Child Labour

Hi. my name is Jacquie and I’m in Year 6 at Caulfield South Primary School. We are doing an inquiry into the consumer system and as part of this inquiry, I chose to research into Child Labour in the Fashion Industry. I chose this issue because I know how lucky I am and I feel really bad for all the children that are forced to work.

Child Labour is where children are forced to work, often in unsafe conditions, usually to help their families earn money for their basic needs. They may be made to work for many hours a day and might not get to eat or drink for multiple days at a time. While they are working, they miss out on their education and this can make it difficult to get a job when they're older and then they continue in the poverty cycle. This can lead to the next generation of children also being forced to work. This is known as the child labour chain.

No child should have to go through any of that but millions of children do. In fact there are around 150 million child labourers worldwide. I feel so grateful that child labour is not a big issue here in Australia but it is in many developing countries. Even though there may be rules or laws in many countries that children have to go to school, they may not be enforced. For example, in Sri Lanka school is compulsory and free of charge for all children aged 5 - 13 but there are 40,000 children working as child labourers. And then in some countries, there are no rules at all to make children go to school. In Africa, for example, between 62 to 149 million children actually go to school. This is less than half of the 400 million children in Africa!

Did you know that some of the clothing that you wear could be made by children? This is because Child Labourers usually work in factories that make clothes as part of the fashion industry. They work for many hours a day, sacrificing their education and suffering to make clothing that we just throw out when it's no longer fashionable. It might sound like this isn’t our problem because it's mainly happening in developing countries and on the other side of the world. But really we are part of the problem because we are buying these items, at a rapid rate because clothing goes in and out of fashion.

This is an important issue and if we all work together then we can help stop or at least minimise child labour. If you want to help stop child labour please join me in donating to the “Global March Against Child Labour”. This is a worldwide group of organisations that work together to help eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour and make sure that all children have access to free education.