Tuesday, May 30, 2006

child slavery

Here is some shocking information that I have found out about child slavery (labour). Children as young as 5 [ :o ] are involved!

There is an estimated 246 million children engaged in child labour in the world. Of those children, almost 171 million work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, and hidden from view in plantations.

Millions of girls work as domestic servants and unpaid household help and are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Millions of others work under horrific circumstances. 1.2 million may be trafficked, 5.7 million forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery, 1.8 million into prostitution and pornography, 0.3 million into participating in armed conflict and 0.6 million are participating in other illicit activities. However, the vast majority of child labourers (70 per cent or more) work in agriculture.

A girl working in the reconstruction effort carries a tile on her head in the city of Choluteca, Honduras.

Different regional estimates indicate that:

* The Asian and Pacific regions harbour the largest number of child workers in the 5 to 14 age group, 127.3 million in total. (19 per cent of children work in the region.)
* Sub-Saharan Africa has an estimated 48 million child workers. Almost one child in three below the age of fifteen works.
* Latin America and the Caribbean have approximately 17.4 million child workers. In fact, 16 per cent of children work in the region.
* Fifteen per cent of children work in the Middle East and North Africa.
* Approximately 2.5 million children are working in industrialized and transition economies.

I was blessed (lucky) to be born in New Zealand (a developed country), where child labour doesn’t exist, would somebody please tell this to my parents though. ;)

Friday, May 19, 2006

World Vison – Walk The World

Date: May 21, 2006
Where: Alexandra Park Raceway
Greenlane West
Auckland
Time: 10am - 12.30pm
What: A fun, family-friendly 5km walk through Cornwall Park, to show your support for the fight against child hunger. There'll be entertainment and food after the walk, and plenty of opportunities to donate to this worthy cause.

Registration: FREE!

Just turn up on the day with your friends and family and join in.
Fundraise:
* Get sponsored and make your walk really count!
* Collect donations prior to the event and put them in the donation buckets on the day.
* Email/text this URL "rampant.co.nz/walktheworld" to your friends, family, workmates and ask them to donate online by credit card.
* Collect cheques payable to World Vision New Zealand and put them in the plastic buckets on the day or post to:
Walk the World
World Vision
Private Bag 92078
Auckland

Its this weekend, so it might be to late to fundraise, but if you can it would be great!

Hope

Friday, May 12, 2006

another fair trade post :) - a just world

Fair Trade Chocolate

Ask a person about their favourite sweet thing to eat, and they’ll probably say its chocolate.

People all around the world love chocolate.

They love it so much that EVERY year they eat more chocolate than any other sweet.

But this is bad news for the people that produce the cacao beans (cocoa beans). Every year major chocolate companies like Cadburys and Nestlé get cacao beans at cheap prices. This leaves the farmers with almost no money whatsoever for their production and to provide for their families. But there is a way out of poverty for the cacao farmers. That way out is through fairer trade practises.

Most chocolate is full of guilt, about mine (and yours!) continued oppression of the third world. You should make every purchase thinking about what you would buy if the labels told you how much the person suffered to make it and stuff like that. If we think about purchasing things in a fair way, I’m sure more people would be rushing toward fair trade products and organic produce.

Fair trade on Close Up!

On Monday night, I watched a section on Close Up about fair trade chocolate and coffee etc. I learned the following:-

With fair trade the people get $600 from their cocoa beans, but people who didn’t get paid fair prices get $44 - $158 per year.

In England Co-op had a 20% increase in sales when they swapped their name-brand coffee, tea and chocolate products entirely to fair trade products.

4% of starbucks coffee is fair trade, and Esquires is totally (100%) fair trade.

Fair trade is guilt free shopping. We need to put more thought into what we are buying.

Fair Trade is the trading alternative for a just world.

Hope

Space Pontiff


Race,
In space,
with Trace*,
End Case


* shortened version of the name Tracey

enjoy a fair cuppa

You can enjoy fair trade coffee or tea this weekend. Take a look at the website linked in the picture above. Pop down to your local tradeaid shop for a free Fair Cuppa!

Personally, I don't drink coffee and tea, but if I did I would drink only Fair Trade. :)

read family home school **NEW BLOG**

My mum has started a new blog so that we can showcase some of the things we have done in our home schooling. At the moment there is only one post - a story written by my sister Briahna, aged 6, but we hope to post some of my own work there soon. :)

Take a look, you can click on above picture to get to the blog...