Busia Beyond Crime, a Community-Based Organisation (CBO) supported by the Freedom Fund in Busia, has embarked on training 45 Nyumba Kumi leaders as Trainers of Trainers (ToT).
The initiative aims to equip these leaders to sensitise other community members on issues related to domestic child exploitation.
Speaking during the training exercise for the first batch of 15 ToTs at Busia County Commissioner’s Boardroom on Tuesday, the organisation’s Director, Major Retired Titus Wabwire, said the training will be carried out in Busia and Samia Sub-counties.
“In Matayos/Busia Sub-county, we are training 15 ToTs in Burumba, 15 in Bukhayo West and 15 in Nambuku/Namboboto,” he said, adding that the training can be extended to areas with Nyumba Kumi clusters.
Wabwire added that it has been difficult to reach individual families within the community, but Nyumba Kumi representatives can sit down with their clusters and sensitise them on how to prevent child labour and child domestic work exploitation and abuse so that children can get their rights.
“They will build the capacity of communities so that they own children collectively to ensure that the children grow up in a holistic manner,” he said.
The Official further noted that failure to bring up children in the right way tends to create a vicious cycle of delinquency.
“We shall hold these ToTs responsible for ensuring that there is no child labour in the community,” he added.
He at the same time said that the Nyumba Kumi members are very active in areas where they have been trained and have even managed to reduce the menace of criminal gangsters in the community.
Busia Sub-county Director of Children Services, Euphresia Agala, said that 59 per cent of children within Busia County are involved in child labour.
“When we talk of child labour, it is within the service industry, such as markets and homes, as herdsboys or house helps and also in the agricultural farms,” she said, adding that some children were also being exploited in the fishing and sand harvesting sites.
Agala added that the training will help in reaching out to children who engage in child labour within the homesteads, which cannot be easily detected by government officers.
She urged the beneficiaries of the training to give the right information on child labour and its negative effects in the community.
By Salome Alwanda
