16 April, International Day against Child Slavery. No Longer Slaves, but Brothers and Sisters

What is there behind a label that says "dress for 9€" or "unbeatable prices"? What is there behind a toy, or a pair of shoes, or a mobile phone, or an ad for cosmetics, or behind certain brands…? Let’s have a look behind these labels, these prices, this publicity... They hide the sweat and blood of the slaves of the 21st century. Child slaves are present in every sector of the economy, where the human being itself is regarded as a throw-away commodity.

Murdered on 16th April 1995, in Pakistan, 

when he was 12. [1983-1995]

Testimony of true activist and solidarity trade-unionism.

On 16 April, it was the anniversary of IQBAL MASIH’s murder (1995-2015), a Christian non-violent militant for Justice in the fight against Child Slavery in the world. 

In commemoration of his death, the 16th April is the INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST CHILD SLAVERY, and rallies, different events, street actions and solidarity marches against child slavery were held in Spain and Latin America

On 16 April 1995, a child slave, Iqbal Masih, was murdered in Pakistan because he fought against child slavery. 

Every day we can find products made by enslaved children, in our homes, in our streets, in shopping malls, in our consumption. At present, millions of children breath the smoke of rubbish landfills, they risk their lives as pearl divers, they work in the mines to get the minerals for our cosmetics or for new technologies, they are kidnapped to become child soldiers, they live amidst bullets and rapes in the streets, they are used for the trade in human organs, in brothels, in sweatshop... Children who have been deprived of their childhood and education. Children who are subjugated, enslaved, humiliated.

Sold to the Sea

Human Trafficking at Sea

ETCHINGS ON THE WALL IN THE ROOM WHERE TRAFFICKING VICTIMS WERE HELD:
“Don’t think too much about life. It cannot be destroyed so easily.”
“Let’s fight together.”
“No matter the rain is heavy; even it may dissolve a mountain; my love will survive.”
“Let’s pass through the difficult journey.”
“You are on your own in Thailand.”

See video:

Click on this link to read and download the Complete PDF Report 

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi.

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

                                              Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

Some outstanding extract:

"We have utterly failed in imparting an education to our children. An education that gives the meaning and objective of life and a secure future. An education that builds a sense of global citizenship among the young people."

"Solutions are not found only in the deliberations in conferences and prescriptions from a distance. They lie in small groups and local organisations and individuals, who confront the problem every day, even if they remain unrecognised and unknown to the world."

"You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a story I remember from my childhood: A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?” To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire.” He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?” The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit.”

Malala Yousafzai Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Nobel Lecture

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norweigan Nobel Committee,

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me.

I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth- which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam.  And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.

Lesson Plan for The Help (2011) "Criadas y Señoras" -in Spanish-

Told through the point of view of three different women living in Jackson, Mississippi, The Help chronicles events from late summer of 1962 through 1964. Skeeter Phelan, who has just graduated from Ole Miss, returns home to the family plantation, ambitious to become a writer.

Taking the advice of a New York editor to hone her skills, Skeeter begins to write a column for the local newspaper while searching for a topic that she truly cares about. 

Missing her beloved childhood family maid and confronted by the overt racism of her friend Hilly Holbrook’s campaign to require a separate bathroom for the black help, Skeeter proposes to write about the lives of the black maids in Jackson. Knowing she will need to interview black maids to tell their stories but without realizing the danger of what she is asking, Skeeter approaches Aibileen, the maid of one of her close friends.

With an increasing sense of bitterness at the injustice of her situation, Aibileen agrees to help, and later recruits Minny and eventually other maids. As they work on this project to tell their true stories, including stories of the prejudice and injustice that the maids experience in their everyday lives, a close relationship develops between Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. The three women come to confront and resist the intimidation experienced daily by the black maids. Woven throughout the stories are the key events of these seminal years of the civil rights movement.

Click to see futher information on the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

For an overview of the Civil Right Movement and the conditions of black people living in America, students can visit the following pages:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#events-1960

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/index.html

https://hunniebrown.wordpress.com/lynching-in-america/

Address the following topics to help students add to their background knowledge: 

1. Where did most Afroamericans live?

2. What was the Second Great Migration that occurred between 1940-1970?

3. Why did coloured people move to the North in such numbers?

4. What kinds of work were typical for coloured people in the South? Why?

5. What were the Jim Crow laws?

6. How did this affect the daily lives of coloured people, especially in the South?

7. What violence or threat of violence affected them?

8. What was their response? How did they resist the violence of racism?

While watching the film

The Help (2011) "Criadas y Señoras" -in Spanish-

"The Help" - Criadas y Señoras (in Spanish) (2011) 146 mins.  

