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Life after Bully: Teenage star of hit documentary finally escapes his tormentors... and finds happiness in new school

Alex Libby's life has changed since he featured in the hit anti-bullying documentary, Bully.

The highschool freshman now has other students come up and hug him in the corridors, has good friends and gets on well with his teachers.

The unlikely fame has potentially saved him from becoming one of two thousand American teenagers who have committed suicide because of relentless aggression from their peers.

Some 13million schoolchildren in the U.S. are victims of bullying, with 3million absent from class each month because they cannot cope with the torment.

The award-winning documentary by Lee Hirsh follows five kids and families over the course of a school year, including two families who have lost children to suicide because of bullying.

Alex agreed to take part in Bully in the hope that his persecutors would stop tormenting him.

He didn't realise that the brave act would bring him national notoriety, a trip to the White House and a chat with a beauty pageant winner.

Much of the bullying took place on the school bus, on which Kim Lockwood, assistant principal of East Middle School in Sioux City, Iowa, insisted the kids were 'as good as gold'.

Alex knew different.

'Most of the kids on that bus, I knew from elementary school, and we were good friends then,' he said in the documentary.

'But then in middle school, everything changes, and it's all about popularity and who dresses the best and who's the most athletic and who has the best hair. I was not the kid with the best hair.'

The bullies in Iowa called him 'fishface'. They threatened to break his bones, sexually assault him and kill him.

Perhaps, more crucially, the bullies scared away other kids who were his genuine buddies.

'I craved friends. I didn't have any friends. That was all I wanted, some friendship, someone to come over, someone to lift me back up when I'm knocked down. I didn't have that, he said.

However, today things have changed dramatically, reports the Des Moines Register .

A move to a new school, Edmond Memorial School in Oklahoma, has broken the cycle of bullying but Alex is also enjoying his unlikely fame and has become a spokesperson for the bullying cause.

He wears a T-shirt that says, 'I stand for the silent'.

Alex is not the only one: the documentary has already been seen by over 90,000 American schoolchildren and has 97,000 'likes' on its Facebook page .

Watch the video:

Watch the documentary trailer:

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Life after Bully: Teenage star of hit documentary finally escapes his tormentors... and finds happiness in new school

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Alex Libby's life has changed dramatically since he featured in the anti-bullying documentary, Bully. After leaving the school in Iowa he has now settled in a new school in Oklahoma.

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Natalie Hampton, Sanah Jivani, Peyton Klein, and Tori Taylor share one thing in common: They all experienced or witnessed bullying as teens.

As they tried to make sense of what they'd personally endured or watched others live through, the four young women, who didn't know each other, ultimately decided to dedicate their teen years to bullying prevention.

After taking time to recover from the severe bullying she experienced, Hampton built an app called Sit With Us(Opens in a new tab) that helps students find new friends with whom they can share lunch. Jivani, now 21, had been bullied for having a hair loss condition known as alopecia and founded International Natural Day(Opens in a new tab) while in high school. Klein noticed how students who spoke English as a second language were excluded and discriminated against, so she launched an after-school program to promote tolerance and friendship called Global Minds Initiative(Opens in a new tab) . Taylor, who'd experienced bullying, fought to bring a peer counseling program to her high school.

Bullying often makes victims and bystanders feel helpless, but young people also have the power to help change the culture at their school - just like Hampton, Jivani, Klein and Taylor did.

"There's a lot students can do at the individual level," Susan M. Swearer, Willa Cather professor of educational psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a researcher with expertise in bullying, said.

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Swearer said that students looking for more information about how to develop an anti-bullying campaign can find tools through inspireED(Opens in a new tab) , a website created by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation(Opens in a new tab) , and Channel Kindness(Opens in a new tab) , a project by the Born This Way Foundation(Opens in a new tab) .

You should also listen to the students themselves.

We invited Hampton, Jivani, Klein, and Taylor to talk about how they led their own anti-bullying campaigns and initiatives. Their written responses were edited for clarity and length.

What do you wish you would've known about bullying prevention and being an " upstander(Opens in a new tab) " before you launched Sit With Us?

I wish I had known that I was not alone. Through Sit With Us, I have met so many people with similar stories to mine. In one way, it has shown me how widespread the bullying problem is, but more importantly, it has shown me how many people are devoted to solving it. I believe that every school has upstanders like me who are willing to make a positive impact in their communities. Now more than ever, they are vocal and helping to create change.
What advice would you give to students who want to pro-actively change their school or peer culture in order to help prevent bullying?
Whatever idea you have, run with it! When I came up with Sit With Us, I was 15 years old, knew absolutely no coding, yet wanted to create a global anti-bullying app. Even though it seemed crazy, I ran with it, and with a lot of hard work and effort, the impossible became possible. Students are often told that they are too young to make a difference. My experiences speaking to students around the country and becoming a Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award(Opens in a new tab) recipient and a UN Outstanding Youth Delegate(Opens in a new tab) have shown me that could not be more false. No matter what barriers are in your way, you have the possibility to change the world. Get out there and get started!
What would you describe as Sit With Us' greatest success so far?
To me, our biggest successes are not how many users we have or how many countries we are operating in - it is the individual stories we hear from our users about how the app has impacted their lives. I absolutely love interacting with students through our social channels and hearing about their time at school and how the app is working in their communities. If I can make a positive difference in one person's life, then all of this will have been worth it.
What advice would you give to people who've experienced bullying and want to do something to change the culture at their school or in their peer group?
Never stop telling your story. I understand that reliving the painful experience of bullying can be difficult, but realize it takes immense courage to tell your story and your story truly does have the capacity to change the world. I truly believe that one of the best ways to overcome adversity is using it as an opportunity to serve others. One of the best ways to change the culture at school is by working with teachers, counselors, and administrators. Partner up with them and pitch acts that encourage kindness and inclusion. I hosted several activities at my school from Anti-Bullying Week, Random Acts of Kindness Week, The International Day of Self Love, etc. Find a group of student leaders who are also passionate about creating a kinder culture and work with them to create real change.

In terms of your peer group, leading by example can have a major impact. When you hear gossip or unkind comments, stand up for your peers. Be kind to everyone around you. Show your peers what it means what it truly means to live intentionally in a culture of kindness. When you have the courage to be kind and stand up for others, it often inspires others to do the same.
Did you have any fears about launching Natural Day? If so, how did you get through those feelings?
Launching Natural Day took a lot of courage. I had many fears. I was worried that other students wouldn't participate. I was scared they may laugh at my idea, or not take it seriously. I was nervous about sharing my personal story in such a public way. I struggled with these thoughts and feelings a lot, and worked to get through them.

I clearly remember planning the very first Natural Day. I was a freshman in high school, and at first, the upperclassmen were very reluctant to participate. I had put signs and posters all around the school advertising the day, and I was getting mixed responses. Some people were excited, others didn't like the idea at all. Either way, not everyone was on board and I received a lot of criticism from, "This idea is dumb and won't make a difference" to "Why does this freshman think she can change the world?" These responses were very discouraging, but I knew I couldn't give up on an idea that I believed in so much. I had to persist, no matter what anyone said.
"I knew I couldn't give up on an idea that I believed in so much."
As the planning process continued, I knew something had to change about how I was advertising the day. I couldn't just tell people to participate in Natural Day. I had to show them what that means. I decided to speak in front of over 3,000 students at my high school and share my story with them. I decided to be vulnerable, and address how much courage it takes to love and accept who you are. After I gave my speech, I got a standing ovation from everyone (even the upperclassmen). It was beautiful to see that courage inspires courage.

I think my biggest advice would be to persist with your idea if you are passionate about it. Realize that not everyone will be on board, but that's okay. I moved forward with my idea with endless amounts of passion. It didn't matter if other people didn't believe in it - I did, and that was more than enough.
Why do you think self-acceptance can make a difference when it comes to bullying prevention?
When you make peace with yourself, you are better able to bring peace to the world. When you are kind to yourself, it is much easier to be kind to others. How can you be compassionate toward others if you are not at all able to show the same compassion toward yourself first? For all of these reasons, I think self-acceptance can truly change the world.

When people bully others, they usually do it because they are struggling with some kind of fear and insecurity inside themselves. I can say this from personal experience. I remember being bullied so badly that at some point I would do anything to fit in. A group of girls in my grade suggested that I might be bullied because I never retaliate. Out of fear and insecurity I decided to draft a few mean messages to send out. Thankfully, I realized how awful this felt. In the moment, I might have felt strong and powerful. However, ultimately, bullying others just leads to more self-hatred. It's a vicious cycle.

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Self-acceptance is a huge key to bullying prevention that we often overlook. If we taught kids early on to love and accept themselves, it would be easier for them to love and accept others.
What do you think has been your greatest success when it comes to bullying prevention?
I am most proud of the bullying prevention work I did at my middle school and high school. I faced severe bullying, and I think I've done a lot to change the culture since then. Everyday I woke up too afraid to go to school. My attendance dropped significantly. When I did attend school, I found mean notes in my locker, gum in my wig, and walked around scared for my own safety. Even though I was terrified of the bullying getting worse, I applied to be the president of my school's anti-bullying organization. I worked with all my heart to bring the organization to life in a way it hadn't been for years.

When I got to high school, I realized there was no anti-bullying organization available for students to join. I created my high school's first anti-bullying organization, which we used as a platform for the first ever Natural Day. The organization still exists years after I've graduated, and both my middle school and high school still celebrate Natural Day. What I went through was painful and difficult, but I am truly grateful I could use it to create safe spaces for others.
Did you ever feel like it would be too hard to make a difference in your own school community? If so, how did you get over feeling overwhelmed or intimidated?
Yes, of course, I still sometimes feel like it is too hard. When dealing with issues of bullying or intolerance, it is extremely overwhelming because they are problems that span beyond yourself, across generations and millions of students. It is so easy to feel powerless, but what you have to realize is that changing one life is changing someone's world. A little bit of kindness or going the extra mile to help someone can make a big change. Little things like sitting together at lunch or just saying hello are such small things that can make the world a little more welcoming. You have to start with setting an example yourself, which will allow for a domino effect to happen within your community and beyond.

I think the success of Global Minds really showcases the power of what a small dedicated group of students can do. We started Global Minds at my high school, Taylor Allderdice in Pittsburgh, in December of 2016. What started as an idea took off in my school, and just from word of mouth and support we now have 13 chapters (with even more this year!), all dedicated to creating more welcoming and inclusive schools. Good attracts good, so I believe kindness has a ripple effect and by setting an example for your peers, you can make a large-scale change.
How did you build peer and administrator support for the Global Minds Initiative?
When I created Global Minds, it was really important that ESL students were involved in the brainstorming and leadership of the program. At Global Minds, everyone is a part of the family and in order to create that type of atmosphere, it is essential to start with representative leadership. I think by being intentional about our diverse leadership, it has led the way to the authentic engagement of ESL students.

As far as the administration, I have had a great experience with my teachers and principal, but I know for a lot of schools that is not the case. When students stand up, are engaged global citizens and do good, I find that adult allies typically listen. Truly I think most administrators want what is best for their students and school. So when discussing with administrators I always try to understand where they are coming from. This helps me best address their concerns proactively, which leads to cooperation and success. Developing relationships with adult allies who will support you and your ideas is essential to making change.
What advice would you give to another student who is inspired to create something similar at their school or in their community?
Go for it!! YOU can be the change. Global Minds has truly been the best experience of my life. I have the opportunity to work with superhero educators and student changemakers, who educate me every single day. My grandma has always told me, "Your mind is like a parachute, it only works when it's open." I live by this phrase every day and go into my work with an open mind and heart. I hope you can do the same.

Global Minds has chapters all across the USA and Canada, and we are continuing to expand. If you want to get involved visit www.globalminds.world(Opens in a new tab) and start a chapter at your school! It seems like a daunting task, but I promise our team is amazing and we will help you through it. We want to hear from you!!

Tori Taylor, 17, Founder, Peer2Peer at Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami, Florida
What prompted you to get involved in bullying prevention?
Hospitalized in psychiatric care at the age of 14 due to my obsessive compulsive disorder, I was exposed to many children and teens dealing with problems from anorexia to drug abuse to depression. Throughout my stay, I encountered many other kids and teens (like me) that had suffered at the hands of bullies throughout their years in America's compulsory educational institutions.
"I want to let people know that they are not alone, and that happiness is achievable."
From that moment forward, I decided that I would dedicate my life post-recovery to ending the stigma around mental health and to sharing my story in order to help others. I want to let people know that they are not alone, and that happiness is achievable. Rather than letting my past define me or cripple me, I have taken what I have learned and experienced and applied it to my service contributions.

