Loading goods at stations, selling them on the road, working in the fields, in factories, in mines or as servants ... These are some of the occupations that minors carry out in the world and that deprive them of going to school and enjoying childhood. The question for a child should never be: "What are you doing: studying or working?"
Child labor mainly concerns agriculture (71%); 17% of child laborers are engaged in the service sector and 12% in the industrial sector, particularly in the mining industry.
Salesians all over the world work to redeem these children from child labor: so that they can recover their childhood, go to school, play with friends, learn something that serves their lives; so that they can feel loved and considered; so that they may know God and feel loved by a loving Father, as befits children of their age.
Children are always cheap labor, easily replaceable, who do not complain, nor claim their rights, simply because they do not know them. They are treated like adults, and so they tire and get sick easily. They carry heavy loads, work the land assuming postures that generate malformations and chronic diseases and, in all cases, develop low self-esteem, distrust in people and even forms of depression.
The Salesians and all the institutions that follow Don Bosco's thoughts will never get tired of asking for the respect of children's rights and of putting in place adequate measures so children be protected and feel safe. Education is and remains the key so that children are not exploited, they can transform their lives, they are agents of change and development and protagonists of their own and proper future.
