In the Hands of Children

It’s dark when he wakes, and silent.

He lies under a tattered blanket on the floor, his sister and two young cousins huddled against him for warmth. Ignoring the temptation to drift back to sleep, he braces himself for the cold morning air and rises to dress in the pre-dawn stillness.

Before leaving, he checks on his mother – listening to her ragged breathing, making sure she has enough medication for another day. As he watches her sleep, he pictures her healthy and strong again. Remembers how it felt to know she would always be there to take care of him. His stomach growls, breaking his reverie. He walks out the door and into the darkness.

All in a Day’s Work

Nobody ever told 10-year-old Brian Singani he was going to have to start working. Nobody had to. When you live in a tiny shack in the slums of Lusaka, Zambia, family crises don’t play out behind the locked doors of your parent’s bedroom – they happen right before your eyes.

So when AIDS made its final assault on Brian’s father, swelling his legs and stomach and leaving him delirious with pain, there was no discreet “other” room to put him, where his sickness could be dealt with quietly. His sickbed was placed in the middle of the shack, and life had to go on around him.

When he finally succumbed to the disease, Brian’s mother, who had also tested positive, tried to reassure the children things would be okay. But each day, she grew weaker – the washing she did for neighbors caused her more pain.

Brian knew he had to do something.

With his father gone and his mother too sick to work, it was up to Brian to be the man of the house. So he found a job at a slaughtering yard, where a family relation was able to hire him.

“The first time I slaughtered a pig, I got sick,” says Brian. “The smell is horrible.”

Slaughtering pigs is dangerous work, but sometimes the animals aren’t the biggest hazard. “We get a dollar for each pig we slaughter, so sometimes the big people fight over them with the knives we use for work.”

Brian spends the first part of his day slaughtering pigs to earn money for himself and his sick mother. “The first time that I slaughtered a pig, I got sick,” Brian says. View larger

Luckily, Brian doesn’t have to fight. The owner takes pity on him because he’s so young. He makes sure Brian gets 3-4 pigs per day.

When he finishes at the yard, Brian walks to his second job: hauling barrels of water for his neighbors. Each arduous trip means more food on the table for his family. When so many people depend on you, getting tired isn’t an option.

As the afternoon fades, Brian has one more responsibility to attend to – one that was added to his daily schedule only recently: education. After he’s delivered his last barrel of water for the day, he rushes off to school to try, for a few hours, to just be “a normal kid.”

By then, he’s so exhausted he’d like to forget school and go home, but that’s not an option either. Brian is determined he won’t have to work like this for the rest of his life.

He’s not alone.


	Putting Away Childish Things Over 300 million children are currently engaged in child labor around the world. Most of these children are coerced into abusive forms of labor from which they cannot escape. Hundreds of organizations and new laws are aimed at ending these practices and rescuing these children. The rest of the children who make up the child labor problem, however, are much harder to rescue. They are victims of circumstance. Nobody forces them to work, but poverty has left them few other options. If their families are to survive, they must earn money. When the alternative is not eating, luxuries like fun and education quickly fall by the wayside. That’s why the problem is so difficult to address. As long as there are families in extreme poverty – children will work. They will emerge from tiny shacks and ragged lean-tos every morning, joining the march of adults trudging to jobs – doing what they have to do to get by another day. Their footsteps will be heard around the globe.	In poor communities around the world, the global recession has left the survival of millions of families on the shoulders of the young. View larger

In the Philippines, the government estimates that over 30 percent of its citizens are poor. According to Sarah Velasco, from our agency in Tabaco, things have gotten worse. “The recession has hit impoverished communities here hard,” she reports. “Families who were already struggling for survival are now buried deep in the shackles of poverty.”

Emil dropped out of school and took a job working 13 hours a day, six days a week to help his parents feed
his younger siblings. View larger

Emil Bordeos comes from such a family. His father has a job, but his pay barely covers the family’s needs. When his mother can’t find work, she borrows from neighbors or relatives, leaving the family buried in debt.

“When I was at home taking care of my siblings, people came and asked for payments,” Emil says. “It was embarrassing telling them we didn’t have any money. Sometimes they say hurtful things.” When he was 15 years old, Emil had had enough.

Though his mother initially objected, he dropped out of school and found a job in the market where he spends six days a week, 13 hours a day. When he gets off, he stays with his boss’ family instead of making the long journey home.

The stall where Emil works in is located in the middle of an intricate labyrinth of narrow passageways deep in the market where the air is heavy with a foul smell.

“At first, the smell gave me headaches,” Emil says, “but I got used to it.”

Complaining is a luxury Emil can’t afford. So even if, at the end of the day, his back and legs are sore and he misses his family and his school friends, he still manages to smile, knowing his hard work is helping his parents support his younger siblings.