Drama  

An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

Director: Tate Taylor
Writers: Tate Taylor (screenplay), 

Kathryn Stockett (novel)

Stars: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer 

The Help received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress for Davis, Best Supporting Actress for Chastain, and a win for Best Supporting Actress for Spencer. On January 29, 2012, the film won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Follow this link to see Lesson Plan on the film

See the Trailer

Kailash Satyarthi’s Nobel Peace Prize: Decades of Fighting Child Slavery in India

Kailash Satyarthi: “The people from everywhere in the world should feel, number one, that slavery’s bad, that exploitation of children is bad, it has to go, and, secondly, they should have a belief that it is possible, it is happening, it is not that it is very pessimistic and say: oh they are poor, they are poor countries and that thing could happen. It is not true. Poor people, poor countries can bring about change, and it is happening here. So, they should have a belief that the change is possible, that we can make a better world to live in, and that will happen.”

Article from The New York Times

Oct. 10, 2014

NEW DELHI — Many years have passed, but a police chief named Amitabh Thakur can remember the precise moment when he first set eyes on Kailash Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Mr. Satyarthi was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head, while a group of men converged on him with bats and iron rods. They worked for the Great Roman Circus, which was illegally employing teenagers trafficked from Nepal as dancing girls. Mr. Satyarthi, a Gandhian activist in a simple white cotton tunic, had come to free them.

As he approached the scene, the chief realized he was interrupting a savage beating.

“I remember that when I reached this man, he was rather composed,” Mr. Thakur said. “I was very impressed, for the simple reason that a man was putting his life in danger for a noble cause.”

Mr. Satyarthi is not an international celebrity like 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, with whom he is sharing the prize. Instead, he has labored for three decades to shave away at the numbingly huge problem of child slavery in India, using undercover operatives and camera crews to find the airless workrooms and mine shafts where children were being kept.

The circus raid was a reminder of the factors that converge in favor of employers using bonded labor in India: caste differences, religious differences, political and economic leverage. About 28 million children ages 6 to 14 are working in India, according to Unicef. Mr. Satyarthi’s organization, called Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, is credited with freeing some 70,000 of them. In 1994, he started Rugmark, now GoodWeave International, in which rugs are certified to have been made without child slavery.

Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Prize Speech

Malala Yousafzai

Born: 12 July 1997, Mingora, Pakistan
Residence at the time of the award:United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education"

17-year-old Malala Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work promoting young people's rights. Here she is, accepting the prrize. 

‘UBUNTU’: “I am because we are”

An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first would win the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: ”UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are”.

 "Ubuntu is nothing more or less than compassion brought into colourful practice."

"Ubuntu is a concept that is present here in Africa but I also believe it is present in every human being if it is allowed to thrive and prosper."

Lesson Plan for the Film: Elysium

Elysium’s takes place in 2154 in a devastated Los Angeles.  Max -the hero- is now a man, but through flashes back to his childhood, we can learn he was an orphan raised by nuns alongside a girl named Frey, who remains his love-interest throughout his life.  Max has a checkered past -he’s a reformed thief, trying to scratch out a living among the rest of his poor peers on Earth.  They live in the shadow of Elysium, a utopian, wealthy and privileged world, devoid of illness, which shimmers in the sky like beacon, always visible but impossible to reach.

The film has many logical flaws and will not get points for originality. However, it has lots of strong sci-fi violence and teens will love it. The plot is very easy to follow and the film can be used to deal with and analyze topics such as migration, frontiers, the role of countries that do the dirty work and keep migrants far away from the first world (Kruger), injustice, poverty, bravery… Then, I believe it can be a good educational film and resource.

Clik to see further info. about the film

ACTIVITIES

Before watching the film

Click on the link: 

See the pictures, read the extracts of the news and answer the questions.

Lesson Plan for the Documentary Film: The Corporation

ACTIVITIES:

The following: Material for the Teacher also includes additional questionnaires to be used with the students to practise vocabulary and ensure their better understanding of the documentary.

A. BEFORE WATCHING THE FILM

1.  Ask students if they know what a corporation is. Providing examples can help them with their reply.  (Brief talk with the class)

What is a Corporation?

It is a very large usually diversified firm that meets certain legal requirements to be recognized as having a legal existence, as an entity, it is separate and distinct from its owners. Corporations are owned by their stockholders (shareholders) who share in profits and losses generated through the firm's operations, and have three distinct characteristics 

(1) Legal existence: a firm can (like a person) buy, sell, own, enter into a contract, and sue other persons and firms, and be sued by them. It can do good and be rewarded, and can commit offence and be punished.

(2) Limited liability: a firm and its owners are limited in their liability to the creditors and other obligors only up to the resources of the firm.

(3) Continuity of existence: a firm can live beyond the life spans and capacity of its owners, because its ownership can be transferred through a sale or gift  of shares.

