There have been improvements, small ones, but many thousands of young Dalit girls are still working under the so-called Sumangali Scheme and similar arrangements, where they are paid a lump sum at the end of three or four years of grueling work. In Captured by Cotton, many former workers reported that they were never paid because they had left before the term was up. That has changed, and workers are now given a prorated sum of money, if they leave early. But the social isolation, the living conditions that essentially amount to captivity, have not changed. For example, Bannari Amman, supplying clothing for brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle, is typical in that it has responded somewhat to pressure from the clothing companies. The lump sum is somewhat larger than it was. But their recruiting methods are pretty much what they always were. And the worst abuses are happening earlier in the manufacturing process, in the spinning of the cotton, giving manufacturers a spurious deniability. Several companies have joined fair labor monitoring organizations or have begun conducting their own audits of their first tier suppliers. The second tier, the spinning mills, represent a loophole you could drive a truck through.

For German speakers, ZDF has a fine documentary by Michael Höft and Christian Jentzsch, Lohnsklavinnen, in which a broker talks up the fine life workers are living at the factory. The food is great, people are kind and shift work is “very relaxing.” The fourteen-year-old recruit looks on, stone-faced. She’s heard the stories, but the pressure of poverty is too great and her parents make the deal. At the local hospital, the director tells us they see suicide attempts among the factory girls every day. Poison is the most common method, then self-immolation, then hanging. In Lohnsklavinnen, Barbara Küppers of Terre des Hommes succinctly sums up the responsibility of clothing manufacturers. If the supply chain is not perfectly transparent, she says, from the cotton field through the picking, dying, spinning and sewing processes, if companies are vague about any part of that path from the field to the store, then they are profiting by slavery and they are complicit. End of story. When you look at the appendix to Maid in India, the suppliers list, you realize that the number of major brands that are complicit in this way is daunting.

What does this have to do with being Dalit?

It is hard to overstate the corrosive effect of caste prejudice. It pervades everything. India Unheard has an ongoing series on the campaign to end untouchability. Article 17 of the Indian Constitution declaring untouchability illegal was written in 1949, yet appalling abuse of Dalits is still routine – routine in schools, routine in the workplace, routine in the courts. The video volunteers of India Unheard have put together a score of short videos on untouchability in all facets of life (and death) and the cumulative effect is staggering. One man had his hand chopped off for getting a drink of water from an upper-caste man’s pot. But it’s not just the accounts of grotesque violence, though there are plenty of those. All manner of everyday situations give rise to social exclusion: the barbershop, lunch at school, walking on the street, assisting at births, going to temple – the list is endless.

One of the most psychologically toxic aspects of untouchability lies in the fact that it is based in religious belief. Imagine the Jim Crow South, but with a religious underpinning. In Born Polluted, a film by Heidi Lipsanen, Kali Bahadur Rokaya of the Human Rights Commission of Nepal defines the greatest stumbling block faced by Dalits in Nepal as “fatalism.” Just as it is extremely difficult to get privileged people to relinquish some of their advantages, it is also very difficult for excluded and marginalized people to believe – fully and completely believe – that they have rights, and have a reasonable expectation of getting those rights. Khadka Bahadur Bishwakarma, a Maoist politician, himself a Dalit, explains it this way: “The people have come to know themselves,” he says. “Before, the Dalits of Karnali didn’t think of themselves as human beings.” But the process of achieving political and social equality for Dalits in Nepal is incomplete, just as the Maoist project of a just society is incomplete. There is a bumpy road ahead, negotiating a political role for Dalits in the process of transition from monarchy to democracy in Nepal.

The girls of Tamil Nadu are vulnerable to the blandishments of the brokers because they can’t quite imagine any hope of a life other than working themselves to death, one way or another. There are inner obstacles to freedom in addition to the more obvious external ones. Which doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. Putting pressure on clothing companies to make their supply chains entirely transparent is vital. Unless continuous pressure is brought to bear, companies will make cosmetic changes and wait for the issue to go away. Don’t let that happen.

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Petra Lent McCarron is an experienced television and film producer and editor. She co-produced Stolen Childhoods and Rescuing Emmanuel for Galen Films.

