In Ecuador, a Coalition of Savvy Children

By ROBIN WRIGHT

Jan. 31, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOLINA DE FRANK, Ecuador — Cindy Espinoza took to the gutted, gravelly streets of this barrio last year to campaign for president. Knocking on the doors of cinder-block shanties and wielding a bullhorn to be heard by voters behind barred windows and doors, she pledged to work for better schools, new community services, paved roads and more parks in the crime-infested slum.

“Oh, and of course, I also said people shouldn’t have to pay so many taxes,” said Espinoza, her dark ponytail bobbing up and down as she nodded vigorously, a broad grin deepening her dimples.

But her campaign focused most of all on the rights of kids. It was an appropriate choice: Cindy Espinoza is 11 years old.

After long hours campaigning in the equatorial heat of Ecuador’s mosquito-ridden coast, Espinoza beat out a lanky 12-year-old named Fernando to win the presidency of one of this country’s Children’s Governments. Kids ages 10 to 14 in the poor suburbs of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city and commercial center, launched the novel governments in 1996 to do for themselves what their elders couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

The daughter of a hotel maintenance man and a seamstress, Espinoza reflects the emergence of a new kind of leadership here. The wave of empowerment that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s--breaking down military dictatorships in Latin America, minority rule in Africa, authoritarian regimes in Asia and communism in Europe--is producing unusual trailblazers from unconventional quarters.

Ideas that traditionally trickled down from the ruling or middle classes are emanating from the bottom--even from preteens. Solutions once transferred from rich nations to poor ones are now emerging from within--even from the barrios of one of the poorest countries in the Americas.

Children’s Governments emerged in Ecuador partly in response to escalating economic woes. Of the country’s children, 40% are malnourished. More than 230,000 dropped out of school last year, most by age 13, according to UNICEF. Families either need the income of working children or can’t afford schoolbooks, uniforms and the annual $5 registration fee.

Ecuador’s kids’ councils--a dozen are operating now, with dozens more being formed--are part of a global trend, “a major movement that’s taking a lot of different forms in different countries,” said Cynthia Price Cohen, executive director of the Child Rights International Research Institute in New York. “In each place, the idea is to give children a voice in the politics of the country and the city.”

When he was 12, Craig Kielburger of Toronto--moved by the story of a Pakistani boy sold into bondage as a carpet weaver at age 4 and murdered at age 10--formed Free the Children in 1995 to campaign against abusive child labor. It now has chapters of young people around the world--and its own Web site, https://www.freethechildren.org.

In 1996, children in Rwanda began volunteering for Solidarity Camps, where they made bricks for returning refugees--more than 1 million of them--to rebuild homes devastated by sectarian violence.

In Zambia, where more than 360,000 children have lost at least one parent to AIDS, kids in the Anti-AIDS Club of Chibolya began traveling to slums and rural villages two years ago to perform skits about protected sex.

One of the most ambitious children’s efforts is in Colombia, where in 1995, at age 13, Juan Elias Uribe helped launch the Children’s Movement for Peace in his war-ravaged hometown of Aguachica. When the city held a referendum on the country’s 35-year-old guerrilla war, Uribe lobbied the mayor to let the children vote too. He then took to the streets, playing peace songs on a guitar to persuade his peers to participate.

With other child activists and aid from UNICEF, Uribe then helped organize a nationwide vote to air youth views on the war. More than 2.7 million youngsters between the ages of 7 and 18 turned out--almost a third of the child population. About 10,000 Colombian kids are now active in the Children’s Movement, which counsels youngsters traumatized or left homeless by strife, trains them to detect land mines and campaigns against recruitment of child soldiers. The group was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.

The same kind of youthful imagination and motivation provided the critical spark for Ecuador’s Children’s Governments.

“We want to see what we can do for ourselves--and to show that kids can play important roles in society,” Espinoza explained.

Children’s Governments--made up of 6- to 10-member leadership councils elected annually by other kids--vary according to local needs.

In Proletarios sin Tierra, a slum outside the city of Daule, the plastic and paper waste that is rampant along slum roads was collected and sold to help kids whose parents couldn’t afford schoolbooks and uniforms for their children.

Young Lobbyists Proving Their Mettle

In Boca de las Pinas, the Children’s Government raises chickens to sell, and worms to enrich the soil of a nursery its members set up after persuading a nonprofit group to provide a starter crop of mango saplings and ornamental palms.

The kids have proved to be tough lobbyists, convincing local officials or international aid groups to furnish libraries, build parks, even provide public latrines. Spinoff groups work with city planners, crafting papier-mache models of what they’d like their city to look like.

Adults are clearly benefiting too. Espinoza, a sixth-grader, came up with the idea of having the Children’s Government in Molina de Frank teach basic reading skills to illiterate adults as well as young dropouts and disabled children unable to attend regular school. Advertising by bullhorn through the barrio, the kids have enrolled more adults than children.

“Most of the parents here didn’t finish school, and so they don’t know how important it is for their kids to continue,” Espinoza said. “One of our main aspirations is to help teach them to read and write.”

Despite Ecuador’s patriarchal traditions, more than half the children elected to the Children’s Governments are female.

“Cindy is growing up in a very different environment than I did,” reflected Elizabeth Sanchez, Espinoza’s mother and an eighth-grade dropout. “Parents then made all the decisions, especially for girls. Now I find I’m learning things from her.”

