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Narrowed Topic
--We will be focusing on labor issues having to do with taking advantage of workers and children in Africa.--

**Case Study 1**
• Part One: Find and research an organization that is currently doing work on your narrowed topic and answer the following questions. Answer the questions and fill out the resource log (it is posted on the wiki under Assignments) and post it on your wiki.


 * What is the organization?**

//The International Labour Organization (ILO)//


 * What exactly are they doing to try and combat or change your issue?**

//Since 1919, The International Labour Organization has made and maintained a highly developed system of labour standards. Aimed to provide decent work for men and women on an international scale. These conditions are freedom, equity, security and dignity.//


 * What are some of the things you like about their program?**

//I like the fact that the program is part of the UN. This means that it is a highly trustworthy and prestigious organization that helps thousands of worker around the world to seek better job conditions.////They have a micro insurance project that gets funds from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide quality to low-income families and regions in order to avoid poverty.////They also run the Better Work project that is formed by workers' and factories' organization that help workers in Jordan, Vietnam, and Lesotho. This three part campaign will directly benefit 800,00 people.////COOP AFRICA is funded by DFID and run by ILO. The group supports creating reasonable working environments and job availability in over 9 countries in Africa.////The International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) is the largest campaign ever to be done in the world to reduce or eliminate child labor. This project was started in 1992, and has assisted over 90 countries to develop rules, policies, punishments, and regional campaigns to end child labour.//


 * What are some questions you have about it?**

Do you pay your volunteers?How much funding do your organization get a year? What areas are you more focused on?


 * How could you become involved with this organization or model your action plan after it?**

//Every Organization needs money to run, donations from me would be well appreciated and within reasonable means. Plus, this is a very big organization with many offices and many events around the world. If there is ever a campaign nearby, I would volunteer myself to help the situation through campaigning.//

• Part Two: Find and research another organization (yes, this means your group is researching two organizations) that is currently doing work on your narrowed topic and answer the following questions. This person should answer the questions and print out the resource that they gathered this information from.


 * What is the organization?**

AIR (American Institutes for Research)

AIR is an organization which maintains a project called RECLISA (Reducing Exploitative Child Labor in South Africa). The RECLISA project has fourteen project activities to raise awareness, improve educational opportunities, enhance social services, and strengthen government policies.
 * What exactly are they doing to try and combat or change your issue?**

**What are some of the things you like about their program?**

I like that they are making good progress in helping the exploiting of child labor in South Africa. At the end of February, 2008, RECLISA had helped more than 10,000 children who were caught in, or were at the risk of, child labor.


 * What are some questions you have about it?**

How much money have you put into this project? Why did you (AIR) choose to start this project?


 * How could you become involved with this organization or model your action plan after it?**

We could become involved with this organization by being one of their supporters or by donating to their group. Our action plan could be similar to theirs because we are also focusing on international labor and exploited child labor as a major issue in Africa. Our action plan could giving children education so they will have better work opportunities when they grow up. Also we could try to give children other jobs which are less dangerous or harsh. Make sure to give your resource information to person one. [|http://www.reclisa.org/]

Case Study 2
Now that you have your opening paragraph posted on the wiki, you need to post some more information on your case study. Post the questions as well as the answers on your wiki. Make sure to add youtubes, photos and video to your wiki as well.


 * 1. What is the specific topic your group decided to focus on?**

Our group is focusing on the International Labor Laws, which are bodies of laws to give workers legal rights and restrictions. Africans, for example, are being taken advantage of for natural resources they posses. Such as: diamonds, coffee, and oil. Not just being taken advantage for their products, but Africans are being used as workers against their wills, often for extremist groups. Workers in these groups are not only adults, but also young children, of who are brutally treated.Our group is interested (our main goal) in helping the labor conditions in Africa. Although it’s not as large an issue in Africa, in many regions of the world, workers are denied certain jobs based on education, nationality, and unfortunately, ethnicity. Treatment of these workers and their rights is very controversial because they are often illegal immigrants, but they provide the services that keep many countries up and running.


