I spent last week in Bangladesh, a country of 161 million people, many of whom live in the capital city of Dhaka. Many of those people, in fact 54 million of them, are kids under 15. And a high percentage of these children start to work by the age of 10 or 12 in order to help support their families.
Save the Children has been working in Bangladesh since 1972 and for much of that time, we have sought to improve the lives of working children. Given the staggering poverty in Bangladesh, including among children, it is often in families’ best interest for their children to work. Save the Children and our partners are focused on making conditions safer for working kids and on pushing for their right to a decent wage and continued access to education.
Just outside Dhaka, where I joined some Save the Children colleagues, we met about two dozen kids who are currently working in the city. They produced this compelling video that documents the conditions in