But not everyone welcomes the kids’ efforts.

“The biggest problem for Children’s Governments--and the reason some fell apart--was opposition from adults. Some community leaders actually put pressure on parents because they felt their authority was being eroded,” said Mark Leighton, local manager for Plan International, a nongovernmental organization founded during the Spanish Civil War by a British journalist to help child war victims.

The kids’ governments are not the only source of youthful innovation in Ecuador. In Daule, Wellington Molina, 13, and Ambar Hidalgo Ayala, 14, came up with the idea of a radio show dedicated to addressing children’s needs. They sought the assistance of Plan International and Rainbow, a local nongovernmental organization that included journalists as members, to figure out how to do it. Rainbow helped train the kids to conduct interviews and equipped them with tape recorders.

Within weeks, the one-hour “Here Are the Children” show was broadcast to 50 communities. By 1998 the program had such a following that the kids were granted government press passes and allowed to cover major events and news conferences.

The young journalists are widely credited with prompting the reconstruction of San Gabriel, a barrio devastated by eight months of El Nino rains in 1998. At a news conference with Ecuador’s vice president, Molina asked why the government had done nothing, and described the plight of children affected by washed-out bridges, destroyed rice fields and contaminated water.

Visibly taken aback, then-Vice President Rosalia Arteaga pledged immediate aid. Within a week, shipments of rice seeds arrived, and work on key roads began. Last year, the radio show went international, reaching Peru and Colombia.

One of the biggest successes of Ecuador’s young activists has been drawing attention to the United Nations’ 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified treaty on human rights in history. The only countries that have not yet ratified are Somalia and the United States, where the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sees many U.N. conventions as a threat to U.S. sovereignty.

Ecuador is a microcosm of the problems the convention is designed to address. Although it was the first country in Latin America to ratify the accord, the status of most Ecuadorean children remains dire.

“Ecuador reflects the huge gap between good intentions and reality,” said Jorge Rivera, director of the local UNICEF office. “For eight years, this country did nothing, until a new constitution in 1998 recognized the rights of children from birth. But even now that it’s law, Ecuador doesn’t have the resources to fulfill those rights.”

Worldwide, the problems faced by children will be worse in the early 21st century than they were in the late 20th, according to many international organizations and humanitarian groups.

Working kids are a particular problem. Democracy’s spread may have empowered children, but the pressures of open markets and the absence of socialism’s safety nets have forced even more to go to work since the 1990s began. From garment industries to prostitution, carpet factories to picking crops, about 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working, half of them full time. That’s roughly double earlier estimates, according to a recent International Labor Organization report.

Children’s Rights on Groups’ Agendas

About 300,000 kids age 16 and younger are still fighting in armies, Amnesty International reports. In Asia, at least 1 million children are victims of the sex trade, and half the world’s poor are children, according to U.N. data.

“For all the gains made, the story of the 20th century is also about failed leadership--a lack of vision, an absence of courage, a passive neglect. The number of violations of children’s rights that occur around the globe every day is staggering,” UNICEF concluded in a report issued in December.

Ecuadorean kids take these issues seriously. In a one-room community house built on weekends by local residents and equipped using profits from raffles and bingo games, Espinoza’s team devotes part of each meeting to discussing children’s rights.

At one recent session, with her cohorts seated around her on the floor, Espinoza led the discussion with unusual poise and authority for someone who still wears bobby socks and who used Garfield the Cat to decorate her campaign posters.

“We have rights to support from our parents and government. We have rights to life and good health,” said Espinoza, who had changed out of a brown-and-white plaid school uniform into shorts and a T-shirt. (She has a gold, navy and red presidential shoulder sash that comes with the Children’s Government job, but she rarely wears it.)

“We have a right to our own opinion and to be respected,” she continued. “We have rights to study, to live in a good environment and to play. And we’re all equal.”

A small boy raised his hand. “If my father refuses to give me his name, what can I do?” he asked.

“Ah,” Espinoza replied. “You should go to him and tell him you have a right to his last name. Tell him that if he wants you to do something for him, then he must first respect your right to his name.”

The boy got a round of encouragement. Espinoza got a round of applause.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Dangerous Time of Life

The problems faced by children will be worse early in the 21st century than late in the 20th, many aid groups say.

PROGRESS in the 20th century:

* Polio almost eradicated

* Measles deaths reduced by 85%

* 12 million children free from risk of mental retardation due to iodine deficiency

* Unprecedented numbers of children in school

PROBLEMS for the 21st century:

* 8,500 children infected daily by HIV/AIDS

* 30,500 children under 5 die daily from preventable causes such as dehydration and pneumonia

* More than 130 million children without access to basic education

* About 250 million children working, many in hazardous or exploitative jobs

FACTS

* More than 1 billion of the world’s 6 billion people are between ages 10 and 19.

* More than 600 million children in the world--nearly 30%--are poor.

* In the decade since the Convention on the Rights of the Child, more than 2 million children have been killed and more than 6 million injured or disabled in armed conflicts.

* More children are living in poverty than when the convention was signed.

UNDER-5 MORTALITY

A critical indicator of child well-being. Deaths per thousand.

BOTTOM 10

Sierra Leone: 316

Angola: 292

Niger: 280

Afghanistan: 257

Mali: 237

Liberia: 235

Malawi: 213

Somalia: 211