Helping The Children

Hurrican Katrina was a terrible disaster one that we will never forget. Many lives were lost that day and many children were left without parents. Katrina Town Hall Meeting (KTHM) is a group that is trying to help the many children and people that were victims of the disaster. “With initial funding from local foundations, government agencies, individuals and corporations, the new partnership will focus public media, community-based outreach and education on The Children of Katrina over the next five years.” This is an action taken to help the children of Katrina by the article, “Media & Policy Center Foundation”. In this article, basically, many organizations are coming together to help the victims of this catastrophe like the children.
Their main people who are most vulnerable members of the society are the kids and elderly. When Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, many lives were separated, destroyed, widows, kids with no parents. So these organizations came together to bring hope back to these kids and give them a new home because they lost their old ones.

http://www.mediapolicycenter.org/docs/proposal_katrina.doc

War Children

This post is dedicated to all those little kids who are forced to fight in uncalled for wars because they feel that they are suppose to defend their country or be killed. And for all those kids who have been brainwashed in believing that if they don’t defend their country, there unworthy or anything of that nature. As you know there are many wars going on around the world. In countries where dictatorship and patriotism play a big role, you would mostly find actions that we feel here are illegal or immoral. But one thing that is just inhuman or unjustified is having CHILDREN fight in wars. These children are under the age of 18 and go as young as 7 years old. According to the article of “World Vision” there are around 250,000 children involved in a war worldwide. Over 2 million of these children soldiers have been killed in the last decade and at least 6 million of them have been permanently wounded and became a disabled person for the rest of there life…and that’s if they get to live it. When these kids get involved in the wars, they usually are used to be sex slaves for the man there, spies, front-line combatants, or suicide bombers. These children soldiers usually end up here because of “Abduction and enticement by armed groups” like government complicity (meaning the government was an accomplice of this wrong thing) the need for more people and because since there is no education for the kids they are therefore put in war, which in my opinion is not even close to a substitution. Children soldiers are wrong no matter how it is put, and it should not exist, but unfortunately it dose.


Sources:
http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/wvususfo.nsf/stable/globalissues_childprotection_conflict?Open&lid=children_in_conflict&lpos=leftnav#factors

http://www.worldvision.org/worldvision/wvususfo.nsf/stable/globalissues_childprotection_conflict_bill?open&lid=bill&lpos=day:txt:bill

Will the "Solutions" to end Child Labor Make A Difference??

It seems almost impossible for Child Labor to disappear but there are organizations and laws being pasted to try to end it. Will they work? I'm not so sure but it's worth a try. An organization called the UNICEF is trying to deal with this issue by advocating for the protection of children's rights, help them meet their basic needs and to help these kids have a better chance in succeeding in life by helping open more doors for them. These people organized a group called "The Convention on the Rights of the Child" which is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.
The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects children's rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil and social services.
By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children's rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community. States parties to the Convention are obliged to develop and undertake all actions and policies in the light of the best interests of the child.




http://www.unicef.org/crc/

5th blog

The Mindset of Child Laborer

The answer to this question is because of poverty. If I grew up in a family with many siblings and both my parents worked and there still was not enough money to pay the rent on time or to have decent meals through out the day or if there still was not enough money to buy decent clothings then I guess that I would have turned to work too. If working is what would help bring food on the table for my little brothers and sisters and help my parents pay the rent ..then yeah, Iwould be up for child labor. I wouldn't be done with school until years from now and since my country is a poor one, the books we would get to use would be really old and probably not even updated to help us kids here learn better. Even if I did go to school and finish high school, there would be no way I will be able to go to college, I wouldnt have any money for it.
This is probably the mindset of many children out there in other countries who feel they dont have a choice but to work for a living. I know it has to be really hard for these kids. Every kid has there own problems but when I think about how fortunate I am to be born into a family that isnt living that bad where I have to work at a young age to help out at home, suddenly my problems dont seem so big anymore.
I have the privilege to go to school and get an education and not have to worry about anything else just school, meanwhile these kids dont. What hurts the most about this whole issue is that there kids as young as five years old..what does a five year old know. They should be thinking about what they're going to do during recess, or which Dr. Zuess book their mom is going read to them at bedtime, not about work.
But then I come across these naïve kids in school and I hear them talk about how they hate school and all this crap about how “this school sucks” and dumb things like that when they should be grateful that they are getting school for free to begin with. I really hate it especially when I hear about teenagers dropping out of high school. There are millions of kids out there who would kill to go to school, because they know how important and how far in life it will get them. They know school is the only way to go if you plan on getting ahead in life.
The following is of a child who is a perfect example of what I mean about kids who work because they have to.
"For Reinal, getting an education is a real struggle. He loves learning, but because he only attends classes for half a day, he misses out on the arts and crafts courses that are part of elementary education in Brazil. He works because he has to. His mother who labors alongside him in the quarry needs the income he brings in to support them both. It is hard and dangerous work. The dry air in the Bahia region where Reinal lives, mingled with the dust from the rocks, makes breathing difficult. "It's strenuous and boring. Stones can get into your face. The hammer can hurt you. We sweat a lot," he explains." This kids work is to break stones with a hammer that sometimes hurts him. He occasionaly gets dust and sweat into his eyes and causes him to get blind for some time. His mother also works doing the same job and she used to do this when she was a child too. She gets paid the same thing he does with is $2.50 a day, and they do this EVERY day of the week with no days off, week after week, day in and day out. Reinal loves to read, write, sing and often startes daydreaming of a better future. See what I mean about appreciating what you have..

