Forum on August 8
Fraternal Greetings!
We are wholeheartedly inviting you to a Forum and Orientation on Child Labor in Commercial Agriculture this coming 8th of August at 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Tower Inn, E. Quirino Ave., Davao City.
This event aims to establish a collaborative effort among the different organizations from the government, non-government, church, socio-civic, student, youth, workers, women and children sectors to carry forward the coalition's advocacy and campaign meant to expose the worst forms of child labor in commercial agriculture and strive for the immediate eradication of the same.
Please do share with us a little of your time on this day and let your voice of inspiration and love penetrate the hearts of the children, people and government in our country.
Very truly yours,
Prof. Alehandro W. Apit
Executive Director
Kamalayan Development Foundation
posted by peterlavina @ 6:17 AM
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ILRF Stop Firestone Campaign
Bridgestone Firestone public relations would love for us to believe that the world tire and rubber giant cares about children. In a May 2006 press release, the company highlighted
their generosity, announcing "Firestone Bus Tires Carry Kids to Summer Fun." Without their donation of 42 bus tires to the YMCA of Middle Tennessee, "many of these kids wouldn't be able to swim, canoe, swing or frolic in the cool waters of the J. Percy
Priest Lake this summer."
But Firestone doesn't seem to care much about what happens to children on the other side of the globe.
In Liberia, West Africa, on the Firestone rubber plantation, children endure long summers of forced labor rather than camp or school. Children wake up each day at 4:30AM to "help" their parents tap rubber trees, spray pesticides and haul heavy buckets of rubber 1-3 miles each day. Without this "help" from their children, plantation workers could never meet their daily tapping quotas (1,125 trees per day). If they fail to meet their quota, workers risk losing their measly $3.19 per day wage (before deductions), without which their families would starve.
On the Firestone Plantation, a summer swim means swimming in the polluted Farmington river. The use of harmful chemicals and the untreated run-offs from Firestone’s operations into adjacent rivers is having severe health implications on communities around the plantation. The children drink and bathe in this river while watching the Firestone factory dump its waste on the opposite river banks.
Firestone has extracted rubber and exploited the Liberian people since 1926. That year, Firestone signed a concession agreement with the Government of Liberia for a period of 99 years. That agreement covered one million acres of land, leased for a fee of 6 cents per acre for a total annual price of $60,000. In 2005, Firestone signed a new 37-year agreement with the Transitional Government in Liberia to lease the land for a fee of 50 cents per acre.
This year marks 80 years since Firestone's beginnings in Liberia-- and four generations of children who have grown up bearing the costs of Firestone's rubber empire. Join the International Labor Rights Fund in taking action on July 26 (Liberian Independence Day) to stop Firestone's tradition of exploitation.
Will you deliver a letter to a Firestone in your community? For more information on the Day of Action, please go to at http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/Np_jxF61kq6z/.
More information about the Stop Firestone campaign can be found at http://www.stopfirestone.org.
For more information on the International Labor Rights Fund, please visit www.laborrights.org.
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