While establishing Peer2Peer, I did not think about my 6th grade bullies whose words hurt worse than any sticks and stones; I was excited for those mentees who may be currently going through similar experiences to finally have a friend.
Why did you decide to focus on peer-to-peer counseling? And why do you think it might help with bullying?
I proposed Peer2Peer, a program that focuses on cross-age peer counseling in which an older student mentors a younger student, to my school's social worker and guidance counselors. I came to the conclusion that a peer counseling program that emphasized emotional support and academic success would have helped me acclimate to a new, intimidating environment as an underclassmen, and therefore decided I would like to provide the incoming freshmen and sophomores with that sense of security.

DASH Peer2Peer mentors are trained in empathetic listening skills by a social worker, and are instructed on emergency situation response. Acting as a resource and support-system for their assigned mentees, mentors provide advice on academic stress, offer personal insight based on their own high school experience, and most importantly, serve as a friend- a shoulder to cry on when their mentee is in a time of need.
What was the hardest part of getting Peer2Peer off the ground?
The most challenging obstacle I faced in leading this service contribution was Peer2Peer's initial startup. I spent three months creating an extensive proposal for the program, including impact reports from peer mentoring programs in other states, a strongly worded letter, and signatures from interested students at DASH.

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Ultimately, I chose a trustworthy committee to work with, and together we constructed the intricate application process used in pairing mentors and mentees, communicated with our social worker outside of school on the "Remind" app, made sure our program was functional and sustainable, and got to work.
What do you think has been Peer2Peer's greatest success?
The benefits of Peer2Peer have not only been increased confidence, productivity, and mental wellness for incoming DASH freshmen and sophomores, but for our tight-knit community as a whole. Peer2Peer has allowed mentees to learn more about the school while simultaneously building self-esteem, enhancing self-motivation, and improving academic success. It has also increased DASH's cultural diversity awareness and improved the campus climate overall. Younger students that would most likely be taunted for their stature or immaturity in other schools are welcomed by their older peers. Mentors gain recognition for service to their mentees at DASH, enjoy the feeling of being useful and supportive, and improve their leadership skills through acting as a support system for younger students.

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If a student is inspired by what Hampton, Jivani, Klein and Taylor have accomplished and wants to launch their own anti-bullying campaign, Swearer recommends first engaging peer and adult allies who will support and guide them through the process. That can mean getting a faculty sponsor, involving the student council, or enlisting well-known school athletes or student leaders. Research(Opens in a new tab) shows that having the right people involved, particularly those with social influence, can make anti-bullying campaigns more effective.

Building a team is particularly important when a student's motivation to fight bullying is linked to previous experiences of being bullied or bullying others. What you don't want to happen is for a teen's risk of continued bullying to increase, said Swearer. Garnering support from friends, teachers, and staff may insulate a student from personal attacks.

The message itself matters as well, said Swearer. Her research(Opens in a new tab) suggests that negative messages like "don't bully" actually aren't that effective. Instead, she encourages students and schools to focus on positive slogans or catchphrases that emphasize inclusivity, kindness, and bravery. Mental health resources -- for both those who are bullied and those who are bullying -- should be available and talked about as part of a student-led campaign.

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But a successful anti-bullying campaign isn't just about the people or message.

Swearer said that certain basic school values and practices must be in place, including clear guidance from the school about mechanisms for reporting incidents and consequences for bullying.

If a school's administration just isn't interested in working with a teen to develop a new initiative, Swearer said not to be too discouraged.

"If you don't have group behind you, you could set yourself up for disappointment or failure, and it depends on how much you want to push it," she said. Instead, she recommends looking for opportunities elsewhere, like a church group, the local YMCA, or a community center.

Now matter how you proceed, Swearer said it's critical to remember one thing: You're not alone.

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Natalie Hampton, Sanah Jivani, Peyton Klein, and Tori Taylor share one thing in common: They all experienced or witnessed bullying as teens. As they tried to make sense of what they'd personally endured or watched others live through, the four young women, who didn't know each other, ultimately decided to dedicate their teen years to bullying prevention.

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Hirsch created of the film "Bully" and The Bully Project, a social action campaign aimed at ending bullying in schools across America. He will speak Wednesday at the National Press Club in downtown D.C.
Why did you create this project?

I was bullied as a kid. And I became a filmmaker. Making the film "Bully" was something I had looked at many times. I was probably scared to make the film. After we produced it, we saw the film was really moving people and that is where the secondary tier of work began. I wanted to harness the moment and create the best tools we possibly could to allow people to use the film as a motivator and actually create safety in our schools.

What is the project about?

It's is very much like an experiment. It's about how we can leverage the power of a film that has traction, that brings people to a place where they want to raise their hand and say, "What can I do?"

How do you create that kind of leverage?

It's interesting because what we are celebrating in part on Capitol Hill on Wednesday is that we met and surpassed our goal of getting a million kids to see the film.

Beyond the film, how does the project work?

We have created a set of tools that go with it -- lessons that are created for the student that sees the film. It's using the film as a tool for educators, the people who are reaching out for it and saying we want to do that in our community and bring it to our school.

What do you believe is behind the uptick in bullying?

It has a lot to do with the broader question of school climate and school culture... Schools have gotten very focused on results and numerical evaluation based on testing. And what I see has gotten lost is increasing the social and emotional connections between students and staff. Schools need to teach kids empathy and how to process relationships.

What can a school do to reduce bullying?

The Bully Project includes a toolbox that is a roadmap for creating change. The first thing we encourage people to do is survey the school climate and school culture and really determine how many students feel connected to the school. They should determine what are the areas in student daily life that feel safe and unsafe.

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The 3-Minute Interview: Lee Hirsch, anti-bullying activist

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Hirsch created of the film "Bully" and The Bully Project, a social action campaign aimed at ending bullying in schools across America. He will speak Wednesday at the National Press Club in downtown D.C.

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About WE Charity - WE Charity Foundation (WCF)

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For 25 years, WE Charity empowered change and worked in five key areas - education, water, health, food and opportunity - to create transformative and lasting impact.

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By Lucie Horton | | Science and research

With more than one in five UK young people saying they've recently been bullied, and reports of cyberbullying on the rise, the need to understand the short and long-term impacts it has on mental health is crucial.

An MQ-funded study published today in JAMA Psychiatry has provided the strongest evidence we have to date around direct impact of bullying on the development of mental health problems.

So, what has the research found?

Dr Jean-Baptiste Pingault and his team at UCL found that bullying causes many mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, years later.

Previous studies have shown that bullied children are more likely to suffer mental health issues. But it has been unclear whether this is because of the bullying or pre-existing issue like genetic influences or home life - are more likely to explain the relationship. This research provides robust new evidence to demonstrate the causal link.

But the good news is that the results revealed that for some young people these detrimental mental health effects decreased over time, a discovery which could show that children exposed to bullying develop resilience.

How did they find this out?

To gain these unprecedented insights, the researchers surveyed 11,108 participants from the Twins Early Development Study, a longitudinal study collecting data from sets of twins in the UK from early childhood through adolescence.

By using twins, researchers were able to account for the confounding effects of their genes and shared environment because they studied both "identical" twins who have matching genes and home environments and "non-identical" twins, who don't share all of their genes, but have matching home environments. Both children and their parents filled out questionnaires: at age 11 and 14 they were asked about bullying, and at 11 and 16 they were asked about mental health difficulties.

Researchers found a causal link between exposure to bullying and mental health problems like anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and impulsivity, inattention, and conduct problems. Two years later, the impact of anxiety persisted. Five years later, many of these problems had improved, but 16-year-olds who had been bullied at age 11 remained more likely to have paranoid and disorganised thoughts.

Why does this matter?

This important research is further strong evidence of the need to take the mental health impacts of bullying seriously.

These findings highlight the harmful impact bullying has on mental health, demonstrating the need to intervene early to tackle the issue. It also offers a message of hope - that children can recover and shows the potential of research. We must now research how to create the best support for young people affected by bullying and develop new ways to intervene early and change lives.

Last updated: 15 May 2019

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Bullying causes mental health issues - but effects reduce over time

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By Lucie Horton | | Science and research With more than one in five UK young people saying they've recently been bullied, and reports of cyberbullying on the rise, the need to understand the short and long-term impacts it has on mental health is crucial.

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Bullying can affect physical and emotional health, both in the short term and later in life. It can lead to physical injury, social problems, emotional problems, and even death. Those who are bullied are at increased risk for mental health problems, headaches, and problems adjusting to school. Bullying also can cause long-term damage to self-esteem.

Children and adolescents who are bullies are at increased risk for substance use, academic problems, and violence to others later in life.

Those who are both bullies and victims of bullying suffer the most serious effects of bullying and are at greater risk for mental and behavioral problems than those who are only bullied or who are only bullies.

NICHD research studies show that anyone involved with bullying-those who bully others, those who are bullied, and those who bully and are bullied-are at increased risk for depression.

NICHD-funded research studies also found that unlike traditional forms of bullying, youth who are bullied electronically-such as by computer or cell phone-are at higher risk for depression than the youth who bully them. Even more surprising, the same studies found that cyber victims were at higher risk for depression than were cyberbullies or bully-victims (i.e., those who both bully others and are bullied themselves), which was not found in any other form of bullying. Read more about these findings in the NICHD news release: Depression High Among Youth Victims of School Cyberbullying, NIH Researchers Report.

Citations

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). Fact sheet: Understanding bullying. Retrieved June 17, 2016, from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-factsheet508.pdf (PDF - 356 KB).

2. Smokowski, P. R., & Kopasz, K. H. (2005). Bullying in school: An overview of types, effects, family characteristics, and intervention strategies. Children and Schools, 27, 101-109.

3. Reece, T. (2008). Bullies beat down self esteem. Retrieved June 17, 2016, from http://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/at-play/Pages/Bullies-Beat-Down-Self-Esteem.asp

4. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2010). Taking a stand against bullying. Retrieved June 17, 2016, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/resources/spotlight/092110-taking-stand-against-bullying

5. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2012). Focus on children's mental health research at the NICHD. Retrieved June 17, 2016, from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/resources/spotlight/060112-childrens-mental-health

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How does bullying affect health and well-being?

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Bullying can affect physical and emotional health, both in the short term and later in life.

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Being bullied is not an easy thing to cope with. Bullying can leave kids feeling helpless, vulnerable, and confused. Consequently, when kids are bullied, they are often so shocked by bullying that they are not sure what to do. But this indecision and lack of response can open the door to more bullying. Make sure your kids are prepared should the situation ever occur.

How Your Child Can Deal With a Bully

Ignore the bully. Not reacting when someone says or does something hurtful is often the most effective response to bullying. Most bullies are looking for a reaction. They want the target to get angry or cry. And, if your child has an emotional response to bullying, it often continues and may even escalate. Conversely, if your child keeps on walking with his head held high every time someone engages in name-calling or any other type of bullying, the bully will eventually move on when he realizes he will not get a response from your child.

Tell the bully to stop. Again, bullies often do not expect someone to stand up to them. In fact, they often target kids they believe they can intimidate. As a result, telling a bully to stop in a strong and confident voice can be very effective. In fact, bullies often count on finding a victim who will not say anything at all. But if your child makes sure the bully knows he cannot walk all over him, the bully is more likely to stop what he is doing.

Make a joke or agree with the bully. Some kids are naturally funny and find it easy to laugh right along with the bully. When kids are able to do this, it demonstrates that they are confident about who they are; and it does not bother them if other people point out their flaws. In fact, they are often secure enough to laugh right along with the bully. When your child laughs with the bully, it diffuses any power the bully thought he had over your child, and his bullying methods become ineffective.

Avoid bullying hot spots. Sometimes all it takes to prevent bullying is to avoid places where bullies hang out. These bullying hot spots include areas like the far corners of the playground, vacant hallways, bathrooms, locker rooms, and the back of the bus. Be sure your child knows where these spots are located and that he avoids them or travels with a buddy when he can. Sometimes the best way to deter bullying is to avoid crossing paths with the bully.

