Consultancy Services
Rural-Urban Migration and Child Poverty
Motives, Challenges and Survival Mechanisms among child domestic workers (CDWs) in Kigali, Rwanda
Background:
For over 90 years, Save the Children has been making a difference in children's lives in more than 120 countries. We are the world's largest independent child rights organisation, underpinned by a vision in a world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation. Our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.
Save the Children is an organization for talented people with different backgrounds and perspectives. We are proud that our people are representative of the children we work with and we thrive on our diversity. We are an equal opportunity organisation dedicated to our core values of Accountability, Ambition, Collaboration, Creativity and Integrity. Our culture is embedded in these values, along with a strong commitment to our Child Safeguarding Protocol, ensuring that all representatives of Save the Children demonstrate the highest standards of behaviour towards children both in their private and professional lives.
CONTEXT
At Save the Children, our ambition is that children:
- Survive: No child dies before their fifth birthday from preventable causes.
- Learn: All children learn from a basic quality education.
- Be protected: Violence against children is no longer tolerated.
These are known as our breakthroughs – we use them to inspire changes in the way the world treats children. We recognise our breakthroughs cannot be fully achieved when families are too poor to invest in their children. Our child poverty work aims to strengthen the low and insecure incomes that prevent children from surviving, learning and being protected; and to stop the transmission of poverty to future generations.
We focus on three main areas:
- Child-Sensitive Social Protection: securing basic incomes and reducing risks for children in extreme poverty and/or without family care.
- Child-Sensitive Livelihoods: Helping families and children to: (i) manage risks and threats to their incomes/assets and recover from shocks and/or (ii) find pathways out of extreme poverty.
- Adolescent Skills for Successful Transitions: Providing adolescents and young people with: (i) hope for their life-chances and/or (ii) relevant skills for obtaining decent work.
This research touches on items 2 and 3 (child sensitive livelihoods and adolescent skills) in relation to migrants recently moving from rural to urban locations.
Save the Children is committed to achieving the rights of all children, but we aim to put the most marginalised and deprived children first in our own work and advocate for others to do the same. In many country contexts, this includes migrant children.
Rural-urban migration
The world is urbanizing at a breakneck pace. Globally, more than 54 percent of the world’s population resides in urban areas and this is expected to increase to 66 percent by 2050[1]. Though cities are home to the wealthiest people in a country, they are also home to some of the poorest and most marginalized populations. For some migrants, the rural-urban transition does not result in better outcomes. For example, in a study of 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, rapid growth in urban population was negatively associated with access to safe drinking water and vaccination coverage, and increasing or minimal declines in child mortality[2]. Moreover, vast inequities exist in all types of cities. A global study found health indicators among slum residents in cities of 1 million people or less were not statistically different from those of rural dwellers[3].
In the past, Save the Children has delivered the majority of its programs in rural areas. Urbanization has now emerged as an area for greater prioritization and investment. Seven members and SCI have already invested almost $1 million in the Urban Strategy Initiative with the objective of identifying promising urban programs, building internal capacity, and engaging with external urban networks.
Rwanda
Rwanda remains one of the poorest countries in the world ranking 151 out of 187 countries in the HDI. Despite a significant reduction in poverty from 2005, the national poverty rate is still high and children are disproportionately affected; 47% of children aged 0-4 live in poor families and 48.2% of children aged 5-20 live in poverty. Most of these children, if not supported through community and family-based social networks are at high risk of internal unsafe movement and separation, which on many occasions results in exploitation and vulnerability to violence and abuse.
Save the children Rwanda is already implementing a project with a partner organization CVT, Children’s Voice Today (a child-led organization member of the African Movement working children) working around issues of child domestic work. The project is targeting domestic workers below the age of 18. The goal of this project is to protect them from harmful work, exploitation and abuse and enable them to access key services and become healthy, engaged, productive, and fulfilled citizens. The main component of this project is to support around 48 CDWs with case management (i.e. possible reintegration back into their families, the opportunity to enrol back into school, or acquisition of skills for better employment and advocacy for improved working conditions with employers).
There is currently a need to understand in-depth the factors that lead these children to leave their homes in rural areas and join domestic work in Kigali and the specific challenges they face once in the city. In the future, this information will allow us to develop an all-around intervention package targeting prevention as well as response.
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Currently a baseline study is being carried out to ascertain the situation of identified child domestic workers in the target group. However, no particular emphasis is being placed on factors that lead these children to leave their homes in search of domestic worker jobs.
The goal of this study is to help evaluate push factors that lead rural children into domestic work in Kigali and what extreme vulnerabilities (for instance violence and gender/sexual abuse) they face once in those positions. The information from this study will help us design programs to support migrant families at risk of having children engage in domestic work as well as support those children who are currently CDWs to improve their condition.
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objective of this study is to explore:
- The push factors that lead rural children into child domestic work in Kigali
- The challenges that child domestic workers in Kigali face.
- The support that they need to improve their working conditions.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Expected outcomes of the research include:
- A framework of possible prevention interventions that also look into finding alternative livelihood strategies in rural areas
- The livelihood, social and emotional coping strategies of recent migrants
- The risks and opportunitiesassociated with the “choice” of becoming a CDW
- A better understanding of the needs and deprivations faced by CDWs in Kigali
- A conceptual framework and tools to identify, assess and analyse data on deprivations for CDWs
- Recommendations on how to design more effective integrated livelihoods programming for CDWs
STUDY POPULATION AND SAMPLING
The study population will be child domestic workers benefiting from the CDWs project and also domestic workers that are not directly supported by the project. These will be identified based on the information from the baseline study about child domestic workers conducted by Save the Children with an implementing partner. These will be recruited based on the selection criteria already developed to exclude/include child domestic workers to take part in the case management.
