What Are Some Solutions to Help Sweatshop Kids?

A practical solution to helping sweatshop kids is to provide positive alternatives to child labor. Oftentimes families need resources to help them meet the needs of their family so that child labor isn’t so tempting as a solution to their financial struggles.

Through faithful donors, GFA World is able to provide the following solutions to families:

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• Child sponsorship – Sponsored children learn the dangers of child labor and trafficking, and this awareness helps them avoid being lured into such harmful situations. Children and their families receive practical help and resources, such as nutritious food, educational tutoring, medical check-ups, access to clean water, school supplies and more. When families have these helpful resources, it relieves their financial pressure and allows children to stay in school.
• Income-generating skills training – GFA World provides training in income-generating trades. For example, women who learn sewing skills can become tailors, which enables them to provide income for their families.
• Income-generating gifts – Agriculture gifts like livestock provide a family with resources to sell at the market. They can breed their animals and sell the offspring or milk.

Some children who work in sweatshops have been kidnapped or trafficked into the industry. Often, these children work in the fashion industry for little to no money. Children are used in various levels of the garment industry—to pollinate cotton plants, harvest the cotton, spin yarn, cut fabric, dye cloth, sew on buttons, embroider, and fold and pack. Since children cost less to hire, and the fashion industry’s aim is to be fast and cheap in their production, it is advantageous for companies to hire them.

Countries that use large amounts of child labor in the textile and garment industry include Egypt, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Thailand and China.¹ The conditions these children live and work in are often deplorable.