Let me tell you a horror story about the past that is also in the present. Many people do not believe in this, but I promise that it's real, even today in these changing times. Without further ado, I'll start.
Once upon a time, in a land not much different than ours, a couple of children were at work, not at play. These children had been working for 9 hours straight, with not a single break. These children, aged at just 6 years and above had been sowing the fluff into your toys for the past 9 hours. Until their frail, little fingers had fallen off, they were at work. While the rest of the world slept, they were pulling apart the fluff that goes into making pink elephant dolls. Just imagine, all of your friends, your parents, and your sibling, everyone that you care about working in a small and moldy factory to produce pink elephants to be sold to privileged kids in a different country. Everything about the factory puts intense fear into their souls; the room without windows, the smell of hundreds of kids cramped together, the clock that seemed to not change time. At times, the only break these children had was death.
This horror story happens every single day. Today, about 150 million kids aged 5-14 will be working to help support their families; 90% of these kids are girls. I've realized that without a specific rhetoric, similar to Frances Kelley, you will not get a proactive response from a crowd. It's astonishing that in countries like: Bangladesh, Thailand, Malawi, China, and Mexico, children work form the time they are able to reach the machines. This is so different from the US, where even at 16, the legal age to work, kids still have restrictions. Oh Jesus! There is still so much to fix as an international community. We must put a stop to the injustice that is child labor, but the first question is what can we as teenagers do?
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