As some initial information on the population will already be available through the baseline study, a purposive sampling technique will be employed. The number of children is not yet exactly established but it is expected that out of 48 targeted, at least half of them (if not more) will be girls as girls make up the biggest percentage of domestic workers.
METHODS
The study will employ two consultants, one at the international level (responsible for desk review, finalizing methodology, guiding the national consultant, data analysis and report writing) and one at the national level (responsible for in-country protocols/presentation, translation of data collection tools into Kinyarwanda and data collection
This study will employ a qualitative methodology. Methods used in-country by the national consultant will include:
- Focus group discussions with key informants
- In depth open ended and semi-structured interviews with CDWs and other key informants, such as relatives, service providers etc.
- Direct observation, diaries, biographical narrative interviews will be used for a selection of key informants
NATIONAL CONSULTANT DELIVERABLES
Deliverable will include:
- RNEC Protocol Application
- Inception report presentation
- Data collection
- An e-copy of raw data of all collected qualitative information
- Cleaned version of data (from interviews etc.)
- Data collection tools translated into Kinyarwanda
TIMELINE
The development of tools and data collection needs to be carried out between September and November 2015 with reports to be finalized by the end of December 2015.
The total number of consultancy days will be will be between 30 days and will include the refinement of the methodology with the international consultant, translation of tool(s) into Kinyarwanda, data collection and transcription, interpretation of the findings and drafting of the report in consultation with the international consultant.
This five month assignment will be conducted in phases in consultation with staff from Save the Children and will follow the below general timeline:
- Design (development of tools) and desk review: September/October 2015
- Data collection: October 2015
- Data Analysis and Report Writing for Country: October/November 2015
- Summary report: November/December 2015
A more detailed timeline will be developed in consultation with the save the Children staff and the international consultant, but the field work and most extensive engagement of the local consultant will take place in the initial months of August-November
RESPONSIBILITY OF NATIONAL CONSULTANT
The consultant will be responsible for:
· Meeting with Technical working group
· Presentation of inception report
· Protocol application to RNEC
· Presentation of Protocol at RNEC
· Incorporating feedback from RNEC
· Translation of data collection tools
· Data collection
· Data cleaning (putting together notes from the interviews)
· Restitution of the first draft to the TWG
QUALIFICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL CONSULTANT
- A Master’s degree in Development Studies or other areas relevant for the assignment such as sociology, demography, anthropology
- Extensive experience in livelihoods and migration field research in low income countries; experience in the country of focus would be a plus
- Extensive experience in designing and conducting qualitative studies with children and youth
- Good knowledge of child protection and approaches to prevent the engagement of children in harmful work
- Excellent knowledge of spoken and written English would be a plus
ETHICS AND CHILD SAFEGUARDING
We will seek ethical clearance from relevant institutions in country as needed. Save the Children has established child safeguarding protocols which must be followed by all parties. In addition to this, measures to ensure the correct treatment and protection of vulnerable children must be in place during the study, especially when research may bring to light protection concerns or lead to the disclosure of abuse by children. Save the Children has developed and implementing child safeguarding policy and orientation on child safeguarding will be provided those who involve in the study .Researcher and enumerators have to sigh the child safeguarding policy.
SUPERVISION AND WORK ARRANGEMENTS
The Consultant will be contracted to Save the Children Rwanda and work under the direct supervision of the International consultant for this project. Also he or she will work hand in hand with Rwanda Senior MEAL specialist as his/her immediate supervisor.
Initial list of Resources
UNICEF (2012), State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World
Save the Children (forthcoming, December 2014), Evidence review to understand the impact of economic strengthening interventions on child well-being
Reports from Save the Children’s Urban Strategy Initiative Learning Fund (forthcoming, January 2015).https://onenet.savethechildren.net/whatwedo/urbanisation/Pages/Urban-Lea...
Save the Children (forthcoming, May 2015), State of the World’s Mothers 2015: The Health the Urban Poor: Ignored Needs and Progress in Jeopardy
Application specifications
To register interest in this consultancy, please send the following documentation to:
HR-Rwanda@savethechildren.org specifying ‘Rural-Urban Migration and Child Poverty’ in the subject line.
· Cover Letter
· Curriculum Vitae, including contact details for a minimum of 3 references
· An estimated work plan based on scope of services outlined
· Budget breakdown based on expected daily rates (gross) and initial work plan
Applications close on 28th September 2015*
We work with children, communities and governments all over the world and we believe in the right person for the job regardless of where you come from and how you identify yourself. We need to keep children safe so our selection process reflects our commitment to ensuring that only those who are suitable to work with children are considered for these posts. All successful applicants will therefore be required to provide a Police Clearance and must sign onto our Child Safeguarding Policy*
[1] United Nations, World Urbanisation Prospects, 2014 Revision
[2] Fotso JC, Ezeh AC, Madise NJ, Ciera J. Progress towards the child mortality millennium development goal in urban sub-Saharan Africa: the dynamics of population growth, immunization, and access to clean water. BMC Public Health 2007
Aug 28;7: 218.
[3] Fink G, Gunther I, Hill K. Slum Residence and Child Health in Developing Countries. Demography 2014 Jun 4.
HOW TO APPLY:
Application specifications
To register interest in this consultancy, please send the following documentation to:
HR-Rwanda@savethechildren.org specifying ‘Rural-Urban Migration and Child Poverty’ in the subject line.
· Cover Letter
· Curriculum Vitae, including contact details for a minimum of 3 references
· An estimated work plan based on scope of services outlined
· Budget breakdown based on expected daily rates (gross) and initial work plan Applications close on 28th September 2015