Jawad knows these children’s stories all too well: At the age of seven, he worked eight-hour days in a factory making Persian rugs. “I was born two years after the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the Taliban took control of Kabul, things changed for worse. They closed schools to females and only taught us hateful materials to brainwash us. Since I was not learning anything useful in school, my father put me to work in a rug factory so that I could learn a trade. At age seven, I had to work long hours in the sweatshop, while my friends played soccer just outside the rug factory. Our working conditions were terrible, especially during the hot summer days, when we would sweat all over and the factory provided no fans or air conditioners. I worked for four years, but I was fortunate enough to move to the United States, where I received an education.”

Jawad Wahabzada and Jon Bougher on location in Kabul

Yasamin wants to be a teacher, so she can teach respect and morals and rebuild her country—but without an education, her future, and the future of Afghanistan, isn’t promising. “Each of these children, affected in different ways by the war, provide a snapshot of the country while hinting at a dangerous future,” said Wahabzada. “I knew that, without help, they would never get that chance to become a professor, engineer, or doctor. So, it was heartbreaking to listen to their sad stories and not to be able to do anything help their situation.”

Wahabzada wants to change this ominous outlook not only by raising awareness, but also by raising funds to help the children in this film. “Our goal is to enhance the lives of these children and empower them as individuals,” he said. The film was screened at RiverRun International Film Festival, and Wahabzada hopes it will travel throughout the US.

If you would like to make a donation or sponsor one of the children in this film, please visit www.mypartfoundation.com.

For information on screenings of Children of Kabul, visit the film’s website

We learned that they worked from sun-up to sundown. Many had infected cuts from climbing into the plants to pick the coffee beans and their injuries were aggravated by the pesticides that covered their small bodies.

They lived in a mud village with no sanitation, running water or electricity. They worked hungry and easily 60% of the workforce were young girls.

So when the social worker who took us to the plantation told us that only $50 a child would put them in school and remove them from these circumstances, the film crew and I did some quick math. The next thing we knew, we’d started a program that would end up continuing for ten years and provide educations for literally hundreds of children.

The single best way to rescue a child from the worst forms of child labor is to put her in school.

Now, fast forward to ten years later. Here are four young men we’ve supported for ten years who are completing their college educations, having won scholarships to Kenyatta and Moi Universities. I was almost overcome when one of them said to me, “You don’t recognize me but I was in the coffee fields that first day in 2002, I was ten years old.”

Today we have 34 students enrolled in the Kenyan Schoolhouse Program. Primary school is now free in Kenya, but secondary school is not. It is not uncommon for rural students to have no secondary school nearby – going to boarding school is the only way they can advance in their education, effectively putting secondary school out of reach for many Kenyan children. In rural Kenya today, less than 30% of girls complete secondary school.

A majority of our supported students are young girls.

Every year we raise and wire the funds to pay the educational expenses for our students. There are three school terms in Kenya and the fees for May are fast coming due. 100% of the funds donated to help are spent on the children and all donations are tax-deductible.

You can donate online at: kenyanschoolhouse.org

Consider having your church or school or even a group at work sponsor a child for just $365 a year. This figure covers school fees, room and board, books and uniforms and personal items.

or

Mail us a check at:

Media Voices for Children
110 Daggett Avenue
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568

memo: Kenyan Schoolhouse

Also this week at Media Voices, we have a new photo essay shot by Steve Button at Nyumbani Village in Kenya this past September. Nyumbani Village is a new group community for grandparents raising their grandchildren who have been orphaned by AIDS.

We’re also very excited to have a trailer for Children of Kabul, a new documentary short made by Jawad Wahabzada, a former child laborer himself, and Jon Bougher. Jawad and Jon traveled to Afghanistan to film four children whose parents are either disabled or dead and who have shouldered the burden of supporting their families. Children of Kabul is making the rounds at film festivals in the next few months. Check the film’s website for a schedule of screenings. Monique DeJong has written a review of the film.

The Fair Labor Association has issued its audit of labor practices at Foxconn, the large Apple supplier in China. The FLA found a number of problems, including “serious and pressing noncompliances with the FLA Workplace Code of Conduct as well as Chinese labor law.”See also Pharis Harvey’s recent blog on the FLA and Apple.

