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Project Description:

To stop child labour in mines, this two-year project offers human rights training and campaigns urging respect for Bolivia’s labour laws while providing vocational skills training for youth which will lead to options for livelihoods outside of mining.

The project also provides scholarships to young women, microcredit loans to skills training graduates and single mothers. In this way the project provides a base of support from which young people and their families can create new lives free from dependency on Potosi’s mines.

While large mining firms have largely left the Cerro Rico mountain in Potosi, Bolivia, small scale mining operations still extract the few remaining minerals. These operations are dangerous, as no safety standards are in place and the mine-shafts are often unstable. They are also unhealthy, with miners suffering very high rates of respiratory illness and short life expectancy. As the award-winning film ‘Devil’s Mine’ made clear, many children and young people in Potosi work in and around the mines.

Although most families would prefer that their children did not work, they live in poverty and therefore often depend on the small income generated by their children. Many Potosi households are headed by women who lost their partners to mining accidents or to mining related illness. These single mothers depend on the small income that their children are able to earn by working in the mines. Poverty makes child labour a reality in Potosi. However, the community is committed to finding alternatives to child labour in mines. This project provides these alternatives and creates a base of support from which young people and their families can create new lives free from dependency on Potosi’s mines.


Update from the field: June 2009

This project has been very successful at fulfilling its objectives and has exceeded its target number of beneficiaries from 320 to over 500 youth who are working in the Cerro Rico silver mine. Vocational training programs, academic scholarships and artistic workshops, along with career counselling and internship placement programs have provided these youth with viable economic alternatives to mining.