App is there to stop it

Kids at stoplights offering to wipe a windshield for a few coins, or little ones hawking goods at produce markets: In much of the developing world, it's common to see children as young as eight or nine hard at work.
And it's no different in Colombia, where an estimated 1.5 million children between the ages of five and 17 work in such situations for more than 15 hours a week. Nearly nine percent of kids aged five to 14 work, a 2011 government census found. Though the government was able to document the scope of child labour in Colombia, finding lasting solutions to end the practice, which can keep kids out of school and place them in dangerous work environments, has proved challenging around the globe.
But in Colombia, a new smart phone crowd sourcing application is helping authorities and researchers tackle the problem. Whenever users see a child working they can take a picture with their phone and log the location, which the app sends to the country's child welfare agency.
The app, available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry phones, is called “Yo digo: Aquí Estoy” (I say: I'm here), and it also goes by the name KidRescue.
“It's a tool that puts the power to report child labour in the palm of anyone's hands,” says Mauricio García, of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), which receives the information, including photos, global positioning system coordinates, and other details, sent by users.
Since ICBF started using the information gathered by the app last February, about 3,800 reports have been filed, and not all of them from cell phone users in Colombia.
“We've gotten reports from Asia and Africa, because anyone can download the app from their phone's app store,” says Claudia Aparicio, head of Fundación Telefónica in Colombia, the organisation that spearheaded the crowd sourcing project as part of a broader campaign to fight child labour in Latin America.
The information is used principally to identify regions or parts of towns that are problem areas, and the times and periods when child labour is most common.
ICBF takes the detailed information sent by users and sends it to agency social workers and psychologists on the ground who try to verify the information. Once a child labourer is identified, officials verify whether the child is enrolled in school, and may call the parents and children in for counselling.
Still, the app has helped get more than 60 children across the country off the streets and back in school, according to Aparicio. She says the Colombia experience is a pilot and eventually the app may be used by welfare agencies around the globe to help the estimated 150 million child workers worldwide reclaim their childhood.