http://www.un.org/works/goingon/labor/reina_story.html

CHILD LABOR IN THE U.S.A !!!!!!

Did you know that child labor also exist in the Unites States of America?
I used to think that child labor only happened in poor countries like in the Caribean Island out there where nobody knows about or in Asia and Africa until I came across an article that said that child labor still exists in the United States today!! I was in a state of shock because this is the richest country in the world..(well atleast thats what everyone says). Why would we need children to work in places where we could easily find adults who are unemployed to do the job? I didnt really believe it until kept on doing my research and I found more and more sites that say the same thing, child labor in the United States today!! If you thought that child labor was something of the past think again. The following is from one of the sites that I looked up and proved that child labor still exist in the U.S.
"The traditional picture of child labor is of something that takes place in poverty-stricken less developed countries. But the United Farm Workers union estimates that at least 800,000 children work in the fields of the U.S. And when the urban sweatshops of the garment and other industries are accounted for, the total number of child laborers in the U.S. runs even higher. In the richest country in the world, these children will never know a childhood that doesn’t include the stress, fatigue and cruelty of work."
In this site, there is a story of a boy, 9 years old, called Sharon Smith who used to work in a jewelry store with his family to help make money. Homework for them didnt meant school work, it meant working outside, making money, so Sharon never got away without doing his homework because it was something he had to do every day. At work him and his family would take a pair of tweezers, dip it into a jar of acid and pull out a piece of lead the size of a pinhead. Then they would put the piece of lead on top of part of an earring or ring. They got paid according to how many pieces were on a tray. "Technically, the factories don’t know about this--much like Nike and Kathie Lee today claim not to know about labor violations in their factories abroad. And chances are that there are no labor department statistics documenting homework in the jewelry industry, then or now." The worse thing about this story is that the owner of this jewelry industry still hasnt gotten caught. He still runs this so-called-business, has been running it for 30 years and still hasnt gotten busted for violating child labor laws for the past 30 years.
I also found a website called Young Migrant Workers Toil in U.S. Fields
By Karen Fanning. This website has a story of a young boy 6 years old, Santos Polendo and how he used to work in onion fields of Texas. He had been working ten years on those fields breaking his back along with 800,000 other children in the United States. "I had blisters on my hands. My back was hurting. My head was hurting. I never thought I was going to make that my life."




http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/child_labor/child_labor/index.asp?article=migrant
http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/500Supp/500S_20000707_ChildLabor.shtml

HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE ACTUALLY INVOLVED WITH CHILD LABOR??

"Approximately 211 million of the world’s children, between the ages of 5 and 14, work at least part time, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the tripartite body representing governments, labor, and employees." This is of children who work part time, children working full time are estimated to be around 120 million, and it is mostly through force to help their parents at home and to survive. According to the international Labor Organization there are around 250 million of children between five years old and fourteen in the working world, and of this 250 kids, 100 million of them are estimated girls. This number doesnt include the millions of other children who work as domestics, prostitution..etc.. which are most likely to be girls.







http://www.laborrights.org/projects/childlab/