I am a seventh grade student from Cedar River Middle School. In class, we have been studying global citizenship and have learned a great deal about child labor.
Millions of children around the world as young as 10 have to work in difficult jobs, missing out on their childhood to get enough money to live. Some kids work without getting paid at all, also working more than 12 hours a day. These jobs can be very dangerous, putting children at a risk. There are multiple different problems linked to child labor. The work keeps children from going to school, so they are not getting a sufficient education enough to be successful in life. This leads to something called the cycle of poverty.
The cycle of poverty is when kids grow up poor without an education, then they grow up poor, raise a family and their kids will basically have the same life. The only way to break the cycle of poverty is to give kids education.
Another problem is that the jobs kids work in can be dangerous. For example, kids that grind yams into powder can get lung damage from breathing in the dust. But not only are kids getting hurt physically, but also emotionally. Kids can lose their personality from working all day, and are also shy from only knowing their life at work.
But knowing about these problems won’t help fix it. So what can we do about it? As one of the main causes of child labor is poverty, we can donate money to poor families so they can hopefully take their kids away from their jobs. If we donate, families can have the sufficient funds to send their kids to school. Nonprofit organizations also help children that are forced to work. You can help these organizations and help them stop child labor.
Another way that we are solving this problem is by the International Labor Organization. The ILO makes conventions to help this child labor problem. For example, convention number 182 outlaws the worst forms of child labor like slavery or debt bondage (families giving away their children to pay off a debt, forcing the child to work until the debt is paid off). We can support the ILO to help child labor go down in this world. As you can see, child labor is a terrible thing in this world, and we should try our best to stop it.
Emily Gipson, Maple Valley
