Walk A Mile In My Shoes Flashcards
(2 cards)
FORCED LABOR
Ref: Time May 9th and 16th. Written in the first person to show effect, like it is happening to me, the subject storyteller.
Bangladesh battle with COVID is ruining the country, the businesses, the schools and the families.
Authorities shuttered our schools in March 2020. Eighteen months later they still were closed. Now they are starting limited openings. Problem is tens of thousands of pupils have not returned. Why you ask?
The majority are boys ages 12 and up who were pushed into full time work to pay the bills and put some food on the table. They are the only wage earners of their families now.
No child under 14 should be employed, but households are broke because incomes in our country have plunged by 23%! My parents say if I do not work full time everyday me and my siblings won’t be able to eat or pay any bills!
Right now I am living a devastating life.
When the pandemic first hit my country was focused on girls being forced into early marriage. Our struggling families tried to reduce expenses by marrying off their daughters to men sometimes more than twice their age. This ruins the future not only for the underage girls, but it devastates our entire families. Instead of having a dream life, girls are forced into a nightmare life that they will pay for until they die.
This is a huge problem for families, because the girls are way too young to be married off. The girls are just barely a teenager and they are forced to quit school and practically be a slave to much older men.
Almost 14,000 underage marriages during the first six months of lockdown. Half the girls have an average age of 14 years. Another girl I know, Helena was top of her class until her brother forced her to drop out of school and marry an older man. She was only 12!
One person I know of is only 8 years old working in a garment factory. He makes the equivalent of $40 a month. His boss argues that he is supporting the families the government has failed. “We have too many people in this country and too few resources.”
In my country, there is no support for families facing financial collapse. Everyone is on their own.
Cost of housing. Sunnyvale, California. Ref: Feb. 14-21 issue
I’d like to live here but the median house costs $1.5 million. A one bedroom apartment rents for $3,330 a month!
The median price for a house in the United States has climbed nearly 20%, while the median price of a rental unit has jumped roughly 14% according to a Zillow index. Nearly half of American workers no longer earn enough to rent a one bedroom apartment in the city where they live.
Those who cannot afford to buy, drive up the rental cost and those who can’t afford to rent are out of luck. More than half a million Americans including more than 100,000 children were homeless in the year 2020. This is the fourth consecutive year that number has increased.
United States homeowners have, on average 40 times as much wealth as renters do, per the federal reserve.
3-D printed home construction is becoming a thrifty way to build a house. These modular homes save 30% on the cost to build a new home. Putting up an average size American home the normal way takes just under eight months. Constructing a 3-D printed home of the same size can be done in less than a fourth of that time. Nowadays we can construct a move in ready 3-D printed three bedroom two bath house in less than a month.
