CACL aims at the immediate and total eradication of child labour and ensuring children the Fundamental Right to Education up to 18 years of age.

Mission:     Eradication of child labour

Vision:

• Child labour free India
• Discussions – education should be added 
• Child labour free and educated India. 
• Confirmed ‘child labour free India’.

Objectives:

• To create awareness on the eradication of child labour.
• To highlight violations inflicted upon child labourers and to promote justice through fact finding and litigation.
• To lobby for review of legislation and policy on child labour and education.
• To put forth successful experiments as alternate strategies to eradicate child labour.
• To undertake media-based advocacy and lobbying.
• To facilitate field research to feed into the programme strategy of the CACL.
• Popularizing the UN Convention and various Conventions of ILO pertaining to child labour.

Strategies:

Adopting a two pronged advocacy strategy, which on the one hand builds up public opinion against child labour, using both conventional and non-conventional media, and on the other hand persuades the government to enforce the existing laws and to enact a comprehensive and progressive legislation to ensure the rights of the children, CACL has been taking initiative to involve a large number of social action groups, NGOs, government agencies, trade unions and international organisations. The campaign believes in networking and alliance building, and intervenes in specific cases of violation of child rights.

• Elimination of child labour through appropriate legislative measures.
• Realisation of the Constitutional guarantee of providing free and compulsory elementary education for all children up to the age of 18.
• To take action in cases of violations of Child Rights, CLPRA and other labour laws and judgements, reported by state units.
• To collate documentation and facilitate development of alternative education systems.
• To raise general awareness on the issue.

The network views every child out of school as a potential child labourers. It therefore seeks to implement policy changes that will lead to a complete elimination of child labour. This requires creating awareness in different sections including child workers and their families, policy makers, media, the judiciary and citizens in general through various programmes. A basic strategy employed for this purpose has been a simultaneous campaign for free and compulsory quality education of all children in the country, and for legislation to effectively eradicate all forms of child labour.

In order to achieve its objectives, the network works at the field level through its various member organizations. While the different member organizations vary in focus, structure and internal organization and nature of programmes conducted, by and large, they subscribe to the common vision of CACL. They participate in its programs and carry forward the message of CACL in their own focus areas. CACL is not registered as an independent entity. Over the years, through a learning process, the network has evolved its own management structure.