Maguindanaon Development Foundation Inc. (MDFI) in partnership with Nestle Philippines through its project BUILDING A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COFFEE FARMING COMMUNITIES IN SULTAN KUDARAT facilitated the conduct of a Capacity Building on Child Labor Monitoring System (CLMS) to the 572 officers and members of the Barangay Council for the Protection of Children (BCPC) in 28 covered Barangays in the five municipalities namely, Lebak, Kalamansig, Senator Ninoy Aquino, Esperanza and Bagumbayan in the province of Sultan Kudarat.

Child Labor Monitoring System, pioneered by the ILO is a method to systematically and consistently measure and report data on child labor, out of school children, irregular children among other indicators of child labor and education in a community. It is a vital tool to assess the various forms of child labor and its impact on children’s health, education and other such indicators including household socio-economic challenges and other root causes of child labor. In the last few years, various forms of CLMS have been adopted especially by cocoa sector to address child labor in the agriculture sector andhas been connected to company supply chain as well as remediation practices.

Under the project “Building a Socially Responsible Coffee Farming Communities in Sultan Kudarat” a CLMS is to be established in the project areas where children are engaged in different forms of farm work in coffee farming plantations, with an emphasis on smallholder farming households.The tool is envisioned to provide insight on the nature of children’s work;differentiate hazardous work, light work and permissible work; assess root causes of child labor and link children and households to relevant remedial measures; monitor withdrawal from child labor and re-integration into school by monitoring school based indicators; assess challenges of farmers with respect to income in coconut farming; share information generated from CLMS with companies to shape and improve their due diligence and risk assessment.

The objective of the training is to provide technical, conceptual and practical understanding on Child Labor Monitoring System to prevent and address child labor in respective communities in Sultan Kudarat.

The CLMS training will focus on sharing conceptual and practical overview of CLMS, providing in depth information on steps to implement CLMS, providing practical knowledge on how to structure and implement the CLMS as per the needs of the identified community, discuss roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders in implementing and sustaining the CLMS and review CLMS Profiling Tool.