A successful four-year project carried out by IOM Buenos Aires has
helped migrant children to attend school and provided micro credits
to the parents.

Beneficiary families, IOM staff, and the donors,
Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), a multilateral
financial institution that mobilizes resources from international
markets to Latin America, and the Inter American Development Bank
(IADB), gathered last week in Buenos Aires for the closing ceremony
of the Proyecto Recuperar (Recycle Project) that has helped over
300 migrants improve their living conditions.

In 2005, IOM Buenos Aires launched the Proyecto Recuperar to
prevent and eradicate child labour; provide micro credits to the
parents, so they could develop micro enterprises that would
increase the family's income thus allowing the children to stop
working and attend school.

Workshops to raise awareness amongst the parents about the
rights of the child, including the right not to work, attend
school, and receive health care were also organized as was
assistance for the beneficiaries to regularize their migratory
status.

IOM's Regional Representative Juan Artola says: "Hundreds of
children from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, who live in poor and
overcrowded neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, walk the streets each
night in search of recyclable materials that they can salvage and
sell.  Adults, boys and girls working in waste collection
activities are not only stigmatized by their peers, but they are
exposed to accidents, skin infections, abuse, and the risk of
death.”

The project also assisted beneficiaries to regularize their
migratory status.  Those who had a temporary or permanent
residence permit obtained a National Identity Card through Proyecto
Recuperar.

"A migrant community association was also set up as part of the
project,” says IOM's Juan Artola. "Koe Suyana, dawn of hope
in the local quechua-guarani language, will ensure sustainability
thanks to an agreement with a national NGO with vast experience in
micro credits for communities with large numbers of
migrants.”

A 2005 study carried by IOM and UNICEF in Villa 31 and 31bis
found that the majority of cartonero families were also migrant
families.

In the city of Buenos Aires, the IOM/UNICEF research team
registered 8,762 people gathering recyclable materials from garbage
cans on city streets, or at dumps and landfills.  Nearly half
of the informal recyclers or cartoneros in Buenos Aires are
children and youth, and 39 per cent are internal migrant
families.  The families earn an average of USD 21 per
week.

For more information please contact:

Mariana Bocca

IOM Buenos Aires

Tel: +54 1 14.815.51.94

E-mail: "mailto:mbocca@iom.int">mbocca@iom.int