Stick with friends. Bullies usually look for kids who are alone or socially isolated. Be sure your child knows that hanging out with friends is a great way to prevent bullying. If your child struggles with social skills or has very few friends, take steps to help him develop friendships. Having just one healthy friendship can go a long way in protecting your child from bullies.﻿﻿

Know how to get out of a bullying situation. Talk to your child about ways in which he can defend himself against bullies, especially if the bullying is physical. For instance, be sure your child knows to keep his eye on the exit and to use it when the opportunity presents itself. Other options include making a lot of noise, attracting attention, and knowing how to deflect any type of physical aggression.

Your child does not have to "fight" the bully to defend himself. He just needs to know how to diffuse the situation and get to safety.

Report the bullying to an adult. Be sure your child knows that the best way to prevent bullying is to report it. Without adult intervention, bullying often will continue or escalate. Talk about the reasons why kids don't tell others they are being bullied and be sure your children know that you understand their fears. Stress that while it takes a lot of strength and courage to report bullying, it is the smartest way to handle this type of situation. Also, be careful not to engage in victim-blaming or to criticize your child for getting bullied. Bullying is a choice made by the bully and never the responsibility of the victim.

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Teach Your Child How to Deal With a Bully

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Being bullied is not an easy thing to cope with. Bullying can leave kids feeling helpless, vulnerable, and confused. Consequently, when kids are bullied, they are often so shocked by bullying that they are not sure what to do. But this indecision and lack of response can open the door to more bullying.

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There are a number of reasons why someone may be bullied. They include everything from personality differences to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's more, anyone can be a target of bullying, even strong, athletic, and popular kids.

There are certain characteristics that might increase a child's chances of getting bullied. It's important to remember that these children shouldn't try to change their characteristics to avoid bullying. Bullying is about the wrong choice the bully makes, not some perceived defect in the target.

Types of Kids Who Might Get Bullied

The responsibility for bullying always falls on the bully's shoulders, not the victim's. Nonetheless, there are a number of types of kids who are often the target of bullies. These are characteristics or attributes that might make bullying more likely.

Successful

Kids who are good at what they do might get bullied. A lot of times kids will be bullied because they get a lot of positive attention from their peers and from adults.﻿﻿ This attention could be everything from excelling in sports, making the cheerleading squad, or getting the editor's position on the school newspaper.

Bullies target these students because they either feel inferior﻿﻿ or they worry that their abilities are being overshadowed by the target's abilities. As a result, they bully these kids hoping to make them feel insecure as well as make others doubt their abilities.

Intelligent, Determined, Creative

At school, these students go that extra mile on schoolwork. Or they learn very quickly and move through projects and assignments faster than other students. For instance, gifted students are often targeted for excelling in school. Bullies usually single them out because they are jealous of this attention.﻿﻿

Vulnerable

Children who are introverted, anxious, or submissive are more likely to be bullied﻿﻿ than kids who are extroverted and assertive. In fact, some researchers believe that kids who lack self-esteem may attract kids who are prone to bully. What's more, kids who engage in people-pleasing are often targeted by bullies because they are easy to manipulate.﻿﻿

Research shows that kids suffering from depression or stress-related conditions may also be more likely to be bullied, which often makes the condition worse.﻿﻿ Bullies select these kids because they are an easy mark and less likely to fight back. Most bullies want to feel powerful, so they often choose kids that are weaker than them.

Many victims of bullying tend to have fewer friends than children who do not experience bullying.﻿﻿ They may be rejected by their peers, excluded from social events, and may even spend lunch and recess alone.

Parents and teachers can prevent bullying of socially-isolated students by helping them develop friendships. Bystanders can also support these students by befriending them.

Sometimes bullies target popular or well-liked children because of the threat they pose to the bully. Mean girls are especially likely to target a girl who threatens their popularity or social standing.﻿﻿

A lot of relational aggression is directly linked to an attempt to climb the social ladder. Kids will spread rumors, engage in name-calling, and even resort to cyberbullying in an effort to destroy their popularity.﻿﻿ When these kids are targeted, the bully is looking to discredit the victims and make them less likable.

Distinctive Physical Appearance

Almost any type of physical characteristic that is different or unique can attract the attention of bullies.﻿﻿ It may be that the victim is short, tall, thin, or obese. They might wear glasses or have acne, a large nose, or ears that stick out. It really doesn't matter what it is, the bully will pick a feature and distort it into a target.

Many times, this type of bullying is extremely painful and damaging to a young person's self-esteem.﻿﻿ Most bullies that target these kids get some enjoyment from making fun of others. Other times, they are looking for a laugh at another person's expense.The best way to combat a bully who targets this type of person is to take away his audience.

Illness or Disability

Bullies often target special needs children. This can include children who have Asperger's, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or any condition that sets them apart. Kids with conditions like food allergies, asthma, Down syndrome, and other conditions also can be targeted by bullies. When this happens, the bullies show a lack of empathy or are making jokes at another person's expense.

It is very important for teachers and parents to make sure these kids have a support group with them to help defend against bullying. It also helps if the general student population frowns on this type of bullying in particular. If bullies know this is taboo, they are less likely to do it.

Different Sexual Orientation

More often than not, kids are bullied for being gay.﻿﻿ In fact, some of the most brutal bullying incidents have involved children who are bullied for their sexual orientation. If left unchecked, prejudicial bullying can result in serious hate crimes. As a result, it is essential that LGBT students be given a solid support network in order to keep them safe.

Religious or Cultural Beliefs

It is not uncommon for kids to be bullied for their religious beliefs. One example of this type of bullying includes the treatment Muslim students received after the 9/11 tragedy. However, any student can be bullied for their religious beliefs. Both Christian students and Jewish students are often ridiculed for their beliefs and practices as well.

Different Race

Sometimes kids will bully others because they are of a different race. For instance, white students may single out Black students and bully them. Or Black students may single out white students and bully them.

It happens with all races and in all directions. No race is exempt from being bullied, and no race is exempt from having bullies. Just like with religious bullying, these students are singled out for no other reason than the fact that they're different.

A Word From Verywell

While each of these characteristics may be exploited by bullies, they in no way are faults that victims should change. Remember, bullying is about the bully making a bad choice. It is important that this fact is communicated to victims of bullying. They need to be reminded that there is nothing wrong with them and they are not to blame for being targeted.

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Why Certain Kids Are Targeted by Bullies More Than the Others

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There are a number of reasons why someone may be bullied. They include everything from personality differences to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's more, anyone can be a target of bullying, even strong, athletic, and popular kids. There are certain characteristics that might increase a child's chances of getting bullied.

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Bully Official Trailer #1 - Weinstein Company Movie (2012) HD

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Bullying. A word almost every kid dreads. They dread being the outcast. The reject. The person everyone bullies. The loner. Not being good enough or not meeting someone's standards. Some dread it so much, they take their own lives. A tragic way to die.
If only the teachers had seen it sooner. If only the parents knew. If only the victim spoke up.
Statistics show in 2011 that 60% of middle school students say they have been bullied. Only 16% of staff believed that students had been bullied. They also say that over 160,000 stayed home from school to avoid bullying. 20% of high school students said they had thoughts of committing suicide in the past twelve months in 2011.
In my opinion, these numbers are too high. What can we do to stop bullying? There are numerous ways to prevent bullying.
Statistics show that over 50% of bullying decreased if the school had an anti-bully program running. If every school had an anti-bully program running, it might reduce the percentage of bullying. It would show the bullies how much they hurt the person who they were bullying.
It would also be more helpful if teachers kept an eye on students at all times. Many bullying cases occur on the playground or at passing time. Only 25% of bullied students said that teachers intervened a bullying incident; while 71% of teachers said they intervened a bullying incident.
Another way is to talk to the bully or stand up to them. Tell them how much it hurts when they call you names or physically hurt you. Try to help them understand bullying isn't cool. Most likely, they bully just to impress their friends.
Tell a teacher or trusted adult. It's one of the most commonly known ways to stop a bully from bullying you. Don't worry; you won't be a snitch or tattle-tale. Tattle-telling is when someone purposely tells on someone to get them in trouble. Just telling a teacher or trusted adult the situation is perfectly fine. It will help you in the long run.
Don't just sit on the sidelines and watch bullying. Stand up for the bullying victim and let them know they won't be alone.
Bullying is never, nor will it ever be, a tolerable matter. Together we can stand up to bullying and make it disappear. Poof!

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Bullying. A word almost every kid dreads. They dread being the outcast. The reject. The person everyone bullies. The loner. Not being good enough or not meeting someone's standards. Some dread it so much, they take their own lives. A tragic way to

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How children are standing up for their rights

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Learn about animal cruelty and what you can do to fight animal cruelty and stop animal abuse.

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Animal fights are associated with gambling, drug dealing and illegal gun sales. Help end dogfighting, cockfighting and hog baiting.

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Table of Contents

1. Child Labor in the United States

2. Industrial Revolution

3. Immigration and Child Labor

4. National Child Labor Committee

5. Depression-Era Child Labor

6. Automatization and Education

7. Does Child Labor Exist Today?

Child labor, or the use of children as workers, servants and apprentices, has been practiced throughout most of human history, but reached its zenith during the Industrial Revolution. Miserable working conditions including crowded and unclean factories, a lack of safety codes and long hours were the norm. Children could be paid less and were less likely to organize into unions. Working children were typically unable to attend school, creating a cycle of poverty that was difficult to break. Nineteenth century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working conditions to uplift the masses, but it took the Great Depression-a time when Americans were desperate for employment-to shake long-held practices of child labor in the United States.

Child Labor in the United States

The Puritan work ethic of the 13 colonies and their founders valued hard work over idleness, and this ethos applied to children as well. Through the first half of the 1800s, child labor was an essential part of the agricultural and handicraft economy of the United States. Children worked on family farms and as indentured servants for others. To learn a trade, boys often began their apprenticeships between the ages of ten and fourteen.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution saw the rise of factories and mines in need of workers. Children were ideal employees because they could be paid less, were often of smaller size so could attend to tasks in tight spaces and were less likely to organize and strike against their pitiable working conditions.

Before the Civil War, women and children played a critical role in American manufacturing, though it was still a relatively small part of the economy. Advances in manufacturing techniques after the war increased the number of jobs-and therefore increased the number of child laborers.

Did you know? In 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16.

Immigration and Child Labor

Immigration to the United States coincidentally peaked during the Industrial Revolution and led to a new source of labor-and child labor. When the Irish Potato Famine struck in the 1840s, Irish immigrants moved to fill lower-level factory jobs.

In the 1880s, groups from southern and eastern Europe arrived, provided a new pool of child workers. The trend continues today, as many immigrant children work in agriculture, which is exempt from certain labor laws.

National Child Labor Committee

Educational reformers of the mid-nineteenth century attempted to convince the public that a primary school education was a necessity if the nation were to advance as a whole. Several states established a minimum wage for labor and requirements for school attendance-though many of these laws were full of loopholes that were readily exploited by employers hungry for cheap labor.

Beginning in 1900, efforts to regulate or eliminate child labor became central to social reform in the United States. The National Child Labor Committee, organized in 1904, and state child labor committees led the charge.

These organizations employed flexible methods in the face of slow progress. They pioneered tactics like investigations by experts; the use of photographs of child laborers to spark outrage at the poor conditions of children at work, and persuasive lobbying efforts. They used written pamphlets, leaflets and mass mailings to reach the public.

From 1902 to 1915, child labor committees emphasized reform through state legislatures. Many laws restricting child labor were passed as part of the Progressive Era reform movement. But many Southern states resisted, leading to the decision to work for a federal child labor law. While Congress passed such laws in 1916 and 1918, the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional.

The supporters of child labor laws sought a constitutional amendment authorizing federal child labor legislation and it passed in 1924, though states were not keen to ratify it; the conservative political climate of the 1920s, together with opposition from farm and church organizations fearing increased federal power over children, acted as roadblocks.

Depression-Era Child Labor

The Great Depression left thousands of Americans without jobs and led to sweeping reforms under the New Deal programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These focused on increasing federal oversight of the workplace and giving out-of-work adults jobs-thereby creating a powerful motive to remove children from the workforce.

