Characteristic of child labor

  • Violates a nation’s minimum age laws
  • Threatens children’s physical, mental, or emotional well-being
  • Involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, or illicit activities
  • Prevents children from going to school
  • Uses children to undermine labor standards


http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/what_is_child_labor.html



Facts on child labor

  • One in six children 5 to 14 years old — about 16 percent of all children in this age group — is involved in child labor in developing countries.

  • In the least developed countries, 30 percent of all children are engaged in child labor.

  • Worldwide, 126 million children work in hazardous conditions, often enduring beatings, humiliation and sexual violence by their employers.

  • An estimated 1.2 million children — both boys and girls — are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work.

  • The highest proportion of child laborers is in sub-Saharan Africa, where 26 percent of children (49 million) are involved in work.
http://www.compassion.com/child-advocacy/find-your-voice/quick-facts/child-labor-quick-facts.htm


What countries take part in child labor?

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Thursday, May 6, 2010

Response to CST's

1. The most important CST teaching is CST#7 Care For God's Creations. This CST is important because we should take care of ourselves and our planet. God placed us on Earth to take care of it including the animals, seas, plants and ourselves. We should not love the creations God has created for us and should always cherish them and not destroy them.

2.What suprised me in this teaching is that the poor and the powerless that must bare the burden of the Earth's dramatic changes. Everyone must work together in order to keep the Earth clean and make safe areas in the enviornment. I did not expect to see the teachings from Catholic church because many church leaders focus on the death penalty and the treatment of others and not focused on the enviornments at hand.

3. The church teaches that humanity is called to act upon caring and preserving the Earth for future generations. Many Christians act to keep the Earth from being crippled and weak and follow Christ's teachings of love and care. The church usually acts by setting up special events and letting the public aware of the situations the world is facing and they want them to act upom them.

Child Labor Poster

Lets Put An End To Child Labor For Good!!
Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change
Save The Children Of Our Future!!

Action Reflection

The action I took for the Social Justice project was the poster. I chose the poster because I want others to know how children are being treated as slaves than human beings. Many children around the world are being forced work against their will and are treated like animals. I hoped to achieve that everyone would join together as one and help stop child labor. I also hope that if everyone helped to end child labor, they should show compassion and kindness because many children want love and compassion and not work. I felt that I was successful because I asked others if they were for child labor or against it and they said they were against child labor because it is immoral and that children should be learning and being a kid. In the future I would see myself standing up for those voices that plea to end child labor to their governments and make their voices heard. This project helped me think that everyone, including children are God’s children and that we should not treat each other this way. As God’s children, we must love those who are being oppressed and even the oppressors because Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies no matter how much we hated them.

Narrative:Seba-Household Slave

Slavery can take many different shapes. They can be working in the fields or running errands for their masters. One individual’s recollection of slavery is Seba, born and raised in Mali by her grandmother. A woman that Seba’s family knew told her grandmother that she would enroll her in school and learn French. By the time she arrived in Paris, she was forced to work, clean and take care of the children. Seba had to work from 7 a.m.-11 p.m. everyday. She slept in the children’s bedroom on the floor and was only fed scraps of leftovers. Seba was periodically beaten by her masters and their mistress that formed her situation as a household slave and her right of “choice.”
One day during her time living in Paris, Seba asked her master that she wanted to go to school. Her master replied, “We had not brought you here to France to go to school, but taking care of the children (Bales 10).” Seba was suffering false hope from her masters. She was promised that she would go to school and learn French, but instead had to work. This injustice is being caused through false hopes of a better life in order to make them believe they’ll have a better life. The master was disguised as an innocent woman from France representing her country and government, to give Seba a chance of a better life, but resulted in cruel labor and beatings.
In 1992, Seba was one day late picking up the kids at school and by the time she brought the kids home, her mistress and her master’s husband were furious. They began by beating her up and then they threw her out on the streets. Seba did not have anywhere to go and could not understand the language and wandered the streets. The master’s husband found her and then took her home. Seba was suffering horrible beatings by her mistress and husband and that by being late to pick up the kids from school, their mood changes from nice to evil. This is related to CST #2 , Call to Family, Community, and Participation because although Seba is a slave, she is family to her master and should not act towards being mean. By finding and picking up Seba from the streets, the husband disguises himself as a good husband by going to get her and bring her back home, but after bringing her back home, he transforms into a mindless monster.
After her master’s husband brought Seba back home, Seba was beaten up again, but this time worse. Seba describes her beating when she arrived, “there they stripped me naked, tied my hands behind my back, and began to whip me with a wire attached to a broomstick. Both were beating me at the same time. I ws bleeding a lot and screaming, but they continued to beat me.” Seba is suffering mass beatings from the husband and mistress. Her cruel beating was a punishment of not picking up the children on time and had to suffer the consequences. This is related to CST# 1, The Life and Dignity of the Human Person because human life is very sacred and we should cherish and protect and not trying to destroy it. The husband was described as a good moral person until he began beating Seba up like a deranged animal for picking up the kids late. After years of being a slave, getting repeatedly beaten by her masters, Seba was finally freed after neighbor-heard sounds of abuse and beatings. The neighbor was able to see her wounds and scars and notified the French Committee against Modern Slavery and took Seba into care. Today, Seba is well cared and living with a good family and receiving the best counseling, and education. During her years as a slave, Seba’s understanding of the world was less developed. She was not able to understand the idea of “choice.” Seba was still unable to grasp the idea because her entire life she was working and was never given a “choice.” Seba’s story helps illustrate a picture that poor families can be easily manipulated and given false hopes to their children and promising them a better life, but then they transform themselves as good people into evil mindless monsters.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Suffering of child labor - prayer


We pray for the kids, who work all over the world, who receive no respect
for their efforts, who work hard to support their families, who work because
they are in poverty.

We pray for the employers of these kids, that they will come to realize what

horrible things they are doing to them, these kids who are forced to work for

small wages.


We also pray for families of these kids who are put into child labor, that their lives will get better and they will find a way to get income without putting their children in dangerous labor.

We pray for all the people who make the effort to correct this issue of child labor.


We pray to you God to help these people in need.

Amen.

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