Between April to June 2009, World Vision Singapore received a total donation of $153, 646 towards its work in Children in Crisis Centres from Asia and Africa. The centres are:
- Cambodia’s Street Children Transformation Centre
- Cambodia’s Community Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children
- Thailand’s Phuket School Beach Project
- Vietnam’s Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation
- Mongolia’s Street Children’s Programme.
The Story of a Child Labourer
Sokkong was only 14, but had dropped out of school to work day and night at a brick factory. His job was dangerous, consisting of clay lifting, carting, drying and carrying brick blocks into hot furnaces. For all their hard work, Sokkong and his family earned less than S$1.30 a day.
With the help of World Vision supporters, Sokkong and other children like him will receive education, healthcare, skills training and shelter, amongst other things. Fortunately for Sokkong, he was rescued from his difficult circumstances and now faces a brighter future.
However, the need is still grave, and there are many children, such as Sohail, who still need our help.
Give Child Labourers a Better Future
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| Sohail is only six, but works to support his family. Photo by Kit Shangpliang, World Vision India. |
At eight in the morning, while other children get ready for school, six-year-old Sohail gets ready to toil at a gem polishing workshop in one of Jaipur’s slums, somewhere in North India.
While children his age are back from school at midday, Sohail is barely halfway through his rigorous daily routine of a 10-hour work day.
For Sohail, school life is beyond his imagination, and he does not know what it feels like because he has never been inside a classroom. “My father couldn’t send me to school”, he says.
It’s a situation that can easily lead to outcries and criticism, but the harsh realities of disadvantaged families like Sohail’s must also be recognised.
According to others in Sohail’s slum community, his parents are in debt, and poverty has forced them to put their children in the gem workshop instead of a school.
When asked “What do you want to become when you grow up?” Sohail does not know how to respond. The time to dream about his future is a luxury he does not have.
Will you give someone like Sohail a chance for a better future?