Almost all of the codes developed under the National Industrial Recovery Act served to reduce child labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a national minimum wage for the first time, a maximum number of hour for workers in interstate commerce-and placed limitations on child labor. In effect, the employment of children under sixteen years of age was prohibited in manufacturing and mining.

Automatization and Education

Changing attitudes toward work and social reform weren't the only factors reducing child labor; the invention of improved machinery that mechanized many of the repetitive tasks previously given to children led to a decrease of children in the workforce. Semiskilled adults took their place for more complex tasks.

Education underwent reforms, too. Many states increasing the number of years of schooling required to hold certain jobs, lengthened the school year and began to more strictly enforce truancy laws. In 1949, Congress amended the child labor law to include businesses not covered in 1938 like transportation, communications and public utilities.

Does Child Labor Exist Today?

Although child labor has been significantly stalled in the United States, it lingers in certain areas of the economy like agriculture, where migrant workers are more difficult to regulate. Since 1938, federal laws have excluded child farm workers from labor protections provided to other working children. For example, children 12 and younger can legally work in farm fields, despite the risks posed by exposure to pesticides and farm machinery.

Employers in the garment industry have turned to the children of illegal immigrants in an effort to compete with imports from low-wage nations. Despite laws limiting the number of hours of work for children and teens still attending school, the increasing cost of education means many are working longer hours to make ends meet. State-by-state enforcement of child labor laws varies to this day.

Sources

Child Labor in U.S. History. The University of Iowa.
History of Child Labor in the United States. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Children in the Fields. National Farm Worker Ministry.

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Child Labor: Laws & Definition - HISTORY

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Child labor, the use of children and teens in often-unsafe working conditions, peaked during the Industrial Revolution but is now regulated by child labor laws.

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What is child slavery?

Despite the fact that many people believe that slavery no longer exists, an estimated five million children are in slavery worldwide, including in the UK.

Child slavery is often confused with child labour, but is much worse. Whilst child labour is harmful for children and hinders their education and development, child slavery occurs when a child's labour is exploited for someone else's gain.

Said and Yarg's story

Said and Yarg are brothers born into slavery in Mauritania. They worked every day from a young age. While their masters' children went to school, Said and Yarg worked.

"We weren't allowed to eat the same food as the rest of the family, sleep in the same rooms or wear the same clothes. They would beat us for any reason at all, and sometimes we didn't even know the reason."

Said and Yarg were able to escape slavery and take their former master to court with support from Anti-Slavery and its partners.

Child slavery includes:

Children used by others for profit, often through violence, abuse and threats, in prostitution or pornography, forced begging, petty crime and the drug trade

Forced child labour, for example in agriculture, factories, construction, brick kilns, mines, bars, the tourist industry or domestic work

Children forced to take part in armed conflicts

Children forced to marry

Why do children work?

Most children work because their families are poor and their labour is necessary for their survival. Children are often employed because, compared to adults, they are more easily controlled and are unlikely to demand higher wages or better working conditions.

For poorer children from rural areas, school is not an option. Education can be expensive or schools are too far away.

As well as being a result of poverty, child labour also perpetuates poverty. Many working children do not have the opportunity to go to school and often grow up to be unskilled adults trapped in poorly paid jobs.

Child work, child labour, child slavery?

The terms around exploitation of children can be quite confusing so here is a short guide.

Child work. Some types of work make useful, positive contributions to a child's development, helping them learn useful skills. Often, work is a vital source of income for their families.

Child labour. Child labour is not slavery, but nevertheless hinders children's education and development. Child labour tends to be undertaken when the child is in the care of their parents.

Worst form of child labour. "Hazardous work" is the worst form of child labour. It irreversibly damages children's health and development through, for example, exposure to dangerous machinery or toxic substances, and may even endanger their lives.

Child slavery. Child slavery is the enforced exploitation of a child for their labour for someone else's gain.

Child trafficking. Trafficking involves transporting, recruiting or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation, using violence, threats or coercion. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved, trafficking is merely the act of transporting or harbouring them for exploitative work. When away from their families, they are at the mercy of their employers.

Child marriage. Many marriages involving children will not amount to slavery, particularly between couples aged 16 to 18 years. But when a child didn't give their consent to a marriage, is exploited within it or is not able to leave, that child is in slavery.

Children in armed conflicts. Children forced to take part in armed conflicts don't only include child soldiers but also porters or girls taken as "wives" for soldiers and militia members. Children involved in conflict are severely affected by their experiences and can suffer from long-term trauma.

Facts about child slavery

Worldwide 10 million children are in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities (ILO)

151.6 million are estimated to be in child labour (ILO)

114 million child labourers are below the age of 14 (ILO)

72 million children are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health, safety and moral development (ILO)

more than 700 million women alive today were married before their 18th birthday. More than one in three (about 250 million) entered into union before age 15 (UNICEF)

300,000 children are estimated to serve as child soldiers, some even younger than 10 years old (UNICEF)

15.5 million children are in domestic work worldwide - the overwhelming majority of them are girls (ILO)

In the UK, 981 children were referred to authorities as potential victims of trafficking in 2015 (National Crime Agency)

Learn more about slavery

Subscribe to our emails to hear latest news about modern slavery, our work against it around the world, and different ways you can take action. You can unsubscribe whenever you want.

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What is child slavery - Anti-Slavery International

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Despite the fact that many people believe that slavery no longer exists, an estimated five million children are in slavery worldwide, including in the UK. Child slavery is often confused with child labour, but is much worse. Whilst child labour is harmful for children and hinders their education and development, child slavery occurs when a child's labour is exploited for someone else's gain.

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When 60 Minutes Correspondent Ed Bradley first met Craig Kielburger three years ago, the 13-year-old possessed a passionate intolerance for child labor and slavery.

Now 16, he has met with some of the most important political and religious leaders of his time. And last year, he joined the ranks of John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Elie Wiesel and Desmond Tutu as he took home the prestigious Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Medal of Freedom. Bradley recently revisited Craig to track his progress.

To understand how a teen-ager from Toronto became the inspiration for a 5,000-member organization called Free the Children, with chapters in 25 countries, consider what Craig had to say at age 13.

"Basically, we're told slavery [was] abolished," Craig explained. "But it was really shocking, because when I was just reading through the different research that I got, and you find the worst type of slavery still exists today - slavery of children."

When Craig was age 12, he had read a newspaper article about a boy his age in Pakistan, Iqbal Masih.

Iqbal's parents, like so many others, had offered their son's labor at age 4 in exchange for a small loan. Iqbal spent the next six years chained to a rug loom, working 12-hour days for pennies, until he finally escaped and joined a crusade against child labor.

But after Iqbal won worldwide recognition, his life was cut short when, at age 12, he was shot dead in the streets of his village. No one has been convicted of the murder, and Craig vowed to keep his cause alive.

"The only way we're going to ever find out is try," he said. "So after doing some research, I just walked to my classmates and said, 'Listen, I read this article. Here's the problem. This is what I know,' which at that point was not very much. And [I] asked, 'Who wants to help?'"

Craig started a group called Free the Children. The board of directors mey Saturdays in Craig's den-turned-command center. They were in daily contact, by phone or fax, with a host of international human rights groups.

Having always done his homework to keep up on the issue, Craig soon felt that homework wasn't enough: He had to meet the children he was trying to help.

"I just wanted to learn more on the issue of child labor. I wanted to make sure that we're not imposing our Western culture on these people. I wanted to speak to the children. I wanted to hear their views, ask them, 'What do you want? How can your life be better?'" Craig said.

This prompted him to take a trip to Asia - a trip his parents were wholeheartedly against.

"We wouldn't even let him take the subway to downtown Toonto by himself, so to let him go to Asia was unthinkable," said his mother, Theresa, a schoolteacher.

CraigÂ's parents eventually found his cause so convincing that they let him miss seven weeks of school and bought his plane ticket to travel halfway around the world. Chaperoned at each stop by local human rights advocates and armed with a video camera, Craig went from Bangladesh to Thailand, and then to India, Nepal and Pakistan.

"The perception that I had was that in child labor, it's all in the deep, dark back alleys,Â...no one can see it; [it's] beyond public scrutiny. But the truth is, it's practiced in the open," Craig said.

He was shocked to discover that child labor did not take place just in hidden sweatshops. It was everywhere - a boy making metal cups to be shipped to hotels and restaurants, a girl bagging candy 11 hours a day in an overheated room or a boy stitching soccer balls.

Craig found himself staring into faces his age and younger - kids missing their childhood, separated from their parents, tortured for small mistakes. And in some cases, the work was life-threatening.

"One shop that I went into, I met one 8-year-old girl," Craig remembered. "She was just pulling apart syringes and needles, piece by pieceÂ...and putting them in buckets for their plastics."

"She wore no gloves, literally had no shoes," he said. "All she was doing was squatting on the ground,Â...surrounded by a pile of needles."

"They were from hospitals, from the street, from the garbage. We asked her, 'Don't you worry about AIDS and other diseases like that?' We got no response. She didn't know what they were," he continued.

"I believe that young people can make a difference, and I believe that young people, when speaking out, do have a lot of power," he added. "One of the best parts about being young is we still have our imagination. We still think we can fly; we still think we can go to the moon."

But despite all the power that Craig has acquired over the years, his parents didnÂ't want him to forget he was still a child.

"It's very important for me that he remain a child - that he enjoys his childhood, that he be able to Rollerblade, to swim, to ski, to do all those things," his mother explained.

The Kielburgers claimed theyÂ're far from activists, even describing themselves as boring. But their life was far from dull these days. The phone would rings at all hours. An uninterrupted family dinner would be a rare occasion, and good-byes were routine.

Ad while Craig admitted to sometimes feeling run down, he said he can't slow down when there's so much left to do.

"It's a lot easier to be ignorant and say, 'I don't know the problem.' But once you know that problem, once you've seen it in their eyes, then you have a responsibility to do something," he said.

"If everyone in the world could say, 'Why me?' then nothing ever would be accomplished. Why me? Because I've met those children. Because I've seen them. Why not me?" he said.

So for the past three years, Craig hasnÂ't worried about much else. And, his organization - that group of kids who used to meet in his den - has grown into the only international human rights group run by children.

"We have groups in over 25 nations," he says. "We've, for example, now run 35 schools in countries ranging from India to Nicaragua. We've established alternative sources of income projects, helping themÂ...to set up cooperatives by giving land."

Craig spends a lot of his time on the road, often alone. He is part of an individualized program that allows him to travel and keep up with his class work. He appears to be pretty popular with the kids in his class, as well as with his teachers, especially considering his record of straight As.

"I plan on going all the way through my Ph.D., so I'm going to be in school till I'm 40 or something," Craig says. "I hope to...study international conflict mediation. I've had the chance to travel to Bosnia quite a bit,...and areas of armed conflict, and to see what war does."

"I want to be involved in helping stop wars before they begin," he says.

But what about a future in politics?

"I've met too many politicians. AndÂ...it's a very noble pursuit. But I find you have to compromise, you know, too many of your morals when you enter politics," he says.

Craig has met his share of political leaders. He has been featured in pictures with the Dali Lama, the queen of England, the president and Hillary Clinton, the vice president and Tipper Gore, and even the late Mother Teresa.

"It's great meeting with them. But the only reason I do meet with them is not to get the picture taken, becauseÂ...every person's just another person," he explains.

"They're all incredibly interesting people. I enjoyed meeting all of them, but theyÂ're still not the people who impress me the most," he says.

So who does impress this teen-ager?

"In Thailand, there was a young street girl, who I handed an orange. And she automaticallyÂ...took the orange, and she peeled it, and she broke it, and she shared it with her friends," Craig says.

"Or a child who I saw in India. He was crippled," Craig says. "So his friends were carrying him from place to place, so he wouldn't be left behind."

"And to this day I'm convinced that if you took these children and put them in those positions of power, we would see this world truly e a different place," he says.

Produced by Aaron Wertheim

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When 60 Minutes Correspondent Ed Bradley first met Craig Kielburger three years ago, the 13-year-old possessed a passionate intolerance for child labor and slavery. Now 16, he has met with some of the most important political and religious leaders of his time. And last year, he joined the ranks of John F.

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Already hit with sagging exports, Pakistani carpet dealers say they have lost more sales to Western buyers since the killing of a young activist who spoke out against child labor.

