Reflection Post

Global issues have an impact on everyone in the same way; this statement would not be true what so ever around 50-100 years ago but today in this world filled with so much technology it is 100% true.  Since child labour In Brazil is a global issue this means that it impacts everybody including us here in Canada.  An example of this would be with people just having kids.  When people have kids it raises the global population which means more consumers resulting in more people buying the things made with child labour in Brazil.

Everybody is capable of contributing to a positive change which in this case is with child labour. Nobody is saying to stop having kids because it would be very extreme. There are little things that you could do to help such as buying fair trade or researching the products before you get them. Just by doing this little thing could potentially save a kid from a life of physical and sexual harassment. You would also be giving them a chance to live with their parents and to get an education so they can prepare for their futures.

Every small action can result in a huge change, how might you say? Well let’s say for example that I decide to donate $1 to a charity even if that doesn’t seem like it could help a whole lot, it does.  If the whole population of Canada also donate 1 dollar that would mean that we would be donating a total of about 37 million dollars! That’s insane! So next time you’re at a grocery store and they ask you to donate a dollar for a random charity go for it because it helps a lot more than you think.

Every problem, not just global and local issues require a logical well thought out plan to solve. You can’t just jump into a random issue and think that you can solve it. That is why one of the most efficient ways to help is by simply supporting NGOs. These NGOs are well thought out organizations that are professionally done so you can be sure that your money is going to a good use. An example of this would be with the ALS ice bucket challenge that happened earlier this year. That organization made a viral trend (their plan) which ended up with millions and millions of dollars being donates to the cause.

How do we balance the worlds need for resources and products with the protection of the people and the environment?  Well there are many different ways that we could accomplish this but the first one that pops into my mind would have to be fair trade. This organization does this exact thing they make sure that we consumers get all the things that we need. They do this while ensuring that the people who made the product are being paid fairly and get the benefits that they deserve. They also make sure that the factories where the products are being produced are being efficient so that they hurt the environment as little as possible.

Who should be responsible for solving child labour in Brazil the government, corporations, or individuals? In my opinion I believe it should be the government even though the corporations and individuals are the one who are making the problem worse the government is the only one that has enough power to change it quickly. The government could very easily put a law in place stating that we can only buy materials from Brazil if they are made using no child labour. If they made this law it would encourage companies in Brazil to get approved by fair trade so that they could sell to Canada. Just by doing this it would dramatically lower the child labour rates in Brazil.

Globally, have things changed for the better or remained the same over the past few decades? I would defiantly say that they have changed for the better. Now unlike a couple of decades ago our technology has improved drastically. With this new technology our world is a lot more connected. For example around 30 years ago I doubt anybody was ever talking about how child labour was happening in Brazil or anywhere else in the world. Now though since we have this technology we can actually have a chance to help with these issues. This is why we see these child labour rates dropping over the last couple of years. Even though some things are getting better there is always room for improvements and we should never stop supporting these issues. Thank you for reading my blog! 

My Plan to Help

During my life I have always been taught that if you want people to do the things that you are asking you are going to need to lead by example. So for this post I have prepared a plan to help that I am going to share with all of you. This is what I am going to do in my everyday life to try and improve the conditions for the children in Brazil that are involved in child labour. Firstly, as I have talked about many times before I will defiantly try to buy both more fair trade items and/or local products. I will also strongly encourage my friends and family to do the same. I will keep researching the problem in hopes that I keep finding newer and better ways to help out with the issue and also just to find out if the problem is getting better or worse. I would also like to raise awareness for the issue whether it’s through this blog, on my social media, to friends, or even on the local newspaper. As I get older and get a job I would like to donate some of the extra money that I would have to different NGOs and charities that are involved in child labour in Brazil or child labour in general all over the world. As I did this blog it really got me interested in the topic and continues to encourage me to actually want change to happen. It’s really unfair that I get to live with my parents and have no worries other than getting good marks and doing well in sports while some kids spend their whole days working atrocious hours just so they can have food on the table…  I will always keep this in mind to remind me to follow my plan and hopefully actually make a change no matter how small. 

  

Getting Involved

So as you read through this blog you are probably wondering how you could help out with this cause and hopefully contribute to putting an end to child labour. Well, there are a lot of different ways that you could help out one the ways that I’ve been stressing throughout most of my blog is to simply try to always buy fair trade products. This method is very simple and produces great results but let’s talk about something new that you might not know about. You could always donate to groups that specialize in stopping child labour for example The Abrinq foundation. I would recommend this one in general because unlike a lot of the NGOs that fight child labour this one focuses on just Brazil instead of the whole world. In one of my previous posts I go more in-depth about this NGO and even leave a link to their website so that you have the option of donating and learning more about them. Even just raising awareness and informing people about the issue helps. Some of the ways you could do that is by simply sharing my blog on your social media or friends. You could also just mention it while talking to people just to get the word around. Lastly, instead of buying items from Brazil try to buy more local not only does this help grow your community but is usually more healthy for you and is way more fresh since it doesn’t have to travel across the world. When you can’t buy things locally or with fair trade just do a quick background on the company to ensure that they produce things fairly and pay their workers a decent wage. Lastly on a more extreme case you could volunteer with groups such as the Abrinq foundation or Save the Children and actually go down to Brazil and physically help out with the problems. This option is very extreme no one is asking you to do this but if you feel strongly enough about this issue then go for it!       

