A Charming View: Child Labor

One presentation that I chose to look at was Alyssa's final presentation about child labor. I chose to look at and read this presentation because I did not know a lot about child labor before doing so and I wanted to learn just how lucky I am to live the life that I live. First off, I found this presentation about child labor to be very interesting. Before looking through and reading this presentation, I did not know a lot about child labor and the extremely hard life that children are face with, in order to not go hungry. I learned that many children were forced to make a choice between gaining an education and working for food. After watching a video that showed the terrible conditions that many children live under, I truly became even more thankful for all that I have. One statement that was written in the video was that we must all work together. This statement truly stood out to me because I believe that if everyone were to come together, then it would be possible to begin ending poverty and more specifically hunger in the world. Every year, many young children die from hunger and they are forced to miss out on so many opportunities that life has to offer.

From this presentation, I was able to learn that many children are forced to work for twelve hours a day, under poor conditions, and they only earn less than two dollars per hour. The saddest part to me is not only that these children have to work many hours under poor conditions, but that they are payed a very little amount of money for their work. These children are forced to make the choice to work instead of earning an education and they do not even make enough money to make ends meet. I believe that many of these children work longer, harder hours than many adults do, yet the adults are still payed much more money than the children.

During an economic downfall, I had never thought about the idea that families turned to children for additional financial aid, in order to keep them from living off of the streets. These children were forced to work extremely hard in sweatshops and they earned minimum wage for their duties. I learned that child labor and sweatshops were much more common in America during the Great Depression, when the economy was unstable. In many third world countries, their economy is very unstable, which causes child labor to be very common. I was unaware of the fact that America supports child labor by indirectly trading with these third world countries. I believe that child labor is an issue that needs to be addressed right away. I know that if child labor was eliminated, then children may be forced to live on the streets. I believe that education is a must and that it is crucial for a child to have the opportunity to attend school. I think that the government should begin to take steps to help these children and in order to help them, they must first help their families financially so that the children are not forced to work and can have the opportunity to gain an education. With an education, as the children grow older, they will have a lot more freedom in the workforce and they will hopefully be able to find jobs that are much higher paying and that have better working conditions as well. Overall, I believe that child labor is an issue that cannot be ignored and that action needs to be taken immediately, in order to help these children (as well as their families).