The death of Iqbal Masih, 12, received worldwide publicity after a group that is fighting child labor blamed carpet industry owners. But residents of his village later said Iqbal was slain in a fight with a farm worker, and Pakistan's leading human rights group says there is no evidence implicating the industry.

Iqbal's case attracted attention because he had been to Sweden and the United States to speak at conferences denouncing child labor. He had worked as a carpet weaver from age 4 to 10.

Imran Malik, vice chairman of the Pakistan Carpet and Manufacturers and Exporters Association, estimates $10 million worth of orders have been lost since the April 16 shooting.

"Carpets that were once considered a piece of art are now looked upon as if the blood of children has been used to make them," Malik said.

*

The carpet industry, one of the biggest exporters in this impoverished country, was facing lean times even before Iqbal's death. Exports fell from $183 million in 1992 to $149 million last year, the government says.

The United States, the largest importer of Pakistani carpets, purchased $42 million worth last year, down from $55 million two years earlier.

"With this controversy, our wholesale carpet buyers don't want to take the risk and buy Pakistani carpets," said Abdul Latif Malik, a leading Lahore carpet dealer who says he has lost at least $300,000 in sales since Iqbal's death. He is no relation to the vice chairman of the carpet association.

Usman Ashraf of Usman Carpet House in Lahore said he has lost $80,000 in sales since mid-April. "It is all related to the young boy's death," he said.

Both dealers said Western buyers had contacted them to say they would not be making further purchases due to the furor over the killing.

But in New York, carpet dealers contacted by the Associated Press said they had seen no backlash against Pakistani carpets since Iqbal's death, although one said reports of child labor overseas had sparked questions from a few customers.

"There isn't a major scare that I'm aware of, but all carpets have not been selling as well because of the downturn in the economy," said Michael Harounian, a partner in the New York-based Harounian Imports.

Harounian and Larry Feldman, president of the Rug Warehouse in New York, both said they try to ensure they do no business with carpet makers who use child labor.

*

Anti-Slavery International, a British-based group that campaigns against forced labor, estimates carpet makers employ about 500,000 children under 14 years old in Pakistan, 300,000 in India and 110,000 in Nepal.

Children are prized by carpet makers because their tiny fingers make small, tight knots, the sign of a truly fine carpet.

Hand-knotted carpets also are made in Iran, China, Afghanistan, Morocco, Turkey, Peru and some former Soviet states.

"Apart from the former Soviet Union, where we have no information, we have information to suggest that child labor is used to some extent in all these countries," said David Ould, spokesman for Anti-Slavery International.

It was the campaign against child labor that drew attention to Iqbal's killing.

The Bonded Labor Liberation Front, a private group in Pakistan, blamed the slaying on Pakistan's "carpet mafia," although it provided no evidence.

An AP reporter who visited Iqbal's village outside Lahore was told by numerous residents that the youth was shot by a farm worker after a petty dispute. Iqbal's cousin, who was wounded in the shooting, told the same story to police, who have arrested the farm worker.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the country's most respected human rights group, said it found no evidence tying the carpet industry to Iqbal's death.

In dirt-poor villages where there are not enough schools, children are routinely sent out to find work in mills, brickyards and garages before they reach their 10th birthday.

The conditions are often filthy and dangerous and the daily pay can be as little as one rupee--the equivalent of three cents. But in such an impoverished region, many people accept child labor as normal, including the children.

"Children themselves say, 'We're earning a living.' The family says they need the money," said Shireen Khan, a spokeswoman in Islamabad for the International Labor Organization, a United Nations group.

Pakistan passed legislation in 1992 that says children under 14 are not allowed to work, but the law is not enforced.

If Pakistan does not show some progress, it could lose preferential tariffs on its carpet imports into the United States, Commerce Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said.

"It's like a sword dangling over our head," he said.

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Young Activist's Death Hits Pakistani Carpet Sales : Trade: Exports to West have diminished even though producers haven't been linked to death of 12-year-old who fought child labor.

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Already hit with sagging exports, Pakistani carpet dealers say they have lost more sales to Western buyers since the killing of a young activist who spoke out against child labor.

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10 Shocking Child Labor Facts - The Borgen Project

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Here are 10 child labor facts about the perpetuating cycle of poverty that results from depriving children of an education. These shocking facts about child labor demonstrate the detrimental effects of the practice on the countries which it plagues.

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COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - Benjamin Obando is surrounded by death.

The 11-year-old boy works at a cemetery, praying, singing and fetching water for relatives of the dead.

"I bring money home for my family, to give them food," said Obando, who earns about $3 a day.

He isn't afraid to work among departed souls, but said he hurries to leave the graveyard before 7 p.m. because that's when "little ghosts appear."

In 2014, Bolivia lowered the age children could work for themselves or their families to 10, the lowest minimum age for labor. Children can work for others when they are 12. Previously, Bolivia's minimum working age law in all cases was 14.

The United Nations, the International Labor Organization and other groups have urged Bolivia to repeal the law, arguing it lacks strong protections for the young child laborers.

But in a country with a 39 percent poverty rate - despite an economic turnaround in recent years - the children's wages can be a lifeline for their families, pitting their safety against their own survival or that of their families.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has resisted calls for repeal, saying children have the right to work.

Last week, he reiterated his support for children and adolescents and unveiled new decrees to protect them.

One decree gives free legal aid to victims of violence. Another mandates paid leave for parents if their children are critically ill. A third order requires the news media to spread - free of charge - "messages of love, affection, respect, appreciation and dignity toward children and adolescents and against violence."

Morales, who herded llamas at 6, told reporters that the government has a duty "to protect the greatest treasure that is the future of Bolivia. We have to take care of future generations."

Critics said Morales' additional rules aren't enough.

"Many laws are written that aren't followed," said Marcos Gandarillas, a sociologist in Cochabamba in central Bolivia.

The debate is taking place in a economically improved Bolivia, which government supporters say Morales has helped make better for children since taking office in 2006.

Poverty has declined over the past decade. And in 2017, the Bolivian economy grew by 4 percent, higher than any other South American nation, according to the World Bank.

"Bolivia is experiencing the longest period of democracy in its history - 35 years," said Hernan Rico who helps enforce the laws to protect children.

Rico is the leader of the government's Delegation on Children and Adolescents in Cochabamba. He said child workers helped write the 2014 law, which established harsh penalties for bullying, harassment, sexual violence and infanticide.

The law also called for registering child workers as a way of tracking and protecting them, but that system isn't yet in place.

Rico acknowledged the law has faced "administrative difficulties," but said the government is progressing.

"The most difficult part is not the children, but the openness of adults" toward allowing children to work, said Peter Strack, a sociologist in Cochabamba. "The law has lost momentum," he said.

According to UNICEF, some 850,000 children work in Bolivia. Keeping them safe is a daunting task, child advocates say. Crime, violence and other perils threaten many young people, especially the poor.

Natalia Calahumana said she sold candy and gum on the streets at age 7 after her father abandoned the family.

"I learned to shine shoes at 8," she said. "At 9, I started to weave."

She said she didn't like living at home because it was painful to see her mother cry all the time over money troubles. So at night she curled up in a cardboard box on the street.

Back then, she said she ate whatever she could find, including restaurant leftovers.

At 11, Calahumana said a stranger drove up and asked her to come work for her. "I believed everything the señora said. I would be fine. I would have something to eat. I would have clothes."

So she climbed into the woman's car.

"I didn't want to be on the streets anymore," Calahumana said. "I took care of a little girl she had. I cleaned all the bedrooms. I cooked."

And it was fine - at first. But the job turned into a nightmare when the woman locked the child in her house and forced her to work for no pay.

"The señora disconnected the phone so I couldn't call anyone. The only thing I wanted was to escape. She told me, 'You were on the streets. You'll steal from me. You have to be shut in with a key.' I told the señora, 'Yes, I was on the street, but I would never rob you.'

'No,' she told me, 'you'll steal everything. I have jewels. Everything is gold.'"

One day, Calahumana said, she accidentally broke a plate. The woman picked up a shard of glass and cut her with it.

"She would cut my hand to say 'you'll never break anything again.'"

Calahumana finally escaped after the señora forgot to lock the door.

Now, more than two decades later, she has three children of her own.

"My dream is that my children be something in life, not like me," said Calahumana, 34, who lives in El Alto, Bolivia's second-largest city. "That's why I work. I wash clothes. I shine shoes. I sell newspapers, gum, candy. I do everything so my children don't have to do what I do."

Some experts question whether Bolivia has the resources and capacity to protect child workers. Bolivia had only 12 child labor inspectors in 2016 and up to a fifth of country's municipalities lacked a child protection advocate, U.S. officials said.

Bolivia reported that it carried out "250 targeted child labor inspections" in 2016. That was "inadequate to address the scope of the problem, particularly in rural and hard to reach areas," the U.S. Labor Department said.

The Bolivian government did not disclose statistics on child labor investigations, violations, prosecutions or convictions, according to the department.

Bolivia's Ministry of Labo r had been expected to release the results of a child labor survey in 2017, but publication was postponed over disagreements about how to interpret the data, a source told NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Child advocates hope the results will help identify workers most in need of protection.

In 2008, 60 children died in accidents and caveins at Bolivia's Cerro Rico mine, National Public Radio reported in 2013.

The number of Bolivian children working in mining and construction, another hazardous occupation, rose from 2001 to 2012, Bolivia's National Institute of Statistics reported in May.

The average monthly wage for children and adolescents was $201 in 2014.

Many Bolivians shun low-wage earners, workers say. Shoe shiners often wear ski masks so they won't be recognized.

A masked shoe shiner who goes by the nickname "Universal Soldier" said he started working at age 7. His family needed the money after his parents divorced.

At 9, he worked for a carpenter, making and sanding chairs. But he said he wasn't paid a wage for five months.

"He only gave me lunch," Universal Soldier said. "But I worked all day - 14 or 15 hours per day. It wasn't fair."

After he told the employer he was going to report him, the carpenter threatened to kill his brothers.

"Since we were just children, we were afraid we'd never see our younger brothers again," said Universal Soldier, now 20.

So he kept his mouth shut.

Despite such episodes, he has no regrets.

"A child who starts working very young appreciates what he earns with the sweat on his brow," he said. "You learn to appreciate life, to appreciate every cent that you earn."
This report was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.
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Bolivia wrestles with protecting child workers as young as 10

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Boliva President Evo Morales added new protections to a law that lets children as young as 10 work, but critics say existing safeguards aren't well enforced.

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Because people who are insensitive to the suffering of animals are more likely to be unresponsive to the needs of dependent people in their household (and vice versa), several states have "cross-reporting" laws. Cross-reporting laws are those in which humane officers and/or veterinarians are required to report possible elder and/or child abuse.

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Despite heightened public awareness, puppy mills continue to plague communities across the nation. The Animal Legal Defense is working across the country to combat puppy mills from multiple legal channels.

The term "puppy mill" generally refers to a large-scale commercial dog-breeding facility where the emphasis is on profits over the welfare of the dogs. The goal of puppy mills is to produce the largest number of puppies as quickly as possible, without consideration of genetic quality or the care of the animals.

The dogs are generally kept in crowded, unsanitary conditions. They often lack good food, clean water, and veterinary care. The mother "breeder" dogs may give birth to multiple litters per year throughout her adult life. They, and aging father dogs, will regularly be abandoned or killed when they are no longer "useful" to their owners.

As a result of the breeding practices of puppy mills, it is common for puppy mill dogs to suffer from genetic and hereditary conditions, and deadly diseases. Additionally, many puppy mill dogs experience behavioral and psychological problems throughout their lives from lack of early socialization and being weaned too young.

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Despite heightened public awareness, puppy mills continue to plague communities across the nation. The Animal Legal Defense is working across the country to combat puppy mills from multiple legal channels. The term "puppy mill" generally refers to a large-scale commercial dog-breeding facility where the emphasis is on profits over the welfare of the dogs.

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Wild animals enjoy few legal protections under either state or local laws.

At both the state and federal level, the key laws protecting wildlife are those governing when and where hunting is permitted. Some states have also begun also to prosecute people who commit acts of cruelty against wild animals.

A handful of other federal wildlife laws are in effect. These include the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But these laws protect only a small number of animals, and even for these animals the protections are not robust.

