Life Stories From Children Working in Bangladesh’s Leather Sector and its Neighbourhoods: Told and Analysed by Children

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) has a participatory and child-centred approach that supports children to gather evidence, analyse it themselves and generate solutions to the problems they identify. The life story collection and collective analysis processes supported children engaged in the worst forms of child labour in Bangladesh to share and analyse their life stories.

Over 400 life stories were collected from children who worked in the leather supply chain, or who lived and worked in leather sector neighbourhoods. Using causal mapping, 53 children who were engaged in or had experience of the worst forms of child labour collectively analysed the data. This resulted in children’s life stories becoming the evidence base for revealing macro‑level system dynamics that drive the worst forms of child labour.

This paper is a record of the children’s analysis of the life stories and key themes they identified, which formed the basis of a series of seven child-led Participatory Action Research groups.