Alternative Income

Free The Children alternative income projects are focused on helping parents find sustainable sources of income to provide for their families, thus freeing their children to go to school. To date, we’ve benefited more than 23,500 women. Around the world, many young children cannot go to school because they are forced to work to help support their families. In areas of low employment, poverty is the normal state of affairs, and parents do not have the skills or the money to provide properly for their children. Children have no choice but to help the family; the alternative is starvation.

Recognizing that parents want to provide for their children, Free The Children implements alternative income projects that give those disadvantaged families a sustainable source of income. We supply them with productive and sustainable resources that they otherwise would not be able to purchase or organize:

• Agricultural implements
• Animals and small machinery
• Women’s cooperatives

When parents can meet their basic income needs and sell milk, sew clothes, or sell farm produce in the community, they are able to remove their children from dangerous working conditions and send them to school.

Helping Parents Help their Families

To date, Free The Children’s Alternative Income Campaign has directly benefited more than 23,500 people in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Our projects include: sustainable agricultural initiatives, purchase of animals and machinery for struggling families, and support for women’s cooperatives.

In this way, the Alternative Income Program helps us achieve some of our broader developmental goals, including:

• Reducing child labour
• Increasing school attendance rates
• Improving literacy rates

How You Can Help

$50 can help purchase animals for milking/breeding
$100 can help purchase basic business supplies and resources
$250 can help purchase sewing machines and tailoring equipment
$500 can help support small grants or micro-credit loans for families
$1,000 can help support basic literacy, numeracy and business training workshops

Suggested donation amounts represent a significant contribution towards stated projects. Funds donated to Alternative Income programming will be used to support projects in this category based on greatest need.

Disclaimer:
The above represents the average costs of Free The Children projects in the communities in which we work. In cases where donations exceed what is needed or local conditions prevent program implementation, Free The Children will redirect funds to similar activities to help people in need. If additional funding is required because of specific project requirements or challenging local conditions, Free The Children may provide additional funding to complete the project to meet our commitment to our beneficiaries.