Mission Statment, Topic Explantion & History

My childhood so far has been pretty "normal", or what most people consider "normal". I go to a normal school, live with my normal parents, and always have food to eat. Some say this is just what everybody has and that it is pretty normal. The truth of the fact is, millions of kids all over the world get raised not even knowing their parents and having to work long hours, that pay little to no money. Majority of these children have unsafe jobs where they get verbally harassed by their bosses or even physically and sexually assaulted. We have to stop ignoring this issue and take action so that one day every child in the world can grow up in a safe and loving environment.

My blog is going to be focusing on child labour in Brazil. I’m making this blog to raise awareness of child labour in general and in Brazil. I am hoping that I can make a change for the better in this world no matter how small. Child labour is when children are forced to work crazy hours in unsafe environments for either no pay or very little pay. I’m going to be covering many subtopics such as the history, the meaning of being a global citizen, people and things making the issue worse, the people involved, and many more. There are many misconceptions of what child labour is and to be honest we will never know the full extent of the horrors that these kids go through each and every day. Some people think it’s just kids having to sweep things or clean the dishes but in reality these kids are getting taken away from their parent to do jobs meant for adults and are even at the risk of getting sexually harassed. These kids get deprived of their educations and childhood and a lot of the time they might even lose their lives…

 Child labour in Brazil goes back all the way to the 1600's, the oldest reported child labour was when the people of Brazil were sailing towards the land of Santa Cruz. Back then, 9 years old was the age for when boys were allowed to work and 15 was the age for females to get married. About 22% of the people who were working on that ship were anywhere between 9-15 years old. Jumping a little bit in time into the 1800's, the Paraguay war was going on and the navy was recruiting children as young as age 9, training them to fight and use weapons. They would end up shipping these kids to war. It is estimated that during that period of time there was at least 1470 minors enlisted in the navy. At around the same time as this was going on, Brazil had slavery. The children of the slaves would usually either be sold to a different owner away from their parents or made to do jobs that were above their physical ability. A hundred years later Brazil became industrialized and like a lot of other countries, greedy factory owners would find any way to save themselves money. In this case minors were not protected by law which meant that they could pay them really low wages and get away with it. So that's exactly what they did and that brings us to the present.