Wild animals experience pain and pleasure just the same as the dogs and cats who share our homes, and who enjoy far more expansive legal protections. Wild animals also play a key role in our environment and ecosystem. And they are affected by all facets of human behavior: where we build, and what we do on developed land.

Factory farming not only affects the lives of the 9 billion animals a year who are raised for food, but also the wild animals who drink from bodies of water and live on the land polluted by these agricultural activities.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund is dedicated to pursuing better legal protection for wildlife.

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Wild animals enjoy few legal protections under either state or local laws. At both the state and federal level, the key laws protecting wildlife are those governing when and where hunting is permitted. Some states have also begun also to prosecute people who commit acts of cruelty against wild animals.

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The Animal Legal Defense Fund is working to change this. Farmed animals are every bit as capable of feeling pain, and pleasure, as the animals who live inside our homes with us. We are fighting for stronger laws to protect farmed animals, and better enforcement of those laws.

What You Can Do

As long as the law fails to meaningfully protect farmed animals, you can help reduce their suffering by adopting a plant-based diet.

Let lawmakers know that legal protections for all animals are important and that you want stronger legal protections for farmed animals enacted and enforced.

Sign the Animal Legal Defense Fund's Animal Bill of Rights at animalbillofrights.org to let your federal legislators know that all animals deserve basic legal protections that prevent the very worst abuses.

Join the Animal Legal Defense Fund in our work to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. We file cutting-edge lawsuits to fight abuses at factory farms, we work with legislators to strengthen laws protecting farmed animals, we assist prosecutors handling cruelty cases, and we promote the growth of animal law in schools, offices, and courtrooms across the nation.

With your help, we can do even more to ensure all animals are protected by the law.

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Farmed Animals - There are an estimated 9 billion animals raised and killed for food every year.

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Many of these animals are subjected to near-unimaginable cruelty - much of which is perfectly legal, under most states' laws. Despite their vast numbers, and severity of abuse they suffer, farmed animals receive only minimal protections by our legal system.

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Federal Companion Animal Protection Laws

The Animal Welfare Act is the chief federal law concerning companion animals. Signed into law in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is the primary federal animal protection law. The AWA mainly involves animals kept at zoos and used in laboratories, but includes animals who are commercially bred and sold like those in puppy mills.

The AWA directs the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to set minimum standards regarding these animals' "handling, care, treatment, and transportation." Dog fighting is also prohibited under the Animal Welfare Act, so long as the activity in some way crosses state lines.

The AWA itself, as well as its enforcement by the Department of Agriculture, are frequently criticized for allowing puppy mill operators' inhumane practices to go unchecked.

State And Local Animal Protection Laws
Because there are so many state laws involving companion animal protection, this won't be a detailed guide, but an overview of the types of laws you'll generally find at the state level. We recommend you check out the Animal Legal Defense Fund's annual Rankings Report on the best and worst states for animal protection laws for more in-depth information.
Most companion animal protection laws are enacted and enforced at the state level. And state animal protection laws are primarily concerned with companion animals.

Each state has laws governing some aspects of the "hands-on" care of animals. Here are some examples:

Laws regulating how long animal shelters must "hold" stray animals before they can be adopted or euthanized.

Laws about how frequently dogs and cats must be vaccinated against rabies.

States often also have some regulations concerning commercial breeding of companion animals.

Other companion animal protection laws are also gaining in popularity, at the state level. Examples include:

"Hot car laws" that criminalize leaving an animal in a vehicle in extreme weather.
Some hot car laws also allow these animals to be rescued from vehicles in certain circumstances and make the rescuer immune from civil or criminal liability.

Anti-tethering laws that limit how long pets can be tied up or chained outside, especially in extreme weather.

More than half of states have laws allowing pets to be included in domestic violence protective orders.

California is at the forefront of some other statewide companion animal protection measures. In 2017, California became the first state to pass a statewide " retail pet sale ban." Under this law, retail establishments like pet stores may only sell cats, dogs and rabbits coming from shelters and rescue groups - and not from commercial breeders. Maryland passed its own statewide retail pet sale ban in 2018, becoming the second state with this type of law.

Many other companion animal protection measures are enacted and enforced at the local level. Examples include:

Hundreds of cities and counties have retail pet sale bans like California's and Maryland's.

In states without anti-tethering laws, cities and counties often pass their own such laws.

Many cities have now banned declawing cats.

While state and federal laws would offer more protection to more animals, these local laws are very important. They not only protect the companion animals in that area - but can also act as a bellwether for more expansive protections to come.

It is not infrequent for new companion animal protection measures to begin at the city or county level, and then as the public increasingly demands it, to be taken up by the state legislators.

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Companion Animals - Animal Legal Defense Fund

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The Animal Welfare Act is the chief federal law concerning companion animals. Signed into law in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is the primary federal animal protection law. The AWA mainly involves animals kept at zoos and used in laboratories, but includes animals who are commercially bred and sold like those in puppy mills.

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Laws That Protect Captive Wildlife

Few federal laws protect the millions of wild animals who live in captivity in aquariums, circuses, theme parks and zoos in the U.S.

The Animal Welfare Act: The Animal Welfare Act, or AWA, is the primary piece of federal legislation regulating captive wild animals. Zoos and circuses are among those who fall under this act.

The AWA only applies to some captive wild animals. The law, adopted by Congress in 1966, protects so-called "warm-blooded" animals who are bred for commercial sale, used in research, transported commercially or publicly exhibited, like in a zoo or circus. Tigers, lions, elephants, bears and nonhuman primates are all included in this law. But the law excludes protection for birds, rats and mice, farmed animals and "cold-blooded" animals such as reptiles, amphibians and fish.

This is only one of the Act's limitations. Its protections are minimal as well. The AWA establishes only baseline standards of care for licensing exhibitors. These standards set a low bar and are widely considered to be sub-par in protecting animals. For example, the law does not restrict the display or private ownership of captive wild animals or prohibit the use of controversial bullhooks, whips, electrical shock or other devices commonly used in circuses. For animals in zoos, the AWA sets low requirements as to housing, food and sanitation, and, as is commonly noted, no requirements for mental stimulation of animals other than primates.

Another serious problem is that the chronically-understaffed USDA conducts inspections infrequently. A common criticism is that the inspectors are often inadequately trained to look for sign of problems such as abuse and neglect.

The Convention On International Trade In Endangered Species Of Wild Fauna And Flora (CITES): CITES is an international treaty that regulates the trade of wildlife for nations that are signatories to the treaty. Some 5,800 species of animals are covered by the treaty (along with 30,000 species of plants). CITES does not directly address living conditions for captive animals.

The U.S. became a signatory to CITES in 1975. Today, nearly every country in the world is a member of CITES. The fewer than two dozen non-participants include North Korea, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Turkmenistan.

This treaty is credited with helping foster international cooperation to protect some endangered and vulnerable species. A criticism is that protections are less robust for species that are economically valuable, and that CITES is not as transparent in its decision-making or enforcement as would be ideal.

The Endangered Species Act: The Endangered Species Act, the ESA, is a federal law that protects fish, mammals, birds and plants listed as threatened or endangered in the U.S. and beyond. The ESA outlines procedures for federal agencies to follow regarding listed species, as well as criminal and civil penalties for violations.

In 2014, the Animal Legal Defense Fund successfully brought a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act against a roadside zoo called the Cricket Hollow Animal Park, that was mistreating protected animals. This was the first time that the ESA has successfully been used to protect captive wild animals. In 2018, the Eighth Circuit issued a unanimous decision in Cricket Hollow's appeal of that case, that it can be a violation of the Endangered Species Act when captive animals aren't given proper care.

In several cases, animals held in poor conditions at roadside zoos have been transferred to sanctuaries, after the Animal Legal Defense Fund brought lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act.

State And Local Laws: Strong state laws and even local laws have historically been a useful way to protect exotic and wild animals. There is considerable variation from state to state and among cities and counties, as to how much legal protection is offered to captive wild animals.

Here are some of the major ways that these jurisdictions are protecting wild captive animals under the law:

Restricting Private Parties From Keeping Wild Animals: Some states ban the keeping of wild and exotic animals. Others allow private parties to keep animals like tigers or primates with a permit. Fewer and fewer states are allowing residents to keep captive wild animals without a permit. There were five such states until 2017, when South Carolina passed a law banning wild and exotic animals to be kept as pets. (This law does not affect zoos or circuses.)

In states without tight enough regulation, local jurisdictions oftentimes adopt ordinances that ban or restrict the display of captive wild animals. Local laws are often most effective in governing the private possession of exotic animals.

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Captive Animals - Most states have no laws governing captive wild animals.

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More tigers live in cages in this country, than exist in all the wild. They are just some of the millions of wild animals living in captivity across the United States. Some are in aquariums, circuses, theme parks and zoos, others live caged at private homes.

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Overview: The Horrors Of Animal Testing

Tens of millions of animals are used in laboratory experiments every year in the United States - and by most estimates, between 85 and 95% of these animals are not protected by the law. Those without protection are complex beings who think and feel pain, just the same as those who have legal protections.

This figure is only an approximation because under current law, labs are not required to disclose data about the animals most often used in experimentation - rats, mice, birds, and fish.

Animals are used across fields, in many types of research: biomedical, aeronautic, automotive, military, agricultural, behavioral, and cognitive research, and in consumer product testing. It's estimated that the National Institutes of Health spends some $14.5 billion per year of taxpayer dollars on animal experimentation. The overall amount spent on animal research is likely far higher, given that the $14.5 billion figure doesn't include spending by other federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture or animal research funded by private companies.

Thanks to better technology and increasing public demand, we have seen some progress.

For example, after decades of scrutiny and pressure from animal protection groups, the general public and the international community, in 2015 the National Institutes of Health announced the agency would no longer support the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. Since that time, NIH has retired some chimpanzees to sanctuaries as space is available, and has reportedly convened a working group to develop plans for chimpanzees deemed too old or sick to be safely relocated.

But our work here is far from done. Despite legal requirements to do so under principles known as the "3 Rs" - reduction, refinement, and replacement - many facilities don't adequately look for alternatives to animal-based tests.

Experts also recognize the need for more change. In 2007, the National Research Council - an organization that puts out reports and policy recommendations for The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine - issued a report on toxicity testing that recommended a move away from the use of animals in laboratory experiments.

Many scientists believe that in vitro testing is scientifically superior to inhumane testing on animals. The same is true for radiation exposure tests and cosmetic testing. Technology, such as non-invasive imaging, provide alternatives to cutting into animals' brains. Cancer antibody testing is better conducted with human cells than by injecting mice with cancer.

On top of that, animal testing does not achieve its intended results. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), just 8% of drugs tested on animals are deemed safe and effective for human use - 92% are not. This helps bolster the argument that animal testing does not provide enough worthwhile information to justify its wide scale cruelty, and calls into question the ethics of animal testing.

We've seen important promising developments, but the millions of animals experimented on in United States labs every year show how much more is still needed.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund calls on government agencies to be more transparent in their treatment of animals used in research. We file lawsuits to compel taxpayer-funded research facilities to follow records laws, so that public funds are used with public awareness.

We work throughout the legal system to secure better protections for animals used in research, and better enforcement of those protections.

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Tens of millions of animals are used in laboratory experiments every year in the United States - and by most estimates, between 85 and 95% of these animals are not protected by the law. Those without protection are complex beings who think and feel pain, just the same as those who have legal protections.

