I asked my Friend Ramendra (Ramen) to provide me a few words for our communication page of Dec 2004 - Jan 2005. These are supposed to be festive days for most Children of the world of all religious denominations. Unfortunately, this is not true for many - many kids across the globe. As you will see below some 250 million of these children are exposed to harsh and dangerous working conditions. At the same time according to published data the 500 top billionaires have increased their assets from 1400 billions in 2003 to over 1800 billion in 2004 (yes I am talking billions here). I really wish I could find how much of that extra wealth was generated by those 250 million kids (this extra wealth amounts to 1680 US$ per child laborer in one year).

If after reading these pages you feel compelled to do something, a tiny step, in an attempt to solve this problem, please contact us by clicking here. Send us your ideas, maybe we can form one more global help network for these kids, maybe we should help individual kids….
Doing nothing is to accept defeat and we should all share the responsibility, the guilt and the shame of this global neglect.

Wishing all of you the very best for the coming season of festivity and for all of us a hope of a better future. Let us work together to save this Green Planet of ours. Let us leave it in a state that will make all our kids proud of their parents and their Friends.

Costas, your Global Friend

TODAY'S CHILD : USED, MISUSED AND ABUSED.

"Farhan Khan Shinwari starts work early, before the sun has risen over the red plains of Karkhla, 15 km east of Peshawar in Northwest Pakistan. After a meagre breakfast of tea and dry nan (leavened bread) with his brothers, he starts sprinkling water on the mound of red clay they will mix and form into bricks. All around him on the plain, hundreds of illegal Afghan migrants squat barefoot in the clay, forming bricks with their hands for less than a dollar a day. Farhan will work for 13 hours today.
Farhan is four years old.
"A nine year old boy, Sagar, was sacrificed by his superstitious grandfather on Diwali night in the hope that the ritual would ensure the safe return of his missing son. While the whole country was celebrating the 'Festival of Lights', the light was snuffed out of Sagar's life forever." The first piece is part of a feature which appeared in an issue of Time magazine sometime back while the second is a news report from Dhumka, Jharkhand, published in The Telegraph, Kolkata, India dated 20th November, 2003.

Miserable Plight

If you think the events in the life of Farhan and Sagar are isolated incidents, you are quite mistaken. The plight of the majority of children, the most vulnerable section of the society, is miserable wherever you look.
Let me take a few case studies from India:
Subbu, for instance, is employed in a factory in Sivakasi, which manufactures firecrackers. He works with hazardous chemicals whose toxic dust he inhales day after day. He works for ten to twelve hours and earns not much more than the price of a hamburger.
Or think about Irfan who works in a glass factory in Ahmedabad. It has furnaces where the temperature rises to more than 1400 degrees Celsius. And what about Venkat who rolls beedis (tobacco sticks) the whole day and will in all likelihood end up with tuberculosis by the time he reaches twenty. And then there is Meena who spends the entire day in a carpet factory on the outskirts of Lucknow, her dainty fingers moving mechanically hour after hour.
Are these names too, exceptions? No they are not. Just look around: the rag pickers who fight with dogs and pigs for pieces of scrap, the boy in the dhaba (a roadside inn) who gets beaten for spilling water, the girl who works as a maid in your neighbour's house and is thrashed for expressing the desire to learn the alphabet, the shoe shine boy in the train, the newspaper hawker at a busy traffic junction of your dazzling city and many, many more. They work for more than 12 hours a day without a break or holiday and get paid only a fraction of what an adult is paid.

In the under-developed third world countries, the median age of children who enter the work force is seven. Two years ago it was eight. Two years from now it may be six. In the lowest income group, children become labourers almost as soon as they can walk.
According to the International Labour Organization, around the world today, some 250 million boys and girls between the ages of five and 14 are exploited in hazardous work conditions. Most of these children exist in the developing world, but even in developed countries, hundreds of thousands of minor boys and girls slog for basic needs in factories, farm fields, brothels and on the street.

Children's Rights:

I don't know how many of you are aware that UNO has pronounced Ten Children's Rights. These are:

• Right to be loved.
• Right to nutritious food and good health.
• Right to education
• Right to entertainment coupled with proper physical growth.
• Right to get his/her nationality in his/her name.
• Right to get other's attention in distress.
• Right to relief in cases of natural calamities.
• Right to nurture and develop their inherent skills and abilities so as to be a useful member of the society.
• Right to nurture humanitarian values and goodwill with others.
• Right to guard against forces dividing the country on caste, religion and other grounds.

The Root Cause:

In every country, ever so often leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists and other celebrities visit slums, orphanages, jails. They distribute sweets, clothes, toys, give profound speeches, deliver sermons on the duties and responsibilities of the citizens of tomorrow. And then they go back to their cocoons of affluence and luxury leaving the children to rot.
Kids can't revolt, they can't take to the streets and most important they can't vote. So naturally no one bothers about them. They can be used, misused and abused with impunity.
So then what is the solution? Obviously, there are no quick answers.
However, I firmly believe that it is illiteracy which is the root cause of poverty and exploitation, specially in the underdeveloped and developing countries. If the poor could be given education, made to understand their rights and responsibilities they wouldn't subject their children to such torture. If they were educated they would realise the importance of small family norms. With lesser mouths to feed there would be less reason for children being sent out to contribute to the family kitty. If the poor were educated they would understand the value of education and send their children to school rather then sending them to hell holes to earn money.
Now the question comes who is going to impart this education? The government? Hardly. Everyone knows how effective the efforts of the government are in enhancing literacy in any country. We, you and I, have to chip in. We are the fortunate ones who have been given an education and it is high time we share this knowledge with those who have been denied the option of acquiring it.

Some time back the Indian Government had launched a literacy programme called 'Each One Teach One'. Even then I had liked the idea immensely, though it had failed to take off. I think this campaign should be re-launched - not by any Government but by us, you and I. In whichever part of the world we may be, if we consider ourselves the concerned and committed citizens of the world we should chip in. We should identify the illiterate in our vicinity and teach them the basics of not only the three Rs but also about hygiene and health. And by we I mean both adults as well as children. Father and daughter, mother and son can teach together and also be taught together.
This might sound simplistic to many of you. But please keep in mind that all great revolutions have begun with a simple step and eventually led to terrific results.
Gandhi, an old and frail man picked up a handful of salt, on a beach in 1931, and rang the death knell of the biggest empire in the history of human civilisation.
We too can make a small beginning. Each of us can pick up a single soul shrouded in ignorance and lead him (or her) on the well-lit path of knowledge. All it needs is a little bit of effort, a little bit of commitment and a tiny voice in our minds and hearts that will urge us on to make the lives of those around us a little better.
Only then can we hope for a world where a four year old Farhan does not have to slave for thirteen hours and a nine year old Sagar does not have to be sacrificed to Goddess Kali.
This reminds me of the immortal words of Pablo Neruda, the famous poet and Nobel Laureate:

"We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life. Many of the things we need, can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer "Tomorrow". His name is TODAY."

In conclusion I would like to share with you a poem I have written. I dedicate it to every child with the prayer that no young and innocent soul is ever denied the right to read and write.