Annie and Joseph Moyo (Not real names) aged 13 and 16 years old respectively, come from Enukweni in Mzimba district. The two lost their father when they were very young and their mother is a mobile businessperson. The mother travels around leaving the children behind. Apart from being a business lady, she also doubles as a sex worker.
Due to lack of proper care, financial support and guidance, her daughter resorted to an alternative way of getting money by venturing into sex work activities. The girl has been prying her trade in different trading centres within the district. On the other hand, her sibling Joseph was employed as a Bottle Store Attendant at Enukweni Trading Centre.
A concerned citizen reported the matter to YONECO’s CLEAR project office on 20August, 2013. YONECO’s CLEAR project Child protection Officer went to withdraw Annie from the sex work activities. At that time, Annie was staying at Mwazisi Trading centre and her brother was still working as a Bottle Store Attendant.
YONECO has offices in a number of districts in Malawi and among its missions is to empower the youth, women and children. In this quest, the organization is very committed in the promotion of the welfare and wellbeing of the youth and children through its mainstream activities like the National Child Helpline and through projects like the CLEAR project.
CLEAR is actually an acronym for ‘Child Labour Elimination Actions for Real Change’ project. The project is being implemented in three districts namely; Ntchisi, Mchinji and Mzimba. The project also tackles the root causes of child labour nation wide through policy development, advocacy and capacity bulding activities.
In this project; YONECO works in partnership with Save the Children Federation Malawi, CRECCOM and Total Land Care (TLC) with funding from Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing (ECLT) Foundation.
