYJT, Nor Sud, and other interested parties, have concrete data to outline the gap existing between Bolivia’s obligations under the Convention and the reality on the ground in Sucre. Such data can be used to lobby municipal and national governments, raise funds at the national and international levels, and facilitate the inclusion of the child’s voice in a soon-to-be created Constitutional Assembly that will amend Bolivia’s Constitution. Lastly, my project had an immediate and practical function: the creation of credentials (ID cards) for the child workers of Sucre.

The data that I collected was given both to NAYJT and to Nor Sud, of which the latter helped f und my project and works closely with NAYJT. In total, I interviewed and photographed over 200 child workers in Sucre (enough to give statistical power,) and compiled all the data into an easy to sort spreadsheet. Knowing that reaching every child would not be possible in my stay, I involved local workers and members of NAYJT from day one, with the hope that they would continue the project in my absence. All that remains to be done is to continue making ID cards for those still without or new to the workforce. As my project had the full support of the Executive Board of NAYJT and of the administration at Nor Sud, I am optimistic this final aspect will ultimately be completed.