Rising prices and household poverty threaten to push more Davao children into hazardous work, exposing the need for sustained livelihood support, education assistance and community monitoring.

DAVAO CITY (November 9) — For some children in Davao Region, going to school means working before sunrise, carrying vegetables in public markets, selling goods along busy roads or helping their parents at construction sites.

Their earnings may pay for school allowance. But for others, the money helps keep the family fed.

One child told a Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) worker that if the child stopped working, the family might die of hunger.

The account captures the pressure behind child labor: when household income cannot meet basic needs, children are pushed into work that can put their safety, education and development at risk.

The DSWD in Davao Region has withdrawn 85 children from child labor so far in 2026. But the agency is also warning that rising prices, particularly of rice, could drive more children into the workforce.

The challenge goes beyond pulling children out of hazardous work. It is whether their families can earn enough to keep them from returning.

Hannah Princess Taguinod, child labor focal person of the DSWD’s Strategic Helpdesks for Information, Education, Livelihood and Other Developmental Interventions (SHIELD) against Child Labor, presented the figures during the Isyu Karon media forum at The Royal Mandaya Hotel on Nov. 6.

She clarified that the 3,819 child laborers recorded in the region came from 2025 profiling conducted by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Public Employment Service Offices (PESOs). The 2026 profiling remains ongoing, so the figures should not be treated as a direct year-to-year comparison.

Davao de Oro accounted for the largest number of profiled children at 1,108, followed by Davao City with 880, Davao Oriental with 617, Davao Occidental with 553, Davao del Norte with 433, and Davao del Sur with 228.

Children working before sunrise

The forms of work vary across the region.

In the provinces, children are exposed to agriculture, aquaculture, fishing and mining. Some told DSWD workers they had worked in mining and construction or carried heavy logs on farms.

In Davao City, Taguinod cited children driving tricycles or electric bikes along roads frequented by large trucks, helping their fathers at construction sites, and selling fruits and peanuts along streets.

Others work as porters at Bankerohan and Agdao public markets, carrying vegetables before dawn. Some use their earnings as school allowance, while others return to work after classes.

For children who are already struggling to stay in school, the arrangement creates a difficult trade-off: earn money for immediate needs or spend more time studying and resting.

Taguinod said some children have become their families’ main breadwinners because their parents are sick or absent. The youngest breadwinner assisted by the program is 10 years old.

She also reported that some children encourage their younger siblings to work as their families struggle with inflation and rising rice prices.

The danger is that child labor becomes accepted as a family survival strategy, passed on from one child to another.

Livelihood support is only the beginning

The DSWD said it helps withdraw children by providing livelihood assistance to their parents through its Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP).

Depending on the family’s skills and interests, support may include capital for a food business, livestock, a sari-sari store or rice retailing. Families that cannot be accommodated under the SLP are referred to DOLE for possible assistance.

The SHIELD project also provides a one-time P5,000 cash educational assistance to profiled children.

These interventions recognize that removing a child from hazardous work without addressing the family’s financial situation may leave the conditions that pushed the child into work unchanged.

But livelihood assistance must be more than a one-time intervention. Families need viable sources of income, while children need continued access to education and basic services.

The crucial question is whether the assistance is sufficient and sustained enough to prevent families from depending again on their children’s earnings.

The DSWD counts a child as withdrawn only when the child is no longer engaged in the worst forms of child labor or hazardous work. The agency also said it follows up with families three to six months after discussing child labor laws with them.

That follow-up is important, but the reported figures do not yet show how many of the 85 children remain out of hazardous work over the longer term, whether their families have maintained their livelihoods, or whether any children have returned to work.

Those are the outcomes that government agencies and local governments need to track—not simply the number of children initially withdrawn.

Protection must reach the barangay

The SHIELD program is designed as a community-based intervention, linking child protection with education, health, livelihood and other services.

Local governments are expected to maintain a Child Labor Local Registry to identify and monitor children and establish barangay help desks that connect families to appropriate assistance, including rescue, counseling and livelihood support.

The DSWD’s Social Technology Bureau developed the program and pilot-tested it from 2017 to 2019 in 15 barangays in Calabarzon, Bicol and Eastern Visayas. It was institutionalized through DSWD Memorandum Circular No. 11, series of 2022.

The system places responsibility not only on social welfare workers but also on barangay officials, schools, employers and other duty-bearers to identify risks and respond before children are drawn into hazardous work.

Taguinod said some parents do not recognize that bringing children to farms or construction sites may expose them to child labor. They often see the arrangement as a way of teaching children work skills.

The DSWD explains Republic Act 9231, which strengthens protection against child labor and prohibits its worst forms. The law restricts the employment of children and sets safeguards for those legally allowed to work.

Taguinod also pointed to the need for DSWD and DOLE to align their assessments. Some children initially identified as child laborers were later found to be engaged only in light work, underscoring the importance of consistent definitions and case assessments.

Clear identification matters. It helps ensure that children exposed to hazardous work are not overlooked, while interventions are matched to the actual risks and circumstances of each child.

A child’s dream, a family’s struggle

During the forum, Taguinod recalled a child who dreamed of becoming a mayor but struggled to afford school expenses.

The child’s ambition stood in contrast to the immediate problem of having no money for education.

For that child and others like them, withdrawing from hazardous work is only one step. Staying in school requires a family that can meet its basic needs without relying on a child’s labor.

The DSWD’s 85 withdrawals are an important intervention. But the measure of success should be whether those children remain safe, continue their education and no longer have to work to keep their families afloat.

That requires government assistance that reaches beyond the initial rescue: livelihood support that produces stable income, education assistance that responds to actual needs, and barangay-level monitoring that can detect when a child is at risk of returning to work.

As long as families see children’s earnings as necessary for survival, the cycle will remain difficult to break.

The question, then, is not only how many children government agencies can pull out of child labor, but how many they can keep out—and whether the support is strong enough to make that possible.