CCR CSR Child Friendly Spaces Program - Overview and Impact 2019 CCR CSR Child Friendly Spaces Program - Overview a | Page 8

CASE STORIES
EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS OF A SINGLE, MIGRANT DAD
On July 30th 2019, staff from CCR CSR headed to
the Child Friendly Space at a printing factory in
Dongguan for a mid-term evaluation. The factory is
one of dozens of ICTI Ethical Toy Program factories to
have joined the CFS programme. During that visit, we
spoke to the parents and children who were taking
part in the programme. The aim was to learn about
their backgrounds and to find out what they thought
of the CFS.
“It exceeded my expectations,” Hu Kun (pseudonym)
tells us numerous times during our conversation. Hu
Kun comes from Shiyan in Hubei Province and has
been working at the factory since 2002 – 17 years
in total. During those 17 years, he grew from being
an ordinary line worker to becoming a workshop
director and from being a young lad to a father.
The pain of separation
Hu Kun’s son Xiao Gang (pseudonym) has been living
in his hometown with his grandparents since birth.
During the second half of this year, Hu Kun will start
going to Junior Secondary School – a big milestone
in a child’s education. But instead of unconditional
joy at the big step in Xiao Gang’s life, Hu Kun seems
overcome by a sense of guilt. When Xiao Gang was
still very little his mother divorced his father and
left. Hu Kun never remarried and has always sorely
loved Xiao Gang. But even so, he has only ever been
able to make it home for 2 weeks during the Spring
Festival each year. As a result, he has missed out on
so many of his son’s developmental milestones.
In the past, Xiao Gang would always stay at home
during school holidays. Last year for the first time,
Xiao Gang came to Dongguan to visit his father for
a week. But Hu Kun recalls being overwhelmed by
worry: he had to work during the day and leave
Xiao Gang home alone unsupervised. Xiao Gang
would spend the day playing on his mobile phone,
watching cartoons or roaming around the factory
premises like a “stray”, in Hu Kun’s own words. Hu
Kun was so worried about his son’s safety that he
couldn’t concentrate at work. After two days, Hu
Kun couldn’t take it and asked the factory for leave.
That experience left Hu Kun reluctant to allow Xiao
Gang to come to Dongguan again – until he saw the
advert for the 2019 Child Friendly Space.
A silver lining in the form of CFS
With Xiao Gang attending the CFS this year, Hu Kun
has finally been able to cast off the fear and worries
associated with having his son unsupervised in
Dongguan. On the contrary, Hu Kun has unexpectedly
been moved emotionally by the CFS experience: “Not
long after my kid came to CFS, I took some food home
and as I was eating I said to him that the soup will do
for me. I asked him why he’s not eating the chicken
legs and he said ‘you work so hard, you should be
eating more. You’re the one earning money so that I
can go to school’. At that moment I wanted to burst
into tears, I was so moved!” Hu Kun continued that
although his son would be clingy during his visits
home over the Spring Festival in previous years, he
never said anything so moving to him before.
This summer, Hu Kun finally got to break the cycle of
only being able to spend two weeks of the year with
his son. Because of the CFS, Hu Kun and Xiao Gang
spent one and half months together. The teachers at
the CFS took the opportunity to teach the children
about family etiquette and endeavoured to get the
children to understand the hardships faced by their
parents.
Unexpected benefits
Apart from strengthening the bond between him
and his son, the “exceeded expectations” that Hu
Kun referred to did not end there. Growing up in a
single-parent household without having experienced
maternal love, Xiao Bo tends to act tough and has a
strong sense of self-protection. He also tends to be
cheeky having grown up without his dad there to
reign him in. At school, this behaviour led to some
hardships. The head of the class would give Xiao
Gang a hard time in private, often trying to put him
down and make him feel bad. As a result, Xiao Gang
has been bottling up more issues than the average
12-year-old. “The teachers at CFS however are totally
different,” says Hu Kun.
One time as they were passing the entrance of the
CFS, Xiao Gang proudly pointed to a picture he drew
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