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An animal shelter, by definition, is: an establishment, especially one supported by charitable contributions, that provides a temporary home for dogs, cats, and other animals that are offered for adoption. An establishment that temporarily provides a home until the animal is adoptable. Sounds good, right?
However, this definition is more in line with no kill animal shelters. These shelters will either keep animals as long as possible, or give them to some other organization that can attempt to adopt out the animals. They will do all in their power to find a great new home for animals that may have been homeless, abused, or a victim of hoarding. Through these types of organizations and charities, animals are given a second chance at life, love, and happiness.
Not only do the animals benefit, but those who adopt them do as well. They can receive some of the best animals and friends from places such as these, (as I know from experience.) While animals may come from any condition, if they are healthy, and great with people, even if it so happens to be as a result of many months or years of training, they will get another chance to be happy and to know love like they should.
Programs like these are great and can really help people in many conditions. There are many success stories out there that will make one want to go adopt every single animal from a shelter that they can, or at the very least, help them.
On the contrary, when comparing no kill shelters to ones without the same beliefs, the results often are not so 'successful.' These shelters may take in animals from the streets, and give them what they need, if only for a little amount of time depending upon their policies.
To clarify, there are some shelters that will let an animal stay for two weeks before euthanizing it. Others give only 3 days. According to research, some shelters may give an animal 3 days, then an additional 7, should the owner come looking for the animal. Meanwhile, other shelters may give the animals a few months, a few weeks, a few days, or even just an hour.
These particular shelters may have excuses, such as "we don't have enough room, we don't have enough money to keep them alive, or they aren't young or 'cute' enough and nobody will want to adopt them." While it may be true that there is no room for the animal or not enough money, the shelters could give the animals to a no kill shelter or an adoption organization.
I personally believe that all animals, no matter what age, as long as they are healthy and gentle, are "adoptable." The excuse that the animal is not young or cute enough has no support, seeing as many ages and kinds of animals are adopted all the time.
Animal shelters that do not have no kill policies don't give the animals enough time. It may take more than 3 days, 7 days, or even a couple of weeks for someone to come to the shelter. But the people coming to adopt are not to blame, because the shelter could put out fliers or notices that there are adoptable pets waiting to find their 'furever homes.'
Though some shelters may do this, and may even genuinely care about the animals, there are always those who just look at the animals as profit. Maybe they think keeping the animals alive is too much money or that there's less hassle with less animals, but clearly, the animals' best interest is not in mind, as it is at a no kill shelter.
Sure, maybe this is the first time in the animal's life that they've had shelter or food and water, but is it beneficial if the animal will not even get a fair chance at life? The animals don't know what's going on, and they may be scared from the past, traumatized, or extremely shy, but they haven't done anything at all to deserve to die.
So while not all shelters can 'afford' to keep the animals, they could find people who will foster the animals until adoption, or some other, positive alternative. Why, if an animal is not a harm to others, should it be killed without any choice? The animals can't speak for themselves. Their fates depend on us to be their voice. Are you up for the challenge? I know I am.

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Animal Shelters: another chance at life or death

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An animal shelter, by definition, is: an establishment, especially one supported by charitable contributions, that provides a temporary home for dogs, cats, and other animals that are offered for adoption. An establishment that temporarily provides a home until the animal is adoptable. Sounds good, right?

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Global Animal | All about animals, from dogs and cats to wildlife and endangered species

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Dori Edwards, Global Animal

Similarly to how many grass roots organizations begin, Kids Against Animal Cruelty started with a small group of animal lovers carrying signs on street corners and a Facebook page with 47 friends.

"We are Animal Knights fighting for the rights of all animals," describes KAAC on their Facebook page. An animal activism group that uses social networking to encourage adoption at high kill shelters, KAAC was founded two years ago by child actor/singer Lou Wegner when he was a mere 14 years old.

Wegner established KAAC after volunteering at a local animal shelter in Los Angeles during the filming of his short film Be Good To Eddie Lee.

"It was heartbreaking. All these dogs crying in their cages. Knowing they would be put down broke my heart," Wegner recalled of the facilities.

Wegner relayed it was the first time he became aware of the disconcerting euthanasia rates throughout the country- believing before that shelters were safe places for homeless animals.

After two years, KAAC boasts 12,000 members, 50,000 supporters, and 20,000 animals it has saved from euthanasia.The organization has branched across the United States and has several chapters, all run by young animal lovers like Wegner.

In New York City, two sisters are head of a faction that helped find lost dogs and provide food for families with animals during Superstorm Sandy. Two of Wegner's young relatives run chapters in Arizona and Minnesota.

Wegner hopes that KAAC will eventually have a chapter in every state, "because the bigger the group you work with, the bigger difference you can make. "

Robin Harmon, a transporter for Best Friends' Animal Society, was "especially impressed that at a young age, he could control his feelings and the sadness that we all feel when we are helping at high-kill shelters."

According to AP, Wegner agrees that the sadness is hard to deal with. "Saving one keeps you going," he says.

Wegner's volunteering does not end with KAAC. Clearly a dedicated animal lover, he began another group in South Carolina called For the Love of Dogs in order to save a black labrador retriever named Tommy Joe that he believed "was doomed."

He is also co-host of the Global Voice Broadcasting radio show Love That Dog Hollywood! Kids & Animals. A ccording to the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services and a guest on the show Brenda Barnette, Wegner is "a well-spoken advocate for animals and for peer involvement."

Wegner also believes in a need to educate children on cruelty to animals. After the recent cases of child-inflicted animal cruelty when a 12-year-old hung his family dog and two 11-year-olds threw rocks at a pregnant cat, Wegner stated that these children should be exposed to a euthanasia room.

Wearing his KAAC t-shirt everywhere he goes, Wegner and his compatriots for animal rights are far from finished with their work. "They euthanize just as many animals every day as we have saved. It's like throwing a Band-Aid in a river," he says.

We expect to see a lot more from Wagner and his team of dedicated friends. We are grateful that the young generation has taken on this cause and is reshaping the future for animals.

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Lou Wegner Kids Against Animal Cruelty Animal Rescue Saves | Global Animal

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Dori Edwards, Global Animal Similarly to how many grass roots organizations begin, Kids Against Animal Cruelty started with a small group of animal lovers carrying signs on street corners and a Facebook page with 47 friends. "We are Animal Knights fighting for the rights of all animals," describes KAAC on their Facebook page.

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Improving your kitty's overall health and ensuring they don't use up those nine lives is something that we take seriously here at Petside. Whether you're searching for help with cat weight management, IBS, or how to treat urinary tract infections, we've got all your cat health concerns covered. Go ahead and check out our comprehensive database of health-related articles and get the knowledge you need to take better care of your feline friend.

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Improving your kitty's overall health and ensuring they don't use up those nine lives is something that we take seriously here at Petside. Whether you're searching for help with cat weight management, IBS, or how to treat urinary tract infections, we've got all your cat health concerns covered.

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Our relationships with the animals we keep are highly personal. They provide us with unconditional love, and we take on a personal responsibility for making sure that they are well cared for. But when the bond between an animal and his guardian is broken, as when an animal is lost, abandoned, or surrendered to a shelter, who then has responsibility for the animal and his care?

Most people would say it's the local animal shelter's responsibility. And that's true. We take on the function of caring for animals other people don't want or can't care for. And we acknowledge our special role in speaking for the voiceless and upholding the moral status of animals in our communities. But if you were to ask the people at the shelter whose responsibility it is to care for lost, mistreated, and abandoned animals, they'd insist that it's the community's as a whole.

That's because we can't do this work by ourselves. Animal shelters rely on the community for funding, homes, volunteer help, and most importantly, we need people to care for their animals properly and not contribute to the problem. That's why we insist that animal welfare is a community responsibility and that success in this field comes through partnerships with people outside of the shelter.

In fact, just a few weekends ago we had an amazing adoption event -- a real example of community partnership. We got 65 animals into new homes in just two days. We kept our adoption trucks moving back and forth from the shelter to their temporary station in front of Friendship Hospital for Animals all weekend.

This private veterinary hospital, the largest in the nation's capital, understands the need for community involvement in animal welfare. Thanks to them, we have a thriving humane education program, ready veterinary interns and staff to help for events and patient care, and now... 65 new homes for our animals. It's exactly the kind of partnership we're always looking for.

With the help of that hospital, we made a lot of new friends and found many new homes. The astonishing thing to me though, was not the number of adoptions. We'd like to do that every weekend. It's the fact that by simply bringing animals to where our adopters live, and not keeping them in our shelter, which, let's face it, is not exactly on the beaten track of metro D.C.'s population (most shelters are tucked away near landfills, railroad tracks, airports, and other well-healed neighborhoods!), we literally tripled our adoptions for the weekend. One obvious conclusion -- we've got to get out more!

And that's exactly what we bought our new adoption truck to do -- bring our animals literally into the waiting arms of adopters. Easy enough to say, but not so simple to do. Especially in a city like Washington, in which parking a 22-foot truck has its challenges. So we need partners: businesses like Friendship Hospital for Animals that can host adoption events and provide us with venues to meet the public and tell them about our work.

At the same time, it's incumbent upon us in the animal welfare business to make our shelters welcoming places that the public doesn't have to be afraid to visit. So many times I hear from donors or other supporters that they love what we do, but don't want to visit because it's so sad to see all those animals without homes or hope.

But that's exactly what you won't see at the Washington Animal Rescue League or in any of the new "breed" of animal shelters being built all over the country. What you'll see at the League are contented dogs and cats acting like dogs and cats. That means you'll see them playing, eating, sleeping, and wagging their tails or stretching their paws in greeting. You'll also see funny bowls and buckets holding treats and messages from our behavior staff asking you to toss a few treats to help train our dogs to be household pets.

Every shelter needs to become a place of hope, education, and engagement -- not despair. They should be places where you can bring kids to adopt a pet, learn about the animals, or just practice compassion for all living things. But above all, places where you can teach responsible animal care, which includes spaying and neutering and adopting from shelters, not from Craig's List. Places where they are taught kindness and that it's important to be part of the world's solutions. Which includes ending animal homelessness. Put us out of business -- please.

November 6-12 is National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. (But you knew that already, didn't you?) It's a great time to get to know your local animal shelter and show them that you're ready to become part of the solution. Every shelter needs adopters, donors, and volunteers. But here are few other ways you might get involved:

1. Help publicize the animals who are looking for homes. Hang a picture and description of an adoptable animal at your workplace or school. You can pull them straight from the shelter's website.

2. Consider donating used towels, blankets, toys, and treats to the shelter. Shelters go through a lot of these. You might even use your neighborhood list serve to organize a drive.

3. Host an adoption event at your work, school, or community group. Even if the event doesn't manage to find too many homes for animals -- and some are more successful in this regard than others -- you will introduce lots of people to the shelter and the work it does.

4. Learn about the services that your local shelter offers -- spay/neuter programs, low-cost vaccination clinics, dog training classes, help for feral cats, and the like -- so that you're ready to talk to friends and neighbors about how they can find help caring for their pets properly.

5. Offer to organize a tour of the shelter for a group of young people. Almost every shelter will happily talk to children about what they do and introduce them to their animals.

It's all about community. What Friendship Hospital showed us this weekend was that community partnerships work. Animal shelters need community support. And this starts by taking good care of all of our own animals. But if it's easier for the mountain to come to Mohammed, we'll do that too, like we did last weekend.

Because when the problem of animal homelessness becomes all of our problems, by spaying and neutering, giving proper veterinary care and teaching compassion for all living things, the animals will finally win. Sixty five dogs and cats who got to sleep in their new beds last week can attest to that.

Related

Animal Welfare abandoned animals animal shelters dc homeless-animals

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Animal Homelessness Is a Community Challenge

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November 6-12 is National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. It's a great time to get to know your local animal shelter and show them that you're ready to become part of the solution.

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Good School, Rich School, Bad School, Poor School

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Good School, Rich School, Bad School, Poor School

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The inequality at the heart of America's education system

HARTFORD, Conn.-This is one of the wealthiest states in the union. But thousands of children here attend schools that are among the worst in the country. While students in higher-income towns such as Greenwich and Darien have easy access to guidance counselors, school psychologists, personal laptops, and up-to-date textbooks, those in high-poverty areas like Bridgeport and New Britain don't. Such districts tend to have more students in need of extra help, and yet they have fewer guidance counselors, tutors, and psychologists; lower-paid teachers; more dilapidated facilities; and bigger class sizes than wealthier districts, according to an ongoing lawsuit. Greenwich spends $6,000 more per pupil per year than Bridgeport does, according to the State Department of Education.

The discrepancies occur largely because public school districts in Connecticut, and in much of America, are run by local cities and towns and are funded by local property taxes. High-poverty areas such as Bridgeport and New Britain have lower home values and collect less taxes, and so can't raise as much money as a place like Darien or Greenwich, where homes are worth millions of dollars. Plaintiffs in a decade-old lawsuit in Connecticut, which heard closing arguments earlier this month, argue that the state should be required to ameliorate these discrepancies. Filed by a coalition of parents, students, teachers, unions, and other residents in 2005, the lawsuit, Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) v. Rell, will decide whether inequality in school funding violates the state's constitution.