Finally, for the true statistics wonks among you, we have the latest trend report from ILO/IPEC, Global Child Labor Developments: Measuring Trends from 2004 to 2008.

Thank you for this encouragement.

I got here by accident from another career.

I was making network TV documentaries … about Jewish history, fashion, Mussolini, JFK, movie westerns, even singing cowboys…

Then Stolen Childhoods came along and changed everything.

It took seven years in seven countries to make this documentary on the worst forms of child labor. Narrated by Meryl Streep, the film’s been shown all over the world.

And it changed every aspect of my personal and professional life.

Child labor became an all-consuming subject in our household. My wife would write and revise our scripts, my son traveled to Kenya and Texas to record sound, my daughter is the voice of a young girl in the gravel quarries in Stolen Childhoods. I think you get the idea.

During those shoots, Robin Romano and I would often head into the streets at night to film the parallel universe of street children. Four years later, a second feature documentary, Rescuing Emmanuel, was released. The story of a 13-year-old street boy provides a window into the lives of 100 million street children.

Two films – ten years of production – eight countries – nearly a thousand hours of footage. We take every opportunity to use this footage at conferences, on campuses and before government – to put the children in the room, to remind us all that they are kids now. Their lives can’t wait.

In 2009 we created Media Voices for Children, an online community for children’s rights. I serve as the Editorial Director and I write frequently for the site. Every day I am immersed in a new world of activism that Iqbal’s short life embodied.

Over 100 organizations, filmmakers, photographers and activists share their viewpoints, research and media at the site.

Naturally child labor is at the top of the list of subjects we cover.

You’ll always find MVC original productions and interviews with world leaders in the fight to end child labor: Kailash Satyarthi, Desmond Tutu and the late Wangari Maathai.

This fall we’ll release the final film in our own trilogy on children’s rights, The Same Heart.

It’s an essay about the state of children and the successes and failures of development aid…a dialogue between a father of eight living on a dollar a day, community organizers, AIDS orphans, Nobel Laureates, economists and philanthropists.

It poses one question:

How can we create a more equitable world for children with less hunger, abuse, disease, and child labor?

Besides creating noise about children’s issues, Media Voices for Children also sponsors a hands-on scholarship program, Kenyan Schoolhouse – now in its tenth year.

These pictures were taken on a coffee plantation in Kenya in 2002. At that time, easily half of the workforce picking coffee were young children.

These children worked hungry, the majority of them young girls.

Their skin was covered in white powder, pesticides that made them sick.

Many had cuts and infections from climbing into the sharp plants.

At that time, primary school fees of about $50 a year kept them, and four million other Kenyan children, out of school.

We liked these kids.

We did some quick math. And every crew member coughed up enough to enroll 34 kids in primary school, then another 30 or so a few weeks later.

Awash in warm feelings of triumph I returned home and then realized what we’d done.

The kids wouldn’t need the fees for just one year…and most of them stayed in school and excelled!

I turned to our local community to help us raise money for them and that support has continued for the past ten years.

Now fast forward with me to last September. The NGO that has run the program for us, ANPPCAN (African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect), plans a surprise on our first day in Kenya.

As we approach the campus of Kenyatta University we are met by these four young men.

What they all share in common is that our Kenyan Schoolhouse program helped them get through primary and secondary school. They won scholarships to university!

And they’ll be graduating in architecture, engineering, chemistry and business.

One told me, “You don’t remember me, but I remember the first day you came to the plantation. I was picking coffee. I was ten years old.”

Hopefully our next university portrait will include four young women.

But these young students are tangible examples of why we started Media Voices for Children.

They remind us that…

Poverty needn’t be a final destination for any child.

A child isn’t stupid because she’s born poor.

Education is the most effective way to end child labor.

We’re always looking for funds for the coffee kids of Kenya and we invite your community to join ours in this work.

One final idea.

There’s a wonderful primary school in the middle of a coffee plantation I’ve been visiting for ten years now.

700 kids try to learn there every day, hungry…and ashamed.

Some children put stones in their lunch-pails to avoid being discovered as too poor to bring food from home.

For 30 cents a day per child, we could change that with a school lunch program…and guarantee attendance!

It’ll bring kids out of hard labor, cut hunger and give girls a chance to go to school – that’s three Millennium Goals covered by one lunch program.

Our new film, The Same Heart, proposes a way to pay for this kind of investment.

I can think of no better way to honor Iqbal’s memory.

Mariana Chilton (of Witnesses to Hunger, now Center for Hunger-Free Communities) and Jenny Rabinowich have published a paper on the ongoing effects of toxic stress caused by extreme poverty and violent trauma such as rape in childhood on the person’s ability to function well and support her own children in later life. Toxic Stress and Child Hunger Over the Life Course: Three Case Studies makes a persuasive case that breaking through the cycle of poverty requires a broad spectrum of assistance – not just food, but mental health counseling to heal adults scarred by hunger, neglect and abuse.

Also from Witnesses to Hunger, Tianna Gaines has a piece on the importance of general assistance, which functions as an emergency safety net for the very poor, currently under attack in Pennsylvania and nationwide.

We also have a trailer for Finding North, a documentary on hunger in the United States that screened at Sundance. You will find the social action campaign for Finding North here. It can’t hurt. Though really what’s required here is an adjustment of priorities, from paying (adult) farmworkers a living wage to expanding SNAP so that all poor children not only get enough to eat, but get enough healthy food to grow and thrive, which would also do much to grow the economy. Because we really don’t need to sequester more wealth in agribusiness.

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Petra Lent McCarron is an experienced television and film producer and editor. She co-produced Stolen Childhoods and Rescuing Emmanuel for Galen Films.

Recall that in 2009 the Department of Labor (DOL) overturned the Bush-Chao legislation signed before leaving office which allowed farmers to pay less than minimum wage to H2-A guest workers brought over to harvest. The North Carolina Growers Association and American Farm Bureau Federation then sued the Department of Labor. My first thought was, they have money for lawyers, but not to pay properly?

Farmworker housing in North Carolina © Julia Perez

In September 2011, the DOL proposed some Hazardous Orders to protect hired youth on farms. I naively wrote to Hilda Solis asking her to tackle more. Meanwhile, the Farm Bureau and others took to the media with a simple statement: the parental exemption didn’t recognize corporations as parents, and many family farms were limited liability corporations. Many submitted nostalgic comments to the DOL about working for their parents, and the importance of the 4-H programs for caring for animals. I wonder if they offer any training on how to treat workers, because we are treated like animals, maybe worse. The box-like living conditions are fit for animals, but some animals receive medical care, unlike the hired help.

Before the year’s end a multitude of both Congressmen and Senators wrote to the DOL stating essentially that corporations are parents and the orders were unnecessary. The DOL compromised by offering another opportunity for comments on the parental exemption. This wasn’t sufficient. In March 2012 a bill was introduced with a heartrending name, Preserving America’s Family Farms Act [S. 2221 and H.R. 4157]. The two page bill defends the importance of children helping on family farms but doesn’t address the injuries, fatalities and the fact that hired help are treated differently than relatives. In a brief final sentence the bill seeks to block the DOL – period. This bill prevents the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, from pulling a Bush-Chao when she leaves office.

“The Secretary of Labor shall not finalize or enforce the proposed rule entitled “Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation; Child Labor Violations-..”

The bill was introduced in both the House and Senate. I feel confident this bill will leave committee. Why? Because the sub-committee on Workforce Protections is now chaired by Tim Walberg of Michigan. On his website he states the following:

Ensure Steady Labor Supply
We also need to retain a steady labor supply for our farms, and I am working to ensure there is adequate farm labor to pick American crops. As Chairman of the Workforce Protections subcommittee, I called a hearing in September 2011 to address workforce challenges facing the agricultural industry.
Prevent Undue Regulations
-Working to prevent the implementation of a Department of Labor (DOL) rule that would prohibit youths from working on farms by sending a December 2011 letter to DOL Secretary Solis expressing my dismay at attempts to hinder family farms.

If one reads between the lines, one could infer they are counting on a new president. Why wouldn’t President Obama support his appointed Secretary of Labor? Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney misleadingly said that the Obama administration is telling farmers what they can and can’t do with their kids on a family farm. Is it safe to assume Romney would sign the bill?

After four years, I recognize the trends but still don’t know how to play the game of politics. My recent request to discuss laboring children with my state senator, John McCain, was politely declined. I later learned Senator McCain has signed on as a co-sponsor of S.2221. I’d like to tackle this issue in court but my attempts to find legal representation have failed.

Despite these trends, I’m less frustrated, because I understand that the power of one isn’t enough – it does take a village. Working on The Harvest documentary with director and human rights advocate U. Roberto Romano gave me a sense of contribution and community. We, the community who seek to protect children, can use our voices collectively. We won’t be swayed with spoon-fed one-liners and we don’t have to take to the streets. Let the DOL know we support the proposed rules. Sign a petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-dol-child-safety-rules-for-hazardous-work-on-farms-will-save-lives-we-need-them-now

Let’s write to the Senators and Congressmen who co-sponsored the Preserving America’s Family Farm bill and let them know we, the hired help, vote and deserve equal protection for our children.

The full list for the Senate and House is available at:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s2221

or http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4157

Julia Perez is an electrical engineer and writer. She is currently writing Among the Forgotten, which describes the behind-the-scenes challenges of filming The Harvest/La Cosecha.

General Assistance helps the most vulnerable of our state. The program serves the disabled, recovering addicts, domestic violence survivors, caregivers for the elderly and disabled, and children living with an unrelated adult. Those who qualify for GA are not covered by TANF or other cash assistance programs. When GA goes away, there will be no other program to absorb them. These Pennsylvanians will inevitably fall through cracks of the “safety net” programs that are meant to help citizens who can’t help themselves due to difficult circumstances.

And this safety net of about $205 a month is a necessary crutch for qualifying individuals. With that money, disabled and sick adults can pay for their food and basic amenities. Domestic violence victims can leave their abusers. Caregivers can be supported as they care for a loved one.

Cutting GA will only strengthen the cycle of hardship its recipients try so hard to break. Rather than rising out of their need for cash assistance, former GA recipients will fall further into the entanglements of poverty. They will be forced to make life-changing choices, such as, do I buy groceries this week, or do I pay my rent? Do I stay with my abuser, or do I go to a homeless shelter?

Studies show that these choices in poverty lead to much higher rates of depression. One in seven Americans below the poverty line is suffering from depression. This staggering number becomes even more alarming when you take into consideration depression’s correlation with risky behaviors. Crime rates will rise and our prisons will continue to fill to capacity. Struggling adults and parents will pack the shelters or become homeless. The elderly will have no choice but to enter state nursing homes. Ultimately, we as a state will pay far more to keep people sane and safe than to keep GA on the budget. This policy will affect every Pennsylvania resident, not just the poor.

There is no doubt that Pennsylvania must have a balanced budget. But how does cutting GA help anyone? The people on GA do not wish to be on this program. But they have been dealt a bad hand of cards and use GA to stay stable and keep trying for a better life. When recipients finally become eligible for Social Security benefits, the Department of Public Welfare is reimbursed for GA out of the disability payments. The government actually gets the money back that they are temporarily loaning out to the vulnerable in our state. And now, the governor and his team are taking that little bit of help, that little bit of hope away, and keeping their neediest residents in their already desperate conditions.

General Assistance is not the place for a budget cut. Rather than improve the state’s overall fiscal health, cutting GA only enables the poor to keep getting poorer.

So while our legislature decides whether or not to pass this proposition, I’m going to try to help my friend get her power chair, and pray that some compassion floods the minds and hearts of our state government. And I am going to encourage every single person reading this to go out and vote this November to speak up for the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable, who keep getting neglected by this administration.

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by Tianna Gaines and Lili Dodderidge
Tianna Gaines is one of the original members of Witnesses to Hunger (now the Center for Hunger-Free Communities). This blog first appeared on the Center for Hunger-Free Communities website.

Children recruited by Islamist group Al-Shabaab in a training camp west of Mogadishu © Private 2011

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report based on these interviews with Somali children fleeing the Al-Shabaab press gangs. No Place for Children paints an ugly picture of children hunted in schools, on playgrounds, on street corners. There is literally no place to hide from your friendly neighborhood Al-Shabaab recruiter. HRW is careful to point out that all parties to the extremely complicated conflict in Somalia have used children. But there is a significant difference between failing to check the age of recruits, as has happened a number of times in the Transitional Federal Government forces, and trolling through schools to abduct this month’s quota of cannon fodder.

I tried to refuse, but I couldn’t. I just had to go with them [Al-Shabaab]. If you refuse, maybe sometime they come and kill you or harm you, so I just went with them. One of my friends who was older than me, they came and started with him as they did to me and he refused, and they left him, but another day they found him on the street and shot him.

14-year-old boy, Kenya, 2011

How widespread is this? According to a report by the UN secretary general’s office, military sources estimate that 2000 kids were abducted in Somalia in 2010. The International Labour Organisation defines the worst forms of child labor as work that causes physical, mental or moral damage. Al-Shabaab often uses kids to reel in other kids, with promises of cash, cell phones, or simply an invitation to play soccer.

Two of my classmates, who I later realized were working with Al-Shabaab, ages 16 and 18, had written our names down on a list to form a football team. The next day we went along to a field to play, thinking that another team would come along, but when we arrived at the field, Al-Shabaab arrived instead…They took 16 of us between the ages of 10 and 16.

14-year-old boy from Mogadishu, Kenya, 2011

The former child soldiers report being used as human shields, sent in front of the adult fighters in battle. The fate of the girls who are abducted from school and forced to join Al-Shabaab is even more awful, if that’s possible. As part of a general policy to institute Sharia law, girls picked up by Al-Shabaab are forcibly married to Al-Shabaab fighters. There are numerous accounts of girls being killed because they tried to resist. A teacher describes one such Al-Shabaab raid on a school in which the girls were lined up and several selected as brides. The day after that, the teacher says, one hundred fifty girls dropped out of school. Mission accomplished.

I can’t leave this topic without commenting on the kerfuffle about the Invisible Children Kony 2012 video, which at the time of this writing, has had 70,624,061 views. Predictably, there have been some snarky critiques of Invisible Children, having to do with finances and a general sense that they’re just too good at self-promotion to be on the side of the angels. Here’s what I think about this.

I think any initiative that calls attention to LRA is good. The movie is well done, and bless them! They’ve succeeded in piercing the general complacency where people read a news story, go tsk tsk and move on. Are there other forces using kids in conflicts? Sure! But Kony is egregious and needs to be stopped, and I’m all for whatever makes that happen. I also think that Invisible Children may succeed in starting a habit of engagement in a lot of young people, and that’s all to the good. So what if they spend a lot of money on the videos? That’s what these things cost, and truly, it’s an achievement to get that many people to look at a campaign video. The more common thing is for videos like that to have an audience in the low thirties…including, sadly, quite a few of our best efforts.

Also this week, we have a very valuable report on the ominously high rate of disappearances of young girls (and some boys) in Jamaica, Missing and Exploited Children in Jamaica, by Dr. Lorna E. Grant.

Brittany Bailey, missing since February 14th

The number of children gone missing has risen so dramatically, that the National Consumers League has sent a letter to the US State Department recommending that Jamaica be made a priority for funding initiatives to fight child trafficking. One very sensible suggestion that would not be very costly was to equip Jamaican schools with digital cameras, so that all Jamaican children can be photographed annually. (The lack of a current photograph makes finding a missing child even harder than it would otherwise be). The NCL also recommends putting Jamaica on a Tier 2 watchlist in the upcoming Traffic in Persons report, as a country that is working to bring itself into compliance, but is showing an increase in the absolute numbers of trafficked persons. See also the Jamaica Country Profile from the 2010 US Department of Labor report on the worst forms of child labor.

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Petra Lent McCarron is an experienced television and film producer and editor. She co-produced Stolen Childhoods and Rescuing Emmanuel for Galen Films.