Ethical Toy Program teams with Save the Children to expand well-being programs

Posted on 11th April 2019 By Billy Langsworthy

Ethical Toy Program has partnered with Save the Children to broaden well-being programs to support migrant parent workers.

The partnership will start with a series of webinars exploring some of the aspects of how children are impacted through the life cycle of a toy and updating companies on actions they can take to respect and support children’s rights.

The first webinar in the series will take place on May 2nd and will introduce and present how the Children’s Rights and Business Principles are relevant for the toy and entertainment industry together with examples of practical actions in China.

The partnership will also see both organisations scale existing collaboration to deliver programs to support migrant parents with left-behind children at toy factories in China.

Taking the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP) as a framework, Save the Children and Ethical Toy Program will engage the toy industry at a global level to expand existing programs and identify new opportunities to maximise positive impacts on children and families throughout the toy industry supply chain.

Since 2016, Ethical Toy Program has partnered with the Centre for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR CSR), a subsidiary of Save the Children, on programs to support migrant parent factory workers with left-behind children in China. Together, they have established Family-Friendly Spaces to reunite migrant parent workers with their left-behind children and delivered migrant parents training to strengthen the remote parenting skills of over a thousand workers.

The Family-Friendly Spaces program will be expanded to cover 30 factories in 2019, reuniting thousand more workers with their left behind children and strengthening childcare provision for factory workers.

“Children are crucial stakeholders of business in their roles as consumers, family members of employees, future employees and business leaders, and as citizens in the communities and environments in which business operates,” said Charlotta Sterky, executive director of child rights and business at Save the Children.

“Businesses – whether large or small – therefore inevitably interact with and affect the lives of children in direct and indirect ways. We are delighted to partner with the Ethical Toy Program to support the global toy industry in its work to advance and implement the Children’s Rights and Business Principles.”

Mark Robertson, senior vice president at the Ethical Toy Program, added: “We are proud of the progress we’ve achieved with the toy industry to advance worker wellbeing in the global toy supply chain, and working with Save the Children, we look forward to extending these programs to benefit thousands more factory workers and their families.

“We are excited to partner with Save the Children to guide our members as they work to respect and support children’s rights through their core business strategies and operations.”