Nicaragua has a population of nearly 6 million. More than half the population is under 18 years of age, and child labor affects approximately 10 percent of these children and adolescents.

“Child labor is every work activity that children and adolescents do before turning 18 years old that affects their physical, social, intellectual, psychological and moral development.” — International Labour Organization

Poverty is a key contributor in child labor. Usually children work because they have to support their families or because they have been abandoned. Many children work because they come from a home headed by a single mom.

The type of work children do varies depending on the area where they live. Many children in urban areas work in the informal sector of the economy, selling on the street, guarding cars at parking lots, collecting garbage, or working at small businesses without benefits. In the rural area, children have more physically demanding jobs.

In the neighborhood where Ciudadanos del Reino Student Center is located, not many children work. Those who do work sell tortillas, find firewood for home use or for sale, work with parents, or do other small tasks.

At the center are two children who help their grandmother sell tortillas. The center staff has spoken with the grandmother about this, but she says she has a need and the children are helping her. Cristel and her twin brother, Ismael, are those two children.

Their grandmother, Anselma, says, “If Cristel’s dad had a job and helped us, I wouldn’t have to do this. I would be watching them more and they would not go out.”

Anselma used to work, but her workplace closed, and so three months ago she began to make tortillas for the family sustenance. The tortillas are ordered by neighbors or by small businesses around Cristel and Ismaiel’s house.

“Cristel goes because she likes it and because there is no one else to do it. Her help is important for me and she begins to value work,” says Anselma.

Cristel says, “I do it because it is important to eat.”

Cristel was abandoned by her mother. Her father is drunk most of the time, and her grandma is responsible for Cristel and her brother. Eleven people live at the house that consists of two small bedrooms and a living room. Three are adults and the rest are children. Only one has a job at a factory, and the others make the tortillas.

“Not having her mother around affects Cristel’s behavior very much. At her home, she doesn’t know whom to obey and becomes rebellious. We have taken her twice to the psychologist, but not very much progress has been seen,” says Katherin, Curriculum Coordinator at the center.

“Cristel presents better behavior while at the center but keeps much resentment in her and if someone hurts her, she doesn’t say anything but cries. When that happens we talk to her and pray with her.” 

“Cristel tries to handles the abandonment situation but it affects her,” says Jennifer, one of Cristel’s teacher. “Sometimes she becomes very hyper and she doesn’t care if we let her grandma know about it. However, she participates a lot in class and gets along very well with the class.”

Cristel’s situation worries the center’s leadership team members, who have included the child labor topic and all that it implies in the orientation they gives to parents. The center leadership is especially concerned because child labor exploits and abusees children, and in many cases these children cannot attend school or do not have good health.

According to Ivonne Tuckler, the Compassion Partnership Facilitator, centers do not currently have any statistics on child labor; however,

“We know that it exists and are beginning to introduce the topic to each center so that we can start a study and find ways to stop this situation that begins with dysfunctional families. Some parents believe it is necessary for their children to work because that’s a way to generate income for the home.

“We want to find alternatives to work with parents, to classify the causes, and give the necessary follow-up. There is a saying that many parents use: ’We didn’t learn anything and we haven’t died, and our children won’t either.’ The parents have made this a generational issue. We do not want that for children, and that’s why we have to make some decisions and find solutions.”

It’s time, actually past the time, to give Cristel and children like her the freedom to just be a kid.

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According to a recent study by the U.N.’s World Health Organization, good progress is being made on health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

• Fewer children are dying.
• The estimated percentage of underweight children under 5 has dropped.
• New HIV infections have declined.
• Existing cases of tuberculosis are declining.
• The world is on track to achieve the MDG target on access to safe drinking water.

Let’s just pause for a moment to let this sink in. We are making progress. Let’s celebrate this!

Of course, this doesn’t mean we can slow down in our fight against global poverty. If anything, seeing progress should motivate us to work even harder. And, as has been mentioned around here before, eliminating extreme poverty is just a matter of priorities.

The annual income of Christian American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion. The amount of money needed to end global poverty is about $74 billion a year. … Basically, 1 percent of our annual income a year is what is needed to end extreme poverty.

So the question is, what are your priorities?

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Sunday, April 25 — I moved last week and it has changed my situation and my perspective. Instead of sleeping in a tent beside the main road of Delmas listening to trucks roar up and down the street all night, I go to sleep seeing stars, and awaken to bird calls. Some of the birds are roosters, which start crowing at about 4:30, but other than that it is amazingly quiet here.

Whenever the power is out, usually from the morning until 10 p.m. there are very few lights in the area. Although the houses are a million dollars in size, they are only about $100,000 complete.

