Risks Children Face: I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on these drums all day.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? At a very young age we are encouraged to explore the depths of our imaginations and decide what it is that we wish to be when we grow up. Children play dress up, don tiaras, fasten on police badges, drive pretend race cars, and conduct plastic trains all in anticipation of the arrival of adulthood. Notice a common theme? Here it is: we work when we grow up. Normal. Nothing revolutionary there.... right? But for 158 million children between 5-14 this is not the norm. This means that one in six children are already being sent to work . Ummm.... say what? This means that these children are not being educated, not playing, and not just being children. But wait let's think about this, they can't be doing anything.... well hard..... after all they're just kids. Right? It can't be that big of a deal. Actually, no. Many of their jobs are extremely dangerous. The children find themselves working with pesticides, harmful chemicals, heavy machinery, and even in dangerous mine shafts (Source). Would YOU want to do that kind of work? I doubt it. There are 44.6 million children in Asia engaged in child labor. That is almost FIVE times the population of Michigan. In Africa 26.3% of the children living there are working as child laborers. There are 5.1 million kids in Latin America being put to work. How about a "few" more numbers?

"In India 14.4 % children between 10 and 14 years of age are employed in child labor. in Bangladesh 30.1%, in China 11.6%,in Pakistan 17.7%, in Turkey 24%, in Cote D’lvoire 20.5%, in Egypt 11.2%, in Kenya 41.3% , in Nigeria 25.8%, in Senegal 31.4%, in Argentina 4.5%, in Brazil 16.1%, in Mexico 6.7%, in Italy 0.4% and in Portugal 1.8%. The above figures only give part of the picture. No reliable figures of child workers below 10 years of age are available, though they comprise a significant amount. The same is true of children in the former age group on whom no official data is available. If it was possible to count the number of child workers properly, and the number of young girls occupied in domestic labor taken into account - the figure will emerge as hundreds of million (Source)."

Get the picture? The second Millennium Development Goal is universal education. I'm not sure how we plan to accomplish that when kids are going to work everyday and not going to school. Clearly there is a problem. In the United Nations Convention on the Rights of The Child, Article 28 says that children have the right to an education and Article 31 says the child has the right to relax and play. Hm..... so where did we go wrong? What are we missing? Have you ever heard of Compassion International? I'm sure you have. They're the people with the annoying overplayed commercials that try to get you to care and have enough pity to sponsor a child. How often do you change the channel when those commercials come on? (I've done it too.) But they're doing something right. When you sponsor one of their kids you are paying for them to go to have an education (which means that they are in school and not at work) and they are a training the kids with life and vocational skills. If we train these kids they will learn a skill which they can develop and use to obtain a decent job with fair pay. Makes you want to sponsor a child doesn't it? Ecclesiastes 2:20-21 says, "So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune." I believe that this is how children sent to work must feel. So what can we do? How about we make sure that the products we buy aren't being manufactured by children? To find out check out free2work.org. It gives rating to top brand name companies on how they're doing in preventing child labor. The best way to start the end to child labor is to be in the know. If you would like to read a story about two boys who sell balloons in Yemen (and only earn about four dollars a day) you can visit Child laborers in Yemen. If you would like to learn more about Compassion International or sponsor a child you can visit Compassion.com. Also check out the video below for more info.

Watch me.