Did You Know..?
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
Though 10 grains of rice may seem like a small amount, it is important to remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time. It is everyone together that makes the difference. FreeRice has generated enough rice to feed millions of people since it started in October 2007.
Child labour, or child labor, refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries.
According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.
Here are some images ..
Poor families often rely on the labours of their children for survival, and sometimes it is their only source of income. This type of work is often hidden away because it is not always in the industrial sector. Child labour is employed in subsistence agriculture and in the urban informal sector; child domestic work is also important. In order to benefit children, child labour prohibition has to address the dual challenge of providing them with both short-term income and long-term prospects.
According to the ILO’s latest estimates (2006), the number of child labourers fell by 11 percent globally over the past four years and the number of children in hazardous work has decreased by 26 percent. While this is encouraging, there are still 218 million child labourers worldwide, 126 million of which are engaged in hazardous work.
Unfortunately, I am unable to find the latest statistics on Child labour, however here are some statistics from “Global Child Labour Trends (2000-2004) published by International Labour Organization.(According to ILO there are 165 Million children(Age 5- 15) involved in Child Labour in year 2008)
CHILD LABOUR BY REGION
Child Labour by Region - Source ILO Copyright ILO
TIPS FOR TEENS TO HELP POOR
What can you, a teenager who doesn’t have a lot of money or resources, do to help the poor and needy?
More than you think. Most young adults are blessed with the creativity and intelligence to find ways to help others despite limited resources. Here are some tips that can perhaps start the creative process:
1. Give a portion of your allowance each week to a poor and needy person or a cause in support of them
How much is your allowance or your salary from your part-time job? Not much, you might say. The great thing about giving though is that in about 99 percent of cases, you are not restricted to how much you can give to help the poor and needy.
That means for instance, instead of dishing out a dollar a day for a can of soda from the vending machine at school or work, maybe you can save this money two days of the week. Then give this money to the Zakat and Sadaqa committee of your mosque, a poor person you know in your neighborhood, a local soup kitchen or to a worthy cause abroad.
2. Encourage your parents to pay Zakat(Giving charity and supporting the community.)
Zakat is something too many Muslims neglect. If you are eligible to give Zakat, you must pay. If you aren’t eligible, ask your parents about Zakat and if they pay, how and to whom. If they do not give Zakat, respectfully and politely emphasize to them the importance of this necessary pillar of Islam and encourage them to start paying it. Use wisdom and beautiful preaching.
3. Encourage a family Sadaqa (charity) project
Get the whole family to pitch in at least once a month to a worthy cause by organizing a family Sadaqa project. Call a family meeting (if you’ve never had one of these, this is a great time to start) and discuss your idea. Then come to an agreement on how everyone can help the poor. Whether it’s contributing a set amount a week as a group with Dad giving the money to the Masjid after Friday prayers or setting up a box somewhere in the house where family members can privately donate, you all decide.
4. Talk about it in your youth group
What are the first steps in finding solutions to problems? Dua (supplication) then brainstorming and discussion.
At your next youth group meeting, put the difficulties of the poor and needy in your community on the agenda. Simply discuss and brainstorm. You don’t have to come up with a plan all at once. But discussing this will start the process and keep it in people’s minds.
If you don’t have a youth group, get your friends together. Instead of having the usual hang out time one day, substitute this with a formal meeting. Now you have a youth group that can do this exercise.
5. Visit a poor part of town
How many big cities have “poor quarters”? Almost every single one. Sometimes, we need to see the reality of poverty right in front of us to really believe it’s there, especially if we live in a financially well-off part of a city.
Go with your youth group to visit these areas. You don’t have to necessarily bring money or food for them (although that wouldn’t be a bad idea). Talk to the people, if they are willing to be approached, about living conditions and how they ended up there. Prepare yourself for an eye-opening experience.
6. Do a class presentation on poverty
Stumped about what to do for a school assignment? Why not talk about the plight of the poor in your community. Do your research thoroughly. Get statistics on poverty, real stories from books and perhaps even video- or audiotaped interviews of the poor and homeless. Show the human face of poverty. Follow the presentation up with a class collection for the poor.
7. Don’t just collect money
There are plenty of basic necessities that people have to meet. Some people can’t afford new shoes. So hold a shoe drive (some teens have already done this – read this link about it). Others cannot afford clothing. Hold a clothing drive. Collect the material, arrange for cars, vans or trucks to transport it to where it’s needed, then make sure the material is properly distributed.
8. Write about poverty in your school paper
Have you got a knack for writing? Then write about poverty in your school newspaper. Educate your student body not just with words, but photos too, if possible. If you’ve visited a poor part of the city (see tips above), then you have plenty of material and personal material to write about.
9. Write about Zakat and Sadaqa in your Masjid(mosque) newsletter
Does your Masjid have a newsletter? If so, dedicate the next issue to the topic of Zakat and Sadaqa and how they help the poor and the needy. You can interview an Imam to get the basics straight. You can also include various charitable causes readers can give their money to locally to help the poor and needy.
If you don’t have a Muslim youth newsletter, maybe this can be your premiere edition.
