Students Work Together To Fight Child Labor

By Larissa Lytwyn

Newtown High School freshman Emily Oliver is a young woman on a mission.

Last fall, she learned about the horrors — and complexities — of child labor in a Latin American course taught by social studies teacher Jan Brooks.

“After [the class] I felt I had to do something,” Emily said.

So, joined by best friend Annie Schneider, Emily founded the student-run human rights group, A Global Voice. In addition to educating students about child labor issues, the group raises funds for human rights groups that build schools and buy medical and educational supplies for children in need.

Joined by A Global Voice’s secretary Tara Cerreta and treasurer Linda Chamiec-Chase, Emily and Annie recently discussed child labor issues with Newtown Middle School seventh graders in language arts teacher Karen Beierle’s class.

Ms Beierle is one of Emily’s former teachers. She described Emily as a role model whose poetry was the mark of a truly prolific writer.

Introducing A Global Voice to her class, she beamed as she noted, “These students have something very important to share with you today.”

Their middle school audience at rapt attention, Emily opened her presentation by asking students to estimate how many wars were being fought worldwide.

In keeping with the American media’s preoccupation with conflicts that affect the United States directly, students named the War on Terrorism and ongoing conflict in Iraq.

In addition, said Emily, 40 “armed conflicts” are going on in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Many are civil conflicts triggered by economic and social distress.

The people most affected by such conflicts, Emily said, are women and children. In many war-torn areas, poverty runs as rampant as gunfire.

“Imagine you are a young mother in Honduras with three children under the age of 10,” said Emily. “Your husband was recently killed in a rebel uprising and you are having difficulty working and taking care of your children at the same time. You can’t make ends meet.”

Under these circumstances, she said, it was understandable that many parents seized opportunities for their children, some as young as toddlers, to toil in textile factories or on farms.

While many children worked long hours in unsanitary conditions facing a myriad of dangers, including exposure to HIV-carrying needles, the money they made were vital to their family’s physical survival.

“The alternative is starving to death,” Emily said simply.

One middle school student asked if hunting could be an alternative.

No, Emily replied. In the world’s most impoverished regions, many game-sized animals are diseased and thus unsafe to eat.

The economic systems that support child labor are deeply complex, embedded in long-established social and trade-based infrastructure.

To try to raise their economic status, Emily explained, third-world countries compete with each other for contracts with major corporations, such as Nike and Gap. They bid rock-bottom operating costs that are achieved through low-paying child labor.

“At first, I wanted to boycott all the products that were being made by companies like Nike, Gap, [Gap subsidiary] Old Navy, and Abercrombie & Fitch,” Emily said. But by rejecting the products completely, she explained, the companies would abandon their third-world bases. The families of child laborers would face even more dire conditions.

The answer, she said, was based in rallying for better protection for child laborers, as well assuring them medical care and education.

“There are 247 million child laborers worldwide,” Emily said, “in nations including the United States.”

About one fourth of the world’s population, she added, “lives on a dollar a day.”

For perspective, she added, “America has a population of about 275 million. Imagine if every single person in this country was a young working child! Now imagine living on a dollar a day!”

Many child laborers in America are immigrants, she explained, working to help their families economically subsist.

A fair percentage of these immigrant laborers are not yet citizens, a process that can take a number of years to complete. Others are illegally arrived laborers who use their salaries to support their families in their native countries, part of the deeply emotional, complicated web of American immigrant and labor issues.

Most of these laborers, Emily said, work in agriculture, many through “underground” factions.

During the school district’s April vacation, Emily attended a child labor law conference in Florence, Italy, to learn more about how standards could be raised through issuing better protection and especially education.

“When these children are working,” she said, “they cannot go to school.”

At the conference, Emily met a Texas high school student who said she had to take two weeks off during the beginning and end of the school year so that she can work at a beet farm in Oregon.

“Maintaining good grades while [working] is really difficult,” Emily said. “Imagine how hard it is to make up work when you’re out sick! That’s bad enough!”

Now, Emily continued, the Texan student is struggling to get accepted into college — or even being able to afford it.

Seventh grader Jen Spanedda described the child labor issue as “overwhelming.”

Another student, Tyler Brindley, said she was shocked by the enormity of the world’s child laboring population.

“It’s terrible!” she gasped.

“When I first learned about [child labor], I was overwhelmed by how big it was,” empathized Tara. “I didn’t know how I, just one person, could make a difference.”

By joining A Global Voice, Tara realized she could, in fact, individually help make the world a better place.

“Not to sound cliché, but our generation is the one that defines the future,” echoed Emily. “We can all definitely make a difference!”

To learn more about child labor issues, visit the websites of the following human rights organizations: www.savethechildren.org; www.humanrightswatch.org; www.amnestyinternational.org; www.freethechildren.org.