           

How Canada is Involved

Everyone in the world is involved together in one way or another. This means that Canada has to be somehow involved in the child labour that is happening in Brazil. How though? You might ask. Well, there are both good and bad ways, people living in Canada have the option to buy fair trade products. This basically means that the product that they are purchasing has been made using no child labour and the people who have made it were paid properly. The problem is that these products tend to cost more than their competitors; the price discourages the buyers and causes them to just buy whatever is cheapest or the buyers just don’t know if what their buying is made fairly or not. For example a poll was done to 1,007 Canadians asking if they knew where the items they bought came from and 82% of them said that they didn’t and never bothered checking.  Majority of the citizens are guilty of this including me but it think we should try to be ethical and pay that little bit of extra money and do our research so that in result we can help out the children that are being taken advantage off. There are other ways that Canada is involved with child labour and one of them is the amount of things we buy off of Brazil. In 2013 Canada bought around 3.5 billion dollars in exports from Brazil. With that huge of an amount of products there is no way that everything was background checked to make sure it was made fairly. As long as countries like Canada keep buying such huge amounts from countries like Brazil without checking where it comes from child labour is going to keep going.      

Challenges Involved

There are tons and tons of challenges involved in child labour especially in Brazil. Some of these kids get taken from their parents and homes at very young ages, They work jobs that they are not suited to do, and worst of all they don’t get an education which really puts a limit and barrier on what they are able to do in their futures, if they even get to that age.

The first challenge and one of the worst ones in my eyes is the fact that they get taken away from their homes at such young ages. The parents are forced by the employers to give them their kids knowing that they will most likely never get to see them again. How do they force them you might be wondering? Well, the parents a lot of the time are very poor and have no money to buy food to feed their kids; so, they give them up in hopes that they can at least get food and shelter because otherwise their just going to starve. In other more extreme cases the children are kidnapped to never be found again. Here in Canada when someone is kidnapped the police conduct many searches and investigations until they find the kid whereas in Brazil, the crime system is very corrupt and the rate of crime is way too high to be controllable so these kids don’t even get looked for…

Here in Canada when you get a job there are laws put in place to make sure that everyone that works is of a certain age, get the proper training, and get a safety course. Even though Brazil has a lot of these same laws they are rarely followed especially when child labour is happening. These kids usually have to work with things that require a lot of physical strength which they don’t have because; they are getting fed very poorly. On top of all that, they get very severely punished by the bosses when they mess up. To make things worse there is always the chance that they could get hurt or even killed doing the job because of the lack of safety training. All of this happens with very little support from the government. These kids don’t even have the choice to quit because they are either forced or would starve and die otherwise.

Lastly, these kids don’t get an education. To me this is honestly one of the worst challenges. Not only does child labour waste the kid’s childhood but they always damage their futures. I’m the same as majority of the kids in Canada, I don’t like school but I appreciate it and understand its importance.  If these poor kids even survive until adulthood, they are not going to be able to read, write, and even do simple math. This is going to give them very little choice when it comes to what career they want to pursue. This is why I really love how there are so many organizations dedicated to building schools in these developing countries.        

Who's making it worse?

There are a ton of different factors that contribute to making child labour worse in Brazil. This can range from a whole country to even just companies. Some of the bigger things like the countries have such huge populations and aren’t fully aware that they are hurting these kids, on the other hand these massive billion dollar companies know exactly what they’re doing and can actually be okay with it! Crazy, right? Well there are two countries and one company that I want to go over and find out how they are hurting these children America, Samsung, and China.   

Let’s start off with America, in 2013 America bought 27.6 billion dollars’ worth of mineral fuel, iron and steel, machinery, and raw sugar from Brazil. There is no way that all of that material came from perfectly paid and treated workers. So I wouldn’t be surprised that a lot of the materials were made using child labour. A lot of the consumers in America that buy these things don’t do it because it’s essential but because they want it but don’t need it. Yet they still don’t care enough to do a quick search on the companies they are buying from to make sure they make it legally. So, there are NGOs that do that little extra step for you such as fair trade. Fair trade finds the best companies and leaves their seal on their products so that you know that no child labour was used when they were making it. Now all that is left is for the consumers to just spend that extra little bit of money and stop buying the cheapest things because those are usually the ones that have child labour. After all, you can’t put a price on a human life.

Secondly, were going to talk about Samsung. Samsung has a net worth of over a billion dollars yet these CEOs still want more and more so they find anyway that they can to cut down on prices. One of the ways they found was moving their factorises to developing countries where they could get away with paying their workers horrible wages, no benefits, and in extreme cases child labour. Well in 2012 a group in Brazil filed a lawsuit against Samsung because of their unfair work conditions and child labour in their factories. At the start they asked for 108 million dollars in damages but after winning the lawsuit they only ended up with $200,000. This inspired many people all over the world to notice what Samsung is doing and fight for their rights. So right now Samsung is facing accusations of child labour from china and South Korea and are most likely going to have to pay compensation to the people they hurt.

Lastly we are going to find out how China is making things worse. China is Brazil’s top exporter bringing in a total of, 41.3 billion dollars in 2013! Just like America they buy lots of raw materials, such as fossil fuel, soybeans, raw sugar, and iron & steel. Unlike America where the problem is with the consumers in China the problem is more with the producers. China manufactures millions of different products. There is a terrible cycle that china and Brazil go through china buys raw materials from Brazil which have been harvested using child labour and then goes on and turns it into whatever they need also using child labour. So if you ever buy those cheap Chinese products just know that not only are you hurting Chinese children but also majority of China’s importers including Brazilin kids.