People do have mortgages here, but many build with the cash that they save from year to year and pay as they go. They don’t owe the bank interest, but they also have to wait a really long time to move into the house.

My new home is at the top of a steep hill in a very nice subdivision with a guard and pavement, mostly maintained. Some friends I’ve met are letting me stay as a courtesy.

The situation at the top of the hill makes the views incredible, I can see out to the bay to the northwest and out to the border to the east. The most amazing contrast is the 3,000-to 4,000-square-foot mansions in my neighborhood staring into the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps where people are sleeping in makeshift homes with U.S. AID tarpaulin sheets draped over flimsy wooden supports.

A new, “well designed” camp with terraced tent sites has just sprung up over the last week and already it is 25 percent full. The U.N. and other non-governmental organizations are trying to make life more tolerable for the hundreds of thousands who have lost everything.

Now that the rains fall three or four times a week, the misery level is increasing. The news that the international community has not forgotten them is comforting, but there is not much hope for the future when all you own is now in an 8-by-15-foot shelter perched on a hillside next to 10,000 of your closest friends.

The main road into our subdivision is paved and connects to one of three roads up to the area called Petionville. Named after the second president of the country, Alexander Petion, it is even higher up and has trees and cooler temperatures in the day and night. The lack of refrigeration makes the big marketplace in Petionville quite pungent during the day and even worse at night.

The traffic through Petionville is horrendous, and after a 90-minute commute home from the office I decided it was time to find an alternative route. There are many footpaths around and I found out that a four-wheel-drive vehicle can make it up and down them.

As I went down one trail yesterday, thinking that I’m the only one crazy enough to do it, a man in another 4×4 honked, telling me to pick up the pace. Apparently everyone wants to bypass the traffic on the main road. I made it to work in 30 minutes, but the new route does place a lot of wear and tear on the car.

During my first year of marriage, my Bible study group went on a four-wheel-drive camping trip over a mining road into Leadville, Colo. That road was built during the heyday of silver mining in the 1880s and is only used by off-road junkies now. My residential shortcut is used every day by very wealthy people, and it is in worse shape than that Colorado road.

I am getting so good at driving “off road” here in the city that I might just have to repeat the trip back home.

After the rain last night cleared the dust and smog out of the air, the sun is dawning over the city with fresh air and a bit lower temperature. As of 7:30, it’s 81 degrees. I’m sure the humidity is at least that high as well. It might be time for a quick nap before church, as earlier in the day I tried to run over to the new U.N. camp to chat with some of the early risers.

A’ bientot.

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Disasters often bring immediate attention from governments, such as the recent earthquakes across Java and Sumatra, which resulted in families losing their most basic needs. But the sad truth is that governments are rarely lobbied to defend the daily safety of children — children who are at risk of abuse and neglect.

In Indonesia, the social bureau stated that there were 6,295 cases of children experiencing violence in the year 2008, either at home or in their community. This figure is five times higher than in 2007.

Although the Indonesian government is a signatory to the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, little has changed for child protections since then. This ambivalence toward the law, both on the part of the government and the individual, means that the number of children neglected or mistreated in Indonesia is increasing day by day.

Compassion Indonesia understands the urgent need to address this issue that often remains silent.

Starting in June 2009, Compassion Indonesia made a number of advances in this area through its Complementary Interventions programs, endorsing training in child protection for child development center workers.

Approximately 329 social workers from child development centers across Indonesia will be trained and enabled to become change agents in their centers, learning how to prevent and respond to violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and discrimination against children, including children with special needs.

Since June, we have conducted child protection training at almost all of our Java and eastern Indonesia island child development centers. The Sumatra area will receive training beginning in February 2010. Once trained, participants will carry out child protection campaigns in their respective areas.

Ririn, age 27, is one of the participants selected from her church as a representative to join this training. She is a development center mentor and was willing to have additional responsibility to promote child protection in her church area.

Mentors, defined as trusted counselors or guides, have long been considered critical for success in this training because they must first of all be experienced adults, both in terms of knowing our ministry and the job, but also in knowing the nuances of how the ministry operates on a day-to-day basis.

In addition, mentors must be able to understand and interpret the local culture and have good interpersonal skills.

Ririn was sent by the church to join a weeklong training in Yogyakarta for the Central Java region. She plans to transfer her knowledge by training staff, volunteers and parents in her local child development center.

“I have already co-facilitated a workshop on why we need to protect children and how to ensure they get protection. And I assessed the development center to try and improve the standards of care we offer.”