2.  Divide the students into six teams. Allocate one questionnaire to each group. There are six questionnaires:

1.THE NATURE OF THE CORPORATION
2.BRANDING AND MARKETING TO KIDS
3.ETHICS AND VALUES & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
4.CORPORATIONS AND GOVERNMENT. REGULATION & DEMOCRACY
5.LABOUR
6.SELLING THE COMMONS

CLICK HERE to see questionnaires

3.  Tell students to read the questions and write useful notes in order to be able to answer them while they are watching the film.

B. WATCH THE FILM

1.  Give each group some copies of the file “Who is Who” for them to know who the speakers in the documentary are.

"The Corporation" Documentary Film

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

The film was nominated for over 26 international awards, and won the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, 2004, along with a Special Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2003 and 2004.

Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics - including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Teaching Resources: CLICK HERE to see Lesson Plan on the Documentary Film

Philadelpian Mill Children March Against Child Exploitation

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, at the turn of the century in states like Alabama, the official percentage of male child slavery was close to 60%. Moreover, a contemporary New York Times article reported that due to deliberate employer underestimation, the number of child “workers” was most likely between 2 and 3 million. As the children of the wealthy were receiving ever more education, with many, consequently, taking until twenty-six and twenty-eight to enter into their professions, the children of the working class were increasingly being sought as cheap labor for sweatshops.

In 1903, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, a prominent socialist and labor organizer, traveled to Kensington, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time, between 75,000 and 125,000 textile workers were striking for better pay and a fifty-five-hour workweek. According to Mother Jones, at least ten thousand of the strikers were children.

Mother Jones was distraught by the condition of the children she met. Some were missing fingers and thumbs, others were missing entire hands, and many looked malnourished. Though state law prohibited children from working before the age of twelve, the law was poorly enforced and mothers routinely lied about the ages of their children because they were in desperate need of income and many had husbands who had been killed or maimed in the mines. According to these mothers, “it was a question of starvation or perjury.”

With more than 120,000 officially reported child slaves, most of whom were employed in coal mining or manufacturing, Pennsylvania employed the most children of any state in the nation. What’s more, at that time 1,161,524 children were officially enrolled in Pennsylvania schools, but average daily attendance was only 847,445, leaving 314,079 children unaccounted for. But Mother Jones knew where these children were, slaving at the mines and factories. Furthermore, one investigation reported that the average hours of labor for children in Pennsylvania was approximately eleven hours a day and sixty hours a week for compensation of about $2.50 a week (equivalent to the purchasing power of about $60 in 2010). Many children worked sixty-five hours a week, and in some towns, children were required to work as much as fifteen hours a day, from 6 am to 9 pm, with just a half hour for lunch and a half hour for dinner.

When Mother Jones inquired as to why the newspapers neglected to report the facts about child labor in Pennsylvania, she was informed that the employers of those children had stock in the newspapers. Her response: “Well, I’ve got stock in these little children and I’ll arrange a little publicity.”

On 7 July, the 65-year-old Mother Jones organized a group of nearly two hundred laborers, including dozens of juvenile mill workers, to march to New York in order to raise funds in support of the striking textile workers and bring attention to the injustices of child slavery.

Lesson Plan for the Movie: "The Hunger Games"

Only for the educator: 

Click on the link for general Information about the film: 

Hunger Games Glance

ACTIVITIES:

A. BEFORE WATCHING THE FILM

The Hunger Games is set in a future dystopia.

What is a dystopia?

Click on the link to do the activity: Dystopian Fiction

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek) anti-utopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state which seems to be ideal. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity's spiritual evolution. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens.

B. WATCH THE FILM

C. AFTER WATCHING THE FILM

The Hunger Games Questionnaire:

Activity #1 – Justice in Panem

1. What are District’s people’s lives like? Why is the film called “The Hunger Games"? What rights do people not have?

2. How are violence and threats used to oppress the people of Panem? What does oppression (the mistreatment or exploitation) demonstrated by Panem as the dominant group in society over the citizens of the districts look like, feel like and sound like?

These themes will re-emerge in Activity 2.

3. Click on the link to do the activity: District 12

SYP’s 2014 Solidarity March throughout Spain

Marching as a sign of protest has served to empower those who are victims of injustice. Solidarity Youth Path’s 2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH throughout Spain in the second fortnight of July 2014 means to side with the over 400 million children who are victims of slavery, with the over 1,600 million adults who are unemployed, with those millions of people worldwide who suffer exploitation…

We challenge every person aiming for a just society to take part in this initiative. If you cannot march with us, during those days you can support our march by carrying out local actions to raise awareness of the CAUSES of Child Slavery and Unemployment.  

We have already started Preliminary Actions in Spain over the course of 2013 year, during SYP’s summer camps in July in Spain and on 27^th August in the streets of London: statues representing Child Slavery in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, a drama in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral: the testimony of Iqbal Masih’s life – a child slave who fought against child slavery, and statues standing for Aggressions to Youth in Leicester Square.

Indifference makes us accomplices!