African Children Demand End to Child Labour

This was a really interesting site! I was just surfing the internet on news about Africa and came across this site that had a list of all the countries in Africa. I clicked on Uganda because of the headline that followed it. The headline talked about how children in Uganda are putting their two cents in and trying to put an end to child labour. This story came from a newspaper called "The Monitor," which is a paper published in Uganda. This article was wrote by a Ugandan News Reporter by the name of Ephraim Kasozi. This was an interesting story because their a statistics that are provided, which helps to give a better idea of how many it really is. In the article it was stated that the number of children ages fifteen to seventeen working in terrible working conditions, doing jobs and tasks only a professional or adult should be doing shot up twenty percent within the past few years. These children should be doing "light" work, not hard overbearing work.

This article had some great information and statistics in the reading, but what really stood out to me was the idea that the parents are the ones forcing their children to drop out of school and to go out and work so that they can help provide for the family. I know that money is scarce over their, but if I was a parent and my child had to option of going to school to receive an education, I would make them do it! I wouldn't want my child  to have to live the same life I had to. I would want better for my child, even if it wold mean cutting back on a particular food item of some sort. Just as the article states, it's the lack of awareness, and no one really pays attention to those more poor, smaller countries across seas. I feel that if we are capable of ending child labour here, we should try to help end it their. We can help the country out, and get those children out of that hard labour.

In America almost all of our parents and other adults went to school and were able to get some sort of education. In Africa, not many of the parents their are capable of doing so, which leads to many of them being illiterate. Since this is how they grew up they don't really know any other ways and just assume their way is the best option. This is not so, these children need that education these days so they are able to go forth in the world and receive better jobs. Their is no need for a fourteen year old girl/boy to be out working construction or being a maid when they can be receiving an education. These children want to learn, they don't want to work. They may not mind going out and trying to sell something small on the side of the road so they can have dinner on the table that night, but that's not want they want to see themselves doing everyday for the rest of their lives.