Like Sambiaze, having access to education and quitting working in mica mining sector.
Sambiaze, 17, benefits from literacy courses as part of the “Project to combat child labour in mica mining sector in Madagascar”. She can envisage a better future for herself and her brothers.
Sambiaze and her family moved to Tatabe – a small village in Betroka, southern Madagascar – where her father works as a mica** miner. This job is the only option the family has to make some money and survive. Because of the drought, agricultural crops in the countryside fell and did not allow the family to meet their basic needs. Like the family of Sambiaze, 201 households live from mica mining in the commune of Tatabe. 120 of the mica mining workers are children. Each family earns an average of Ariary 5,000 ($1.10) per week.
Beyond the question of daily survival, this decision is beneficial for Sambiaze and her brothers. Neither she nor her brothers went to school. “I always dreamed of going to school but my parents couldn’t afford to send us there,” she says. The literacy course implemented as part of the FAMAHA project, which contributes to the elimination of child labour in the mica sector in Madagascar, allows Sambiaze to have another view of the future. “The good will of the literacy practitioner and the encouragement of my parents give me hope that one day I will be able to get a decent job,” she says. Her father who has been sensitised about the fight against child labour is now aware of the danger of working in mica mining sites. He prefers that his daughter choose another path.
“I am happy to be able to attend the literacy course. It is the realization of my dream and that of my mother who also never went to school,” continues Sambiaze. She preciously kept her mother’s anecdote as a motivation: “The advantage of knowing how to read, write and count is not to get scammed. My mother is a witness. She has been tricked and lost her money because she could not count”. Hopeful for her future, Sambiaze wants to become a doctor. The project to combat child labour in the mica mining sector in Madagascar provides literacy courses to nearly 400 people, including 247 children (174 girls and 73 boys).
** In fact, mica is a silicate mineral. Whether white, black or amber, it is widely used in the automotive, telephone, aeronautical industries, as well as in the cosmetic and painting industries, due to its resistance to high temperatures. Madagascar is the third largest mica producer in the world.
