Making Friends
for the Greater Good
Emily Oliver, age 17, Connecticut, USA
Youth from 100 countries all over the world have
been making paper cut out friends to send to September
G8 summit in Scotland to remind them of 104 million
children out of an education. This activity was taken
on by the global community at the suggestion of the
Global Campaign for Education. Out of the thousands
of young adults involved in this program, Youth Network
for Children’s Rights has picked one inspiring
student in Reseda California, to highlight as an example
of what can be accomplished. We talked to Mihiri,
a CA native about her project.
Hi, my name is Mihiri and I am a Senior at Cleveland
High School Humanities Magnet in Reseda, CA.
Mirhir, could you explain you project to
us?
I designed my own template for the friends - I designed
and printed the friends and their clothes. A bunch
of my friends came over on weekends to make them,
and several elementary and middle school kids I worked
with designed their own 'friend' model. They were
really into it!
For the past two and a half weeks, I've distributed
the 'friends' we made to people at several schools.
At my high school, a bunch of people asked if they
could distribute 'friends' as well, and that's how
I've gotten my 'friends' signed. The individuals who
have distributed friends for me have also gotten their
families (especially their younger siblings) involved.
I gave several presentations at elementary and middle
schools about access to education for Global Action
Day # 3 (Global Action Days are days centered around
a particular issue or ideal, e.g., December 1 is World
AIDS Day and June 12 is World Day Against Child Labor).
I also plan to do some NetAid activities in my school
as soon as all the standardized testing is over.
I also took the friends to the Los Angeles Times
Book Fair on April 23. There were hundreds of kids
visiting the Book Fair. I made a little informal booth
on the steps of a building where there were a lot
of children’s booths. I got a bunch of kids
to help me make and decorate my paper dolls. While
doing them, I also educated them and their parents
about NetAid and Universal Access to Education Week.
I went around the Book Fair and talked to students
and their parents and got about 25 friends signed.
I also had my college-age friends at the University
of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) help me get my
paper friends signed and I went to UCLA to collect
the friends.
During all of these outings to collect friends, I
educated people about access to education, my community
work in rural Sri Lanka, as well as NetAid and its
programs.
I also set up "my campaign" (i.e. the online
petition). Unfortunately, I only got 189 people to
sign it, a far cry short of my goal of 1,000.
I also sold Netaid fight poverty bands with the help
of several middle school student councils. These white
bands spread awareness, allow people to show their
personal involvement in the fight against poverty,
and raise money for the NetAid School House projects
in Haiti, Zimbabwe, India and, most recently, in Tibet.
Wow, that is fantastic. Who was involved
in this project?
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My friends (from my high school and other high schools
in the Los Angeles area) and their friends and families,
my parents and family, several elementary schools
and middle schools and administrators, three middle
school student-councils, and various teachers from
many different schools in the Los Angeles area.
What were the results (i.e., number of children,
number of signatures, money raised, etc.)
I sold 800 white bands, for $1 each. So I raised
$800 for NetAid's World School House Projects.
I collected/made 1,000 friends, and I got 189 people
to "Take Action" (i.e. participate in my
online petition campaign).
As for the number of people involved, I don't even
know for sure, but I'd say about 1,500 to 1,600 (including
the people who signed the friends and participated
in the online campaign).
You seem to have a very strong work ethic.
What got you involved in the Campaign for education?
NetAid, I am a Global Citizen Corps Field Correspondent.
Also, for the past ten years I've been closely involved
in Access to Education Projects for rural Sri Lankan
children and I’ve seen, through them, how helpful
education is.
What was the response in your community?
The response was amazing! The elementary and middle
schoolers were really into it, as were my friends.
The college students also expressed interest in NetAid,
even if they did not sign the friends. The best part
is, everyone I've talked to so far has asked 1) What
they can do to help me make my friends, and 2) What
they can do to combat global poverty.
Did you find anything particularly interesting
about your project, the issue of global education,
or the response from your town, etc.?
I read this somewhere, but it applies. I learned
that "Friends are like firefighters. When everyone's
running out of a burning building, they're the ones
rushing right in."
