The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Combating Child Poverty and Child Labor: The Case of Pikolo Association and Turkish Red Crescent Society

Abstract

Nowadays, although awareness and efforts to fight child poverty and child labor have increased, there is insufficient progress regarding the radical solution of the problem. At this point, it is considered important to learn the opinions and suggestions of NGOs on this issue. In light of all this information, the problem of this research is that it is deemed necessary to learn the role of NGOs working in the field of child poverty and child labor in preventing child poverty and child labor, and their opinions and suggestions on the solution of these problems and it is realized that there is a limited number of current research on this issue in the literature. The general purpose of this research is to learn the role of NGOs working in the field of child poverty and child labor in preventing child labor and child poverty, and their opinions and suggestions regarding the solution of the problem. Since the research focuses on the perspectives and experiences of NGOs on child labor, a phenomenological approach, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. Participants were reached through 'snowball sampling' method. In-depth interviews were completed with 25 subjects, and the interviews were recorded and transcribed with a voice recorder. The transcribed data were subjected to descriptive analysis. Within this research's scope, 5 main themes and various sub-themes under the main themes were reached. The main themes of the research are as follows: NGOs' assessments of the causes of child poverty and child labor, NGOs' assessments of the problems caused by child poverty and child labor, NGOs' activities in the fields of child poverty and child labor, findings on the difficulties faced by NGOs, and NGOs' suggestions for solving the problem of child labor and poverty. Due to the recent transformation in the long-dominant central government approach and the recent understanding of the importance of the role of NGOs in solving social problems, it has been observed that there is a limited number of studies on the evaluations and recommendations of NGOs serving in this field. This study will likely contribute to closing this gap in the literature and provide a perspective on combating child poverty and child labor problems.

Keywords: Child poverty, child labor, NGOs, children.