ONE: a face behind the numbers has started sales on www.amazon.ca. Everyday a new blog will go up with a clip from each chapter from the book.
Chapter 1 - Slavery
Meet Shawna. When she was 7, she was living with her very, very poor family in a village in India. Her mother was giving birth to her baby brother and needed about $25 to pay for a doctor. The only way they could get $25 was from the local moneylender, who demanded that the family sell Shawna to him. She was made to roll cigarettes by hand six days a week, 12 hours a day, sitting in one place on the floor. If Shawna didn’t roll 2,000 cigarettes a day, she was beaten. She was paid about six cents a day. After three years, when we met her at 10 years of age, she was not one penny closer to paying off her debt. This is bonded slavery. While it is illegal in India, we believe there are some 15 million children in such circumstances there, rolling cigarettes, making jewelry, making fireworks, and breaking rocks with little hammers.
- Gary Haugen, Founder, International Justice Mission
Three years is nothing. Haugen’s International Justice Mission (IJM) freed a man who was a child when he took a debt of $4.00, 58 years ago! His children had been enslaved for their whole lives, toiling to help their father pay off that minuscule debt. “It is a pandemic, affecting several areas of the world.” IJM and other worthies are fighting to bring hope in a hopeless situation. World Vision reports that “60% of all children in Asian cities are full-time wage earners. Child prostitution is one of the principal means of making money.”In Africa, estimates are that 25 percent of the children between the ages of 10 and 14 are involved in labour.
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