(The above images are various ACTION posters created,
distributed and displayed by Mihiri during Global
Action Day for Education.)
While YNCR is tremendously impressed with the level
of work Mihiri has done, we do not want any of our
readers to feel intimidated by her accomplishments.
This is a campaign that a person of any age or educational
background can carry out. We encourage you to do the
best you can. Every friend counts.
Hanafin
calls for boycott of goods produced through child
labor
June 10, 2005
Ireland Online
The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, has appealed
today for a boycott of goods which are knowingly made
by children.
This Sunday has been declared World Day Against Child
Labor.
Youngsters from two primary schools have been involved
in a march past the shops of Dublin's Grafton Street
to raise awareness about the world's 250 million children
trapped in bonded servitude.
Ms. Hanafin supports educating children here about
it.
Ms. Hanafin said: "Child labor is a very serious
world global problem. There are particular countries
where there are no respect for the rights of the child.
"The rights that have been recognized in United
Nations charters and council of Europe charters, I
think its right that children everywhere should be
aware of this and I think even as purchasers or consumers
we should be active in ensuring that we're not purchasing
T-Shirts or goods that are used in involving child
labor."
Source: http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=145841244&p=y4584y95x
China's
Use of Child Labor Emerges From the Shadows
The deaths of five girls draw attention
to the practice, common in struggling rural areas.
By Ching-Ching Ni, LA Times Staff Writer
May 13, 2005
BEIXINZHUANG, China — Christmas was just two
days away and snow was falling when the five factory
girls finished their shift. They'd been working for
12 hours, it was already after 1 a.m., and their dorm
was freezing cold. One of them ran out to grab a bucket
and some burning coal. The room warmed slightly. They
drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, none of them woke up. They had
been poisoned by the fumes. But their parents believe
at least two of the girls died much more horrible
deaths.
They charge that the owner of the canvas-making factory
was so impatient to cover up the fact that three of
the unconscious workers were underage that he rushed
the girls into caskets while some were still alive.
"You see the damage on the corner of the box,
the bruises on the side of her head, and the vomit
in her hair?" said Jia Haimin, the mother of
14-year-old Wang Yajuan, pointing to pictures of her
daughter lying in a cardboard casket stained with
vomit and appearing to show evidence of a struggle.
"Dead people can't bang their heads against the
box. Dead people can't vomit. My child was still alive
when they put her in there."
The case, made public months later by New York-based
Human Rights in China, highlights this country's often
hidden problem of child labor. The Chinese government
officially forbids children under 16 from working,
but critics say it does little to enforce the law.
Statistics are hard to come by, but in some estimates,
as many as 10 million school-age children are doing
their part to turn China into a low-cost manufacturing
powerhouse. China's one-child policy may have produced
a generation of spoiled "little emperors"
in the nation's relatively wealthy cities, but poverty
and lopsided development have driven a disproportionate
number of rural children out of the classrooms and
into lives of labor.
"We know enough about the problem to know child
labor is extremely widespread," said Robin Munro,
research director at China Labor Bulletin, a Hong
Kong-based labor rights organization. "The rural
education system in many parts of the countryside
is in a state of virtual collapse. There is a high
dropout rate of children under 16. They are not just
sitting around doing nothing. It is safe to assume
most are engaged in some kind of work illegally."
Children, some as young as 4, roam China's relatively
prosperous coastal cities, begging on the streets
or selling roses deep into the night, apparently victims
of schemes that use youngsters as bait. Even infants
are being rented out as maternal cover for women selling
pirated porn movies on the streets.
Things could get worse before they get better. Parts
of southern China's coastal areas are experiencing
a sudden labor shortage. Low wages and poor conditions
have left adults reluctant to take many of the jobs,
and an increasing number would rather stay home on
the farm than be exploited in the cities.
That could drive up demand for underage workers.
Already, children are victims of kidnappings and contract
labor arrangements in which they are forced to work.
In 2000, state media reported that 84 children had
been kidnapped from southern China's Guizhou province
to work in coastal cities assembling Christmas lights.