10. Put the information on a website
If you put the above-mentioned newsletter or at least some of the articles online, you ‘ll probably have more young people reading it than if you limited the information to print only.
11. Collect money in your group
After your next group meeting, pass around a box to collect donations for the poor and needy. Better yet, make this a weekly practice. Make one person responsible for collecting the money and sending it off after consulting everyone on which cause it should be sent for.
12. Organize a youth seminar on poverty
Get a youth-friendly Imam or speaker to come and talk about how Islam has successfully fought against poverty in the past and can continue to do so in the present. Then, after his lecture, hold a workshop with participants and come up with 21 ideas of how the audience and Muslim teens in general can help fight poverty in America and abroad Islamically.
Article Source: Soundvision
Number of hungry in S Asia rises
to 405M
UNICEF asks Pakistan, India to spend more on health, education
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
NEW DELHI: More than 100 million people have joined the ranks of the chronically hungry in South Asia in the fallout from the global financial crisis, bringing the figure to a 40-year high, a UN official said on Tuesday.
The region’s poor, who have borne the brunt of the economic trouble, desperately need governments to spend more money on food, health care and education to alleviate the crisis, said Daniel Toole, a regional director for the UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.
At least 405 million people in South Asia suffered from chronic hunger in 2007-2008, up from 300 million in 20004-2006, according to a UNICEF report on Tuesday.
“Without urgent, inclusive government response, the poor of South Asia, nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population, will sink further into poverty and malnutrition with long-term negative consequences for growth and development in the region and globally,” the report said.
The report focused on the economic crisis’s impact on women and children in eight South Asian nations —Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Nearly 33 per cent of South Asia’s 1.8 billion people eat less than the minimum recommended daily requirements. Three-quarters live in households earning less than $2 a day, the report said.
The poor spend more than half of their income on food, which has become more expensive and made life even more difficult for them, it said. Nearly half of the region’s children are malnourished.
Toole called on India and Pakistan, longtime rivals in the region, to urgently reduce their defence spending and increase their social investments.
The two nations have long spent relatively little on education and health while spending billions on their militaries, which have fought three wars against each another.
Defence accounted for 18 per cent of government spending in Pakistan and 14 per cent in India between 1997 and 2006, UNICEF said.
Education accounted for less than 4 per cent and health care received 2 per cent in the same period, the agency said.
The agency called on India and Pakistan to emulate China, which spent 8-10 per cent of government money on education and health over the past three decades, allowing rural and impoverished communities access to hospitals and schools, Toole said.
Nearly half of the region’s children under five are malnourished, the worst level in the world including Sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries such as India did not make use of the good years to tackle poverty and hunger, UNICEF said.
“We are in the midst of a recession,” a UNICEF official said.
“When you had growth rates of eight, nine and in some cases 15, 16 per cent, we made no progress on malnutrition, on hunger, on including women and children in the society. How are we going to do it now?”
Source: The News, Karachi Edition, Wednesday, June 3,2009
HIV - AIDS
- More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.
- Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.
- At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and for 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide.
- In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.
Global HIV/AIDS estimates, end of 2007
Global HIV/AIDS estimates, end of 2007
Global trends
The number of people living with HIV has risen from around 8 million in 1990 to 33 million today, and is still growing. Around 67% of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Global trends
Regional statistics for HIV & AIDS, end of 2007
During 2007 more than two and a half million adults and children became infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the virus that causes AIDS. By the end of the year, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS. The year also saw two million deaths from AIDS, despite recent improvements in access to antiretroviral treatment.
Regional statistics for HIV & AIDS, end of 2007
I am sad… There are people around me…who start working to earn their livelihood even before the earth is blessed the very first beam of sunlight..they work hard throughout the day..through thick and thin…these people have family members like us..who keep on waiting for them to bring something to eat.
Sometimes,it happens so that these people are unable to earn an amount enough even for the food…did we ever give a second thougt to a person who is pulling a 500 k.g cart at the age of 60 at 40 degrees?what make him to do this job?Have we ever tried to see the pain in his eyes..the troubles..on his face..or we behaved in the same way as most of the people around us do..we saw him..took pity on him and played our part by saying to others”SEE HE IS DOING THIS AT THIS AGE” and went away..
Why we people dont treat the poor people around us in a respectable way?Why are we always rude towards them always?Why we leave them on God?….why … Why…why?
(just a few lines to feel better…postng from mobile..typing errors may b there)
Poverty in Children
Children are the 36 % of world population.Here a some statistics about poverty in children.
Out of every 100 children
- 27 suffer from malnutrition in their first five years of life
- 25 are not immunised against any diseases
- 18 have no access to clean drinking water
- 39 live without adequate sanitation
- 18 never go to school (of these, 11 are girls)
- 25 who begin 1st grade do not reach 5th grade
- 20 never learn how to read (of these, 13 are girls)
- In the developing world, one in every five children aged between five and 14 work
- Half of those who work do so full time
- Nine out of every 21 African children work
- 11 of every 53 Asian children work
- One of every eight Latin American children work
- One of every 17 children born around the world dies before reaching age five, mostly from preventable causes
- In Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe , countries heavily affected by HIV/AIDS , life expectancy is less than 43 years.
Source:http://www.bread.org