Emil is like millions of children – young kids shouldering adult responsibilities, trying to remain strong for those they love. Emil isn’t the only child in his family in this situation. He has a younger brother who has also left school in order to work as a fisherman with some relatives.

The difference between the brothers, according to Emil, is that he is sponsored, while his brother is not. Because of sponsorship, Emil knows that this part of his life is only temporary. He knows that a better future awaits him, and that soon he will back in school with his friends. For now, the gifts and benefits he receives from sponsorship help him grit his teeth and make it through the toughest of times.

Not every working child is so lucky.

In Guatemala, where Marcelino Zapeta lives, 20 percent of boys, between the ages of 5 and 14, work. When Marcelino turned 13, he became one of them.

Each morning, he walks five miles down a dark mountain path to a plantation where he spends the next nine hours cutting coffee, digging irrigation trenches and shimmying up trees with a machete to clear branches. It’s grueling work – even for a full-grown man.

But Marcelino is glad he entered the “adult world” at such a young age. “At first I felt bad about leaving school,” he tells us. “But when I

started earning money, I was able to help my mother. If I’d stayed in school, I would have had to wait many years to help.”

Marcelino’s mother was hesitant to let him leave school. She wanted her son to take a different path in life. But soon, she realized that her family’s survival depended on his ability to work. Now her wishes for his future are “that he never misses work or bread on his table.”

Unfortunately, Marcelino is not sponsored. Without the constant encouragement of a sponsor and the focus on education and advancement that the program offers, the odds are that Marcelino will be working the same job throughout his adulthood that he does now, as a young teenager.

Sponsorship could teach Marcelino about his potential. Show him different ways in which he could rise above his situation and create a better life. For now, Marcelino will have to learn those things on his own.

“At first I felt bad about leaving school. But when I started earning money, I was able to help my mother,” says Marcelino. View larger

Changing for the Better

Chipango Machalo knows what it’s like to be left alone. When he was just 9, his parents died, leaving him with an ailing grandmother who was too sick to work.

If they were going to eat, it was up to Chipango.

“Sponsorship has helped us,” Chipango says, shown here with his grandmother. “I’m able to continue school because the
fees are paid for. I receive things like blankets to keep us
warm, and I even got a nice pair of shoes.” View larger

He soon found a job working with car batteries and dropped out of school. At work, his hands and arms frequently got burned from acid, but when he told his boss, he was simply given a pint of milk to “reduce the effects.” He returned home every night feeling aches and pains a boy his age shouldn’t have.

Then, last year, Chipango got sponsored.

Though he and his grandmother are still in a precarious place, their lives have changed for the better. With access to nutritional support, a doctor and a dentist, along with other benefits, Chipango was able to quit work and focus on his studies.

“Sponsorship helped us,” he says. “I’m able to continue school because the fees are paid for. I receive things like blankets to keep us warm, and I even got a nice pair of shoes.”

Shoes, blankets, visits with doctors and dentists…many of us would be hard pressed to find a child who wouldn’t take these things for granted. But for Chipango, they mean a shot at the future.

	A New Day Dawns While Chipango is preparing for school in the morning, Brian Singani is still picking his way through his neighborhood on the way to the slaughterhouse. But while Brian’s circumstances are far from perfect, there is hope in his story. He, too, is sponsored through Children International. Brian credits sponsorship with his decision to go to school for the first time in his life. The emphasis Children International puts on education has found fertile ground in his brain – he’s already learned to read and write (a fact he’s very proud of). He’s also found hope, which allows him to dream of a better life for his family. Perhaps most importantly, sponsorship has allowed Brian to see beyond the boundaries of his situation and realize that he has the power to change his life. Lighting the Way Sponsorship isn’t a silver bullet. It doesn’t solve every problem or ensure that boys like these will live happily ever after. What it can do is show them a path to a better tomorrow and give them tools to help stay on that path. These children don’t dream of fancy cars and palatial mansions. They merely want what humans have wanted since the beginning of time: food to eat, clothes to wear, and a warm place to rest at night. Brian, Emil, Marcelino and Chipango are just four of the millions of children struggling to be adults for the sake of those they love. As they walk to factories, slaughter yards, coffee plantations and markets every morning, they are hoping for a future in which life is more than a desperate struggle. We all have the power to help them get there. If you would like to offer help to any of the children quoted in this story, please contact us at 1-800-388-3089. Reporting assistance and photos by Clementina Chapusha, our communications coordinator in Lusaka, Zambia; Sarah Jane Velasco,our communications coordinator in Tabaco, Philippines; Javier Cárcamo, our communications coordinator in Guatemala; and Nivedita Moitra, our communications coordinator in Kolkata, India. Do you like this story? Forward to a friend \| Link to Us \|