The youngest was 10. In 2001, an explosion at a rural
school in Jiangxi province killed 42 people, most
of them third- and fourth-graders who were believed
to be making fireworks at the time of the blast.
More recently, labor activists say a growing number
of rural schools have contracted out entire classes
of students to work in urban factories, supposedly
to help defray part of their school costs.
"They call it work study programs," Munro
said. "Of course, it's child labor, because the
school was earning money from it."
In parts of the country where the local economy is
supported by a single cottage industry, such as assembling
fireworks or disassembling electronic trash, children
work from home.
One area in central Zhejiang province is known for
making little tinfoil papers that are used in a ritual
to honor the dead. Most of the work is done in homes,
and the whole family often chips in.
"It's boring work," said a 12-year-old
girl who began helping her mother make the papers
when she was 7. The girl, who wasn't identified because
of her age, can finish 800 sheets a day. "Children
like to play. But my mother always says you can play
after you finish your work."
Local authorities have recently begun cracking down
on the practice after many of the area's children
began testing positive for lead poisoning and skin
ailments.
In principle, China is committed to ending child
labor. According to the International Labor Organization,
China has ratified two ILO conventions on labor practices.
Convention 138 forbids minors under 15 from working.
Convention 182 bans the worst forms of child labor,
including prostitution and slave labor.
But this is a country where making laws is much easier
than implementing them. Youths desperate to help their
families or simply tired of village life can easily
lie about their age and use fake identity papers.
Employers eager to hire them for their nimble hands
and low cost often don't bother to check.
On the dusty plains of Beixinzhuang village, in northern
China's Hebei province, grieving parents blame poverty
and lack of opportunity for sending their children
to the factories.
1 lakh (One
hundred thousand) children employed in brick kilns
Ramya Kannan, The Hindu, Online edition of India's
National Newspaper
May 11, 2005
Study shows exposure to sand and dust results in
child laborers developing serious ailments.
- Ten hours of back-breaking work daily
- Children get no education
- Only some transit camps provide non-formal education
- Without the support of kiln owners, these camps
are non-starters
- Children migrate to their village during off-season,
disrupting learning
- Girls stay home to look after young children
Tamil Nadu - Chennai: One lakh (100,000) children
in the 6-18 age group are employed in brick kilns
in Tamil Nadu, directly or indirectly involved in
hazardous tasks.
Of these, about 60,000 children are in the 6-14 age
group, working as bonded laborers, along with their
families. A recent study conducted by the Pasumai
Trust, Tiruvallur, and the People's Forum for Human
Rights, Chennai, has established that prolonged exposure
to sand, dust and heat of the kilns led to child laborers
developing dermatalogical and gastroenterological
problems, apart from wheezing, asthma, stunted development
and among adoloscent girls, menstrual dysfunction.
This is in addition to the large number of accidents
in the kilns in which the children sustain fractures
and other major injuries, according to Then Pandian,
one of the investigators.
It was conducted over a one-month period between
March and April 2005 in Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram,
Karur, Madurai, Sivaganga, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli
and Kanniyakumari districts in blocks where the brick-making
industry flourishes. Four principal investigators
were aided by six others in conducting the study.
"It is no surprise to us to find such a large
number of children working in the brick kilns. In
fact, if anything, it would be a conservative estimate.
The study was conducted only to prove conclusively
that child labor exists in a hazardous industry in
a State that aims at eradicating child labor in another
couple of years," Mr. Pandian said.
Among the tasks that the children are involved in
include cutting out bricks, preparing the red sand
for baking by walking over it, chipping bricks to
shape them, stacking bricks in the "window format,"
carrying them to the kilns for baking and fetching
them out after the process is complete. The investigators
added that girls are used specifically for this last
task which requires the children to walk into the
hot kiln to gather bricks.
"The children are paid pathetic sums as wages.
Most times their wages are subsumed in the wages that
are paid to a family. For every 1,000 bricks the family
`cuts' they get Rs. 130, while the minimum wages are
fixed at Rs. 192 plus dearness allowance," says
K. Moorthy of Pasumai Trust, who has been working
in the area for about six years now.
Of this, an amount is held back towards settling
the advance amount borrowed by the workers. Mr. Moorthy
said children in the worst circumstances were those
in the "chambers" in Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu
(Kancheepuram district).
While smaller kilns are run as a cottage industry
by families, it is in the larger chambers that the
practice of employing children is rampant.
"The only way to put an end to the problem is
to declare the brick kiln as an industry, considering
the larger ones employ as many as 150 families. Then,
regulating the industry - ensuring minimum wages and
standards of work and elimination of child labor -
will become easier. Minimum wages can also be strictly
implemented," Mr. Moorthy said.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/11/stories/2005051117550800.htm
Child labor on the increase in Lebanon
Poverty and illiteracy lead children to
work
By Jessy Chahine
Daily Star staff
May 10, 2005
BEIRUT: According to experts at a workshop on child
labor Monday, the factors leading children to the
dangers of work, such as poverty and illiteracy, are
on the rise in Lebanon. Entitled "Child at Labor,"
the five-day workshop organized by the Arab Syndicate
for Childhood and Development and the Corporation
of Social Welfare was attended by many local and international
nongovernmental organizations, including the United
Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
"This workshop aims to enhance the participants'
skills in dealing with child labor and helping to
dissolve the existence of this problem in Lebanon,"
said Mohammad Barakat, the head of the Corporation
of Social Welfare.
According to Barakat, poverty is the main reason
behind child labor here. "It is immediately followed
by the current educational system, which puts hundreds
of children out of school, simply because they are
unable to keep up with the school curriculum. The
Ministry of Education does not even bother to introduce
a curriculum to meet these children's needs."
According to a recent Unicef study, 3,163 children
aged 10-13 years are currently at work in Lebanon
while 1,947 children of the same age range are actively
seeking work. These figures represent 1.2 and 0.7
percent of the total population for this age group,
respectively.
However, the study cites that of the 14-17 year age
group, 28,786 children (10.9%) are employed while
9,525 (3.6%) are unemployed.
In addition, the study indicates that North Lebanon
has the highest proportion of working children with
respect to the two age groups. The region is followed
by Mount Lebanon, Beirut, Bekaa and the South.
Overall, the districts of Tripoli, Minyeh, Akkar,
Baabda, Baalbek, Zahleh, Sidon and Tyre are home to
80 percent of the nation's working children aged 10-13
years.
Forced Labor: Africa Generates $159m Profit
- ILO Report
May 14, 2005
The International Labor Organization has said that
out of the estimated $32 billion profits generated
by trafficking in human beings which exceeds the Gross
Domestic Product of over 100 countries, Sub-Saharan
Africa generates $159 million and Asia and the Pacific
generates the highest of $9.7 billion.
This was contained in the ILO Global Report on forced
labor titled: "A Global Alliance against Forced
Labor" presented by Dr. Patience Idemudia, ILO
Chief Technical Adviser, Nigeria's Project Office
yesterday.
The report is the most comprehensive analysis ever
undertaken on the facts and underlying cases of contemporary
forced labor and it contains the first global and
regional estimate by and international organization
of forced labor in the world today including the number
of persons affected, as well as the profits made by
those exploiting trafficked workers.
Industrialized countries like Europe and USA generate
$15.5 billion, Latin America and Caribbean $1.3billion,
Middle East and North Africa $1.5 billion while Transition
countries generate $3.4 billion.
The reports further revealed that global estimates
shows that 12.3 million people are victims of forced
labor, more than 2.4 million have been trafficked,
9.8 million are exploited by private agents while
2.5million are forced to work by the state or by rebel
military groups.
Regional distribution of forced labor shows Asia
and the Pacific with the highest figures of 9,490,000,
Latin America and Caribbean 1,320,000, industrialized
countries (Europe and USA) 360,000, Middle East and
North Africa 260,000, Transition countries 210,000
and Sub Saharan Africa 660,000.
The report reveals that 56 percent women and girls
and 44 per cent men and boys falls under the forced
labor by sex category. Forced commercial sex exploitation
shows 98 per cent and 2 per cent for women, girls
and men, boys respectively. While forced labor by
age reveals that that 40 to 50 per cent children are
affected.
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200505161067.html
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