 * 2. Which organization did you choose to focus on and why?**

The organization we chose to focus on is the International Labor Organization (ILO). ILO is a UN-connected organization that is aimed to provide men and women around the world with productive work and working conditions.ILO's meaning of a good working condition is freedom, equity, security and human dignity. The main aim of this organization is to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, improve social protection, and strengthening handling of work-related issues. While trying to promote good working conditions, theILO is also hard at work to abolish child labor. ILO's ultimate goal is to have good jobs and conditions everywhere in the world at which the poor and rich are willing to work in. We chose (ILO) as our organization because being connected to the UN, it is a trustworthy and an ultimately successful organization (like most other UN organizations). Also, from the information we've seen, their ideas seem very plausible and respectable. They've been a main resource in our research, and have proven to be an excellent choice. 
 * 3. What exactly are they doing to try and combat or change your issue?**
 * ILO has a micro insurance project that gets funds from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide quality to low-income families and regions in order to avoid poverty. Controlled by the Social Financing Programme, part of the ILO, seeks to "increase the availability of quality insurance for the developing world’s low-income families to help them guard against risk and overcome poverty." They have spent millions of dollars this year to achieve their goal, given by the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation. This project was started in 2008.
 * They also run the Better Work project that is formed by workers' and factories' organization that help workers in Jordan, Vietnam, and Lesotho. This three part campaign will directly benefit 800,000 people. With the support of International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the campaign was created in 2006 to " improve labour practices and competitiveness in global supply chains." Their job is to make companies follow the rules and regulations of labour conditions set by the ILO. Both organizations work together in convincing consumers to buy products that are made in a factory with their set labour conditions. This is a great stimulant that will motivate enterprises to have acceptable labour standards. If there are good working conditions for the workers, there will an increase of productivity quality in their final product.
 * ILO runs a group called COOP AFRICA. The group supports creating reasonable working environments and job availability in over 9 countries in Africa. COOP aims to "help people to co-operate out of poverty as well as to deal with the cooperative needs such as the ones researched by COOP". With the help of many partners, COOP has legally established unions and corporations that will help them reach their goals.
 * The International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) is the largest campaign ever to be done in the world to reduce or eliminate child labor. This project was started in 1992, and has assisted over 90 countries to develop rules, policies, punishments, and regional campaigns to end child labour. ILO and its partners (IPEC is a partner) are aiming to create a world "where no girl or boy is forced to work at the expense of their health and development or their future prospects of decent work."According to these organizations, child labour elimination is almost in reach. There has been significant improvement in the elimination of child labour, which will only be eliminated faster with the governments current response to the issues.
 * 4. What are some of the things you like about their program?**

We admire the International Labor Organization for three specific reasons. First, ILO is one of the largest and most widespread organizations dealing with the issues on international labor. For instance, they have covered official core labor statistics and estimates for over 200 countries since 1969. Next, being connected to the UN, ILO proves to be both a trustworthy organization and a prestigious one as well. Most groups connected to the UN are also successful in achieving their goals like: Unicef, Red Cross, and Unesco. Finally, ILO has proven to be a great resource for research and fully understanding the labor situations in Africa. We've listed the International Labour Organization as a top resource in our "resource log", and we plan to use their site for further investigation. As you can see, ILO is an excellent program; they're prestigious, widespread, and, most of all, successful. We are proud to be helping them in terminating illegal labor in Africa.

//“Social justice is the best way to ensure sustainable peace and eradicate poverty. And I believe in people coming together organizing, joining forces, making their voices heard.”// //-Juan Somavia, ILO Director-General//


 * 5. How do you plan to become involved with this organization or model your action plan after it?**

The simplest way to become involved with ILO is to donate. We could send them money and ILO will use that money to hire staff, and obtain resources to help people all around the world in eradicating labour issues. "Every little bit helps." If there are vacancies in their staff then it is possible that you can become a member of theILO. If not, then becoming volunteers of one of the NGOs that the ILO supports could be a good way to aid the many inflicted by labour issues. By joining an organization, we would assist people around the world ourselves, making our help direct.

Modeling our action plan after the Labour Organization would be a great idea. Through researching the ILO, we have some great ideas about how we could help the labor issues in Africa. We could raise awareness and contribute to organizations involved with ILO with direct donations or volunteer work. By raising awareness, we could spread the news that workers in Africa are suffering from many labor issues such as bad working conditions, exploited child labor, and unfair trade. Our action plan could include: donating the money we raised to an organization connected to ILO, making people understand the desperate situation, and volunteering to work with the many organizations focusing on international labour laws.

Related tasks

 * 1. Make a list of relevant articles and statistics on the issue**


 * **[|BBC shows that Starbucks owes $88 million a year for exploiting coffee farmers.]**
 * **[|BBC talks about how child labor is still a big issue in Africa.]**
 * **[|RECLISA is a program which focuses on exploited child labor in Southern Africa. Here are some facts about child labor.]**
 * **[|World Bank has made this PDF file which is about Child Labor in Africa]**
 * **[|This is the Bureau of Labor statistics in most every country]**

Strikes and Lockouts in South Africa 2000: 80 2001: 83 2002: 47 2003: 62 2004: 49 2005: 102 2006: 99 2007: 75

Population under $1 a day: 31.2


 * 2. Make a list of organizations that people can join to get involved in this issue and petitions that people can sign.**


 * [|Matador Change]: Matador change is an organization consisting of volunteers that works to help each region in Africa pertaining to those regions' problems. One of these regions happens to be Cameroon, where the group focuses on child labor issues (branch of our topic).
 * [|TransFair USA] : This site is the official site of global fair trade. It's a non-profit organization, relying on volunteers and the human spirit.TransFair USA has been working in African regions to settle the coffee-trade exploitation since 1997.