I just spent a week with several child entrepreneurs from Peru. In a country where 50% of the population earns less than $2 a day, children are typically forced into labor at a very young age.

The kids I got to know wish to move from day laborers to business owners. Frank Sales, a 15-year old who helps run a micro-enterprise fund for his peers, told me, "We have the desire and the work effort; we just lack access to capital!"

Frank's group - which has an acronym so long and complex that its not worth noting here (note one: they need help with branding!) - helps nearly 15,000 kids get a start on creating their own venture. Over the past 18 months, it has experienced a 95% repayment on loans. In its program, children are required to pay 1% interest on principal, and put into personal savings 1% of their profits. The micro-credit agency provides workshops on writing business plans and operating a budget and charting cash flow, including putting into place a simple accounting system.

We at Right Reality were so inspired by their efforts that we made a pledge to double the size of their loan fund. Earlier this year we established a Children's Aid Fund so that we could use a portion of our own revenues - and donations from friends who wanted to pitch in as well - to help children around the globe who are designing innovative solutions for their future. If you would like to contribute financially to this effort, contact the executive director of our Children's Aid Fund, Kique Bazan (kique@rightreality.com).

Our initial effort is to make a clear distinction between "child labor" and "entrepreneurial children." Political policies that seem so universal in the United States and Europe turn relative in other global communities. The condemnation of child labor is a good example. Nearly all Western human rights groups monitor it, and fair trade activists lobby to make it a standard for compliance. The best "compacts" for corporate behavior in global markets - the SA 8000, for instance - ban the employment of children under 15 years of age.

But we discovered that the primary life skills strategy for helping street kids in Lima, Peru, was to put the kids to work. We work closely with Generación, the largest independent (no government funding) project for homeless youth in Peru's capital.

Generación's goal is to teach kids as young as 11 years old employable skills so that they can fend for themselves, and not be forced to resort to more destructive trades. Young girls who once served as child prostitutes, for example, now run a for-profit bakery. Other children are taught landscaping skills. Generación helps them land jobs at city parks, government facilities, or private residences. The children earn a "salary" and former street manage nearly 400 approved and trained landscape workers on their employee list.

Lucy Borja, the executive director of Generación argues that work does more than put money in kids' pockets - it gives them a discipline otherwise absent in their lives. Moving them from the streets directly into a school is untenable, she says. There are no breadwinners at home. Its landscape company does require kids to go to school for 4 hours a day in order to be eligible for employment. In addition, Generación consciously integrates learning into the landscape work. Managers place rows of seedling plants, for instance, in a formation of a multiplication table to help the kids learn their math (and help them to see the value of education for a work life).

I would be remiss, however, to suggest that the line between "child labor" and "entrepreneurial children" always can be clearly marked. For instance, last year a woman who monitors global purchasing at a major clothes retailer shared her dilemma with me. Due to the past exploitation of child labor, retailers very sensitive to practices of "sweat labor." In response, she told me, producers in underdeveloped regions sometimes organize into collectives that mask the family labor taking place in individual homes. In such cases, the producer can legitimately say that no child labor takes place at their work facility. But the "outside contractors" very well may be families that put their own kids to work. Such practices violate her notion of "child rights"; but does that mean she should shut down families who simply are struggling to subsist?

I myself have four children, a girl and three boys. Over the summer, they enjoy a time of leisure before they return back to school full-time in the fall. I do everything possible to ensure that they "get to be kids" during this stage of their lives. I realize that I hold that expectation as a privilege - and a provisional notion at an economic moment in history.

Political progressives need to be careful not to turn their own privilege into a road block for those who are not so lucky.

To make financial contributions to our Children's Aid Fund, contact Kique Bazan.
Share your views on working children: