Welcome to our New Website
Today we are excited to introduce sweeping updates and additions to our web site, intended to give our users the tools they need to effectively advocate for children at home and around the world.
The mission of Media Voices remains unchanged, ten years after our founding.
We believe in the world described in the Convention of the Rights of the Child, a Declaration our government steadfastly refuses to ratify, which imagines a world without child labor, forced labor or child trafficking. We work to implement real action to the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals. We follow the Bachpan Bachao Andolan Child Friendly Communities model, where opportunities for girls to go to school and play leading roles in their communities are encouraged. We fight for a world where the poor, the powerless and the innocent don't pay the price for our lifestyles as victims of sweatshops and climate change.
Today, the average U.N. appeal for funds for refugee assistance, hunger and preventable disease hovers around 13%. At Media Voices we want to see more resources committed to address the impacts of global inequality on children. We see an answer in a Financial Transaction Tax, a tiny tax on all financial transactions, levied principally on the global financial sector.
One in two children, lacks one of the basics of life - food, medicine, clean water, access to education, housing, sanitation, basic security and human dignity. This year, 160 million will labor as cogs in the global economy. Thirty million children are displaced by war and conflict, while six million are trafficked into forced labor and prostitution. The figures are exhausting, and yet I am reminded of something Archbishop Desmond Tutu told me 15 years ago, "Don't think of them as figures on a page, these children are flesh and blood, imagine the face of a child you love, imagine your own child".
In 1996, Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, set out on the Global March to End Child Labor. Over the past two decades, this campaign has seen child labor cut by almost 40%. To mobilize the effects of compassion, to finish the work of ending child labor, child abuse and neglect and human trafficking in our lifetimes, we need information, the force of law and public opinion, the economic power of consumers, and the tools to match to our convictions.
And so with this newly designed web site, we offer the tools you need to play your role in this war to make child labor obsolete. Teachers can find the entire history of this movement in our documents library. We will name and spotlight the supply chains, the good guys and the bad guys. We offer those reports on how children fare at home and around the world. If you are looking to take action, we list campaigns and pending legislation that need your support.
We hope you will use this site to deepen your understanding and involvement and join us in this work to create a fairer world for all children.