Recently the church and center staff agreed to make several changes to create a safer environment for children. For instance, they renovated the computer activities room and other classes, providing windows for accountability and a higher level of child protection.

Ririn now works at the center as an advisor for children affected by family conflict. She ensures that all activities are well documented, acts as a liaison between the church and the families, and ensures that center operations are carried out effectively and in accordance with Compassion’s policies, values and principles.

She also trains the child protection team to deliver existing program objectives.

In many ways, Ririn’s role as a mentor at her church and the support from Compassion have been the perfect launch into her role as an implementer for child protection in her hometown, too.

For many parents in Indonesia, beating a child is socially acceptable, so the parents must be educated against this. But the Indonesian education system does not accommodate a child’s potential and need for protection.

For that reason they have to be protected by the community or church, which can pay attention to what is going on around them and reduce the incidence of child abuse.

Her community was very cooperative, but unresolved issues for some families in another area meant that it was difficult for the people there to see each other as a “community.”

In her efforts in the fight child abuse, Ririn established networks with other child development centers and churches in her town. She hopes through these networks that people’s awareness will be raised and then a positive action will be taken.

There is great hope and a future for children when we prevent abuse and neglect and protect them as well.

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Yep! A magnet. Can we get get a “Woot! Woot!” for Judy?

Now, without further ado, here is your answer key.

Answer: Six. More than 9 million children under age 5 die every year, and malnutrition accounts for more than one-third of these deaths. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

(Source: www.unicef.org, November 2008)

2. Question: True or False – One-third of the children in developing countries live in poverty.

Answer: True. Of the 1.8 billion children in developing countries, 600 million of them live on less than U.S. $1 a day.

(Source: www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html, November 2008)

3. Question: True or False – In reducing the rate of sickness and death from diarrhea, the supply of adequate quantities of water is more important than improving its quality.

Answer: True. The organisms that cause diarrhea can be spread through many routes besides drinking water; increased quantities of water can improve household and personal hygiene, which prevents the spread of disease.

Each year about 1.7 million deaths related to dehydration caused by diarrhea occur in children under age 5.

(Sources: www.cdc.gov; http://rehydrate.org/, November 2008)

4. Question: Which one of the following is NOT one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals?

• Achieve universal primary education
• Ensure environmental stability
• Provide worldwide access to safe water
• Develop a global partnership for development

Answer: Provide worldwide access to safe water

The Millennium Development Goals were created to develop a concrete action plan for the world to reverse poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people. The other five goals are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Learn more about the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

5. Question: True or False – Life expectancy in the world’s poorest countries is about one-third lower than that in the high-income world.

Answer: True. Life expectancy in the least developed countries averages 55 years, as compared with 79 years in industrialized countries.

In fact, in most of Africa, average life expectancy is only 50 years.

At any given time, close to half of all people in developing countries suffer from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.

For people in the the developing world, illness, job loss, drought or even pregnancy can mean the difference between life and death.

(Sources: www.unicef.org; www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats, November 2008)

6. Question: What is the definition of extreme poverty?

Answer: Living on less than $1 a day. One in six people around the world lives in extreme poverty.

(Sources: www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html)

7. Question: Which of the following statements about children in the developing world are true?

• 1 in 3 children does not have adequate
  shelter.
• 1 in 5 children does not have access to
  safe water.
• 1 in 7 children does not have access to
  health care.
• All of the above.

Answer: All of the above. Along with malnutrition, these mostly preventable causes are leading contributors to the millions of child deaths each year.

(Source: www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats, November 2008)

8. Question: True or False – The majority of the world’s chronically undernourished people live in Africa.

Answer: False. Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.

Despite the food production rate being better than the population growth rate, there is still desperate hunger in many parts of the world.

(Sources: World Resources Institute, “Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems” (February 2001); www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-andstats, November 2008)

9. Question: What percentage of the world’s population growth occurs in developing countries?

Answer: 95 percent.

Currently, the world’s population totals more than 6.7 billion and grows at an average rate of around 80 million persons per year.

Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, three regions of the world made up of mostly developing countries, account for most of the world’s increasing population.

(Sources: www.worldfactbook.org; www.census.gov, November 2008)

10. Question: What is the United Nations’ deadline for meeting the Millennium Development Goals?

Answer: 2015. The Millennium Project is working with individual countries to help identify and address specific needs, such as access to health clinics, immunizations, teachers, roads and water pumps.

Developed countries have committed to provide increased funding to help reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

(Source: www.undp.org/mdg)

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• Achieve universal primary education
• Ensure environmental stability
• Provide worldwide access to safe water
• Develop a global partnership for development

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