"The system is unconstitutional," the attorney for the plaintiffs Joseph P. Moodhe argued in Hartford Superior Court earlier this month, "because it is inadequately funded and because it is inequitably distributed."

Connecticut is not the first state to wrestle with the conundrum caused by relying heavily on local property taxes to fund schools; since the 1970s, nearly every state has had litigation over equitable education, according to Michael Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University. Indeed, the CCJEF lawsuit, first filed in 2005, is the state's second major lawsuit on equity. The first, in 1977, resulted in the state being required to redistribute some funds among districts, though the plaintiffs in the CCJEF case argue the state has abandoned that system, called Educational Cost Sharing.

In every state, though, inequity between wealthier and poorer districts continues to exist. That's often because education is paid for with the amount of money available in a district, which doesn't necessarily equal the amount of money required to adequately teach students.

"Our system does not distribute opportunity equitably," a landmark 2013 report from a group convened by the former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Equity and Excellence Commission, reported.

This is mainly because school funding is so local. The federal government chips in about 8 to 9 percent of school budgets nationally, but much of this is through programs such as Head Start and free and reduced-price lunch programs. States and local governments split the rest, though the method varies depending on the state.

Nationally, high-poverty districts spend 15.6 percent less per student than low-poverty districts do, according to U.S. Department of Education. Lower spending can irreparably damage a child's future, especially for kids from poor families. A 20 percent increase in per-pupil spending a year for poor children can lead to an additional year of completed education, 25 percent higher earnings, and a 20-percentage-point reduction in the incidence of poverty in adulthood, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Violet Jimenez Sims, a Connecticut teacher, saw the differences between rich and poor school districts firsthand. Sims, who was raised in New Britain, one of the poorer areas of the state, taught there until the district shut down its bilingual education programs, at which point she got a job in Manchester, a more affluent suburb. In Manchester, students had individual Chromebook laptops, and Sims had up-to-date equipment, like projectors and digital whiteboards. In New Britain, students didn't get individual computers, and there weren't the guidance counselors or teacher's helpers that there were in Manchester.

"I noticed huge differences, and I ended up leaving because of the impact of those things," she told me. "Without money, there's just a domino effect." Students frequently had substitutes because so many teachers got frustrated and left; they didn't have as much time to spend on computer projects because they had to share computers; and they were suspended more frequently in the poor district, she said. In the wealthier area, teachers and guidance counselors would have time to work with misbehaving students rather than expelling them right away.

Testimony during the CCJEF trial bears out the differences between poor areas like New Britain, Danbury, Bridgeport, and East Hartford, and wealthier areas like New Canaan, Greenwich, and Darien. Electives, field trips, arts classes, and gifted-and-talented programs available in wealthier districts have been cut in poorer ones. New Britain, where 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, receives half as much funding per special-education student as Darien. In Bridgeport, where class sizes hover near the contractual maximum of 29, students use 15-to 20-year-old textbooks; in New London, high-school teachers must duct tape windows shut to keep out the wind and snow and station trash cans in the hallways to collect rain. Where Greenwich's elementary school library budget is $12,500 per year (not including staffing), East Hartford's is zero.

All of this contributes to lower rates of success for poorer students. Connecticut recently implemented a system called NextGen to measure English and math skills and college and career readiness. Bridgeport's average was 59.3 percent and New Britain 59.7 percent; Greenwich, by contrast, scored 89.3 percent and Darien scored 93.1. Graduation rates are lower in the poorer districts; there's more chronic absenteeism.

The crux of the state's case is that it spends enough on education, and that Connecticut has one of the country's best public-school systems. The Educational Cost Sharing formula gets tinkered with by the legislature, the state says, and Connecticut still spends more on poor districts than many regions of the country. It says that what CCJEF is asking is essentially $2 billion more in taxpayer funding to make schools equitable-a sum that would be difficult to raise in a cash-strapped state.

"While we wholeheartedly share the goal of improving educational opportunities and outcomes for all Connecticut children, it is the state's position both that we are fulfilling our constitutional responsibilities and that the decisions on how to advance those goals are best left to the appropriate policymakers: local communities and members of the General Assembly," Jaclyn M. Falkowski, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, told me in an email. ​

Yet the fact remains that delegating education funding to local communities increases inequality. That's especially true in Connecticut, which has some of the biggest wealth disparities in the country. Indeed, in Connecticut, rich and poor districts often abut each other. Bridgeport is in the same county as Greenwich and Darien; East Hartford is poor, but nearby West Hartford is affluent. How did a state like Connecticut, which had one of the first laws making public education mandatory, become so divided? And why does such an unequal system exist in a country that puts such a high priority on equality?

Many of the problems that have arisen in Connecticut's school system can be traced back to how public education was founded in this country, and how it was structured. It was a system that, at its outset, was very innovative and forward-thinking. But that doesn't mean it is working for students today.

"The origins were very progressive, but what might have been progressive in one era can become inequitable in another," Rebell told me.

In the early days of the American colonies, the type of education a child received depended on whether the child was a he or a she (boys were much more likely to get educated at all), what color his or her skin was, where he or she lived, how much money his or her family had, and what church he or she belonged to. States like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York depended on religious groups to educate children, while southern states depended on plantation owners, according to Charles Glenn, a professor of educational leadership at Boston University.

It was the Puritans of Massachusetts who first pioneered public schools, and who decided to use property-tax receipts to pay for them. The Massachusetts Act of 1642 required that parents see to it that their children knew how to read and write; when that law was roundly ignored, the colony passed the Massachusetts School Law of 1647, which required every town with 50 households or more hire someone to teach the children to read and write. This public education was made possible by a property-tax law passed the previous year, according to a paper, " The Local Property Tax for Public Schools: Some Historical Perspectives," by Billy D. Walker, a Texas educator and historian. Determined to carry out their vision for common school, the Puritans instituted a property tax on an annual basis-previously, it had been used to raise money only when needed. The tax charged specific people based on "visible" property including their homes as well as their sheep, cows, and pigs. Connecticut followed in 1650 with a law requiring towns to teach local children, and used the same type of financing.

Property tax was not a new idea; it came from a feudal system set up by William the Conquerer in the 11th century when he divided up England among his lieutenants, who required the people on the land to pay a fee in order to live there. What was new about the colonial property-tax system was how local it was. Every year, town councils would meet and discuss property taxes, how much various people should pay, and how that money was to be spent. The tax was relatively easy to assess because it was much simpler to see how much property a person owned that it was to see how much money he made. Unsurprisingly, the amounts various residents had to pay were controversial. (A John Adams -instituted national property tax in 1797 was widely hated and then repealed.)

Initially, this system of using property taxes to pay for local schools did not lead to much inequality. That's in part because the colonies were one of the most egalitarian places on the planet-for white people, at least. Public education began to become more common in the mid-19th century. As immigrants poured into the country's cities, advocates puzzled over how to assimilate them. Their answer: public schools. The education reformer Horace Mann, for example, who became the secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, believed that public schooling was necessary for the creation of a national identity. He called education "the great equalizer of the conditions of men."

Though schooling had, until then, been left up to local municipalities, states began to step in. After Mann created the Board of Education in 1837, he lobbied for and won a doubling of state expenditures on education. In 1852, Massachusetts passed the first law requiring parents to send their children to a public school for at least 12 weeks.

The idea of making free education a right was controversial-the "most explosive political issue in the 19th century, except for abolition," Rebell said. Eventually, though, when reformers won, they pushed to get a right for all children to public schooling into states' constitutions. The language of these education clauses varies; Connecticut's constitution, for example, says merely that "there shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state," while Illinois' constitution requires an "efficient system of high-quality public educational institutions and services."

Despite widespread acceptance of mandatory public education by the end of the 19th century, the task of educating students remained a matter for individual states, not the nation as a whole. And states still left much of the funding of schools up to cities and towns, which relied on property tax. In 1890, property taxes accounted for 67.9 percent of public-education revenues in the U.S. This means that as America urbanized and industrialized and experienced more regional inequality, so, too, did the schools. Areas that had poorer families or less valuable land had less money for schools.

In the early part of the 20th century, states tried to step in and provide grants to districts so that school funding was equitable, according to Allan Odden, an expert in school finance who is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But then wealthier districts would spend even more, buoyed by increasing property values, and the state subsidies wouldn't go as far as they once had to make education equitable.

The disparities became more and more stark in the decades after World War II, when white families moved out of the cities into the suburbs and entered school systems there, and black families were stuck in the cities, where property values plummeted and schools lacked basic resources. In some states, where school districts were run on the county level, costs could be shared between rich and poor districts by combining and integrating them, especially after Brown v. Board of Education. But in states like Connecticut, with deeper histories of public schooling, there were hundreds of separate districts, and it was much more difficult to combine them or to equalize funding across them.

The most aggressive attempt to ameliorate these disparities came in 1973, in a Supreme Court case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. It began when a father named Demetrio Rodriguez, whose sons attended a dilapidated elementary school in a poor area of San Antonio, sued the state of Texas, claiming that the way that schools were funded fundamentally violated the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause. Rodriguez wanted the justices to apply the same logic they had applied in Brown v. Board of Education-that every student is guaranteed an equal opportunity to education. The justices disagreed. In a 5 - 4 decision, they ruled that there is no right to equal funding in education under the Constitution.

With Rodriguez, the justices essentially left the funding of education a state issue, forgoing a chance for the federal government to step in to adjust things Since then, school-funding lawsuits have been filed in 45 out of 50 states, according to Rebell.

Though it might seem odd that the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a right to live in a better zip code and a right to work at a company no matter their race, but not that every American child has the right to an equal education, there is legal justification for this. The Founders didn't include a right to an education in the country's founding documents. Though the federal government is involved in many parts of daily life in America, schooling is, and has always been, the responsibility of the states.

The plaintiffs in the Connecticut lawsuit want the state to undertake an intense study of local schools and see what is needed to give each child a good education. They want the state to look at how much a district can reasonably raise from its property taxes, and then come up with a formula for how different districts can share revenues so that schooling is more equitable. They don't just want poor districts to get more money; they want poor districts to get enough money so that disadvantaged children can do just as well as children from wealthier areas.

"We think the state's responsibility is to ensure that every child, in every school, in every school district, regardless of whether they're impoverished, is given the opportunity to graduate from high school, and be able to be a full citizen and active in the civic life of their town, state and nation," Jim Finley, the principal consultant for CCJEF, told me.

If CCJEF wins, it might take a page from other states that have tried to radically overhaul how schools are funded from district to district. After the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state's education funding system was unconstitutional, the state in 1997 passed Act 60, which ensured that towns spent the same amount of revenue per pupil. Districts paid into a common pool, which was then redistributed to poorer areas. And since the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that the state's funding system was unconstitutional in the Abbott v. Burke case, New Jersey has been required to spend extra money in 31 of the state's poorest school districts.

Asking the state to step in can also have its downsides. A court decision in California in 1971, Serrano v. Priest, found that the state system, which relied heavily on property tax, violated the state's constitution because there was such great inequality. The state decided then to make sure spending in every district was the same, not allowing for any disparity. But then, when voters in the state passed Proposition 13 in 1978, limiting the amount of property tax homeowners pay in a given year, the state was left trying to equalize schools with a shrinking pot of money. The result has been extremely low levels of state funding available, and shrinking expenditures on public schools throughout the state.

The federal government has provided additional funding for poor districts since 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), but federal intervention in schools has always been controversial, with many parents and school-district leaders resisting federal dictates about curriculum and standards. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which reauthorized ESEA, received pushback after schools struggled to keep up with testing requirements and progress reports. That law was replaced in 2015 with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which rolled back the federal government's role in local education.

In general, keeping schools equitable across a state is a tough task, says Odden, the school-finance expert. Immediately after a court case, there's a lot of momentum for redistributing revenues. But then, as time goes on, the impetus for giving more to poor districts wanes.

There have been suggestions that it is time to change the school-finance system to one that more successfully directs resources to where they're needed. Indeed, the United States is one of the only countries that allows the economies of local areas to determine the quality of local schools.

In 1972, a commission appointed by Richard Nixon came up with a far-reaching report, Schools, People, & Money. The Need for Educational Reform, about how over-reliance on property tax led to inequitable schools. It found that money was not being "collected equitably or spent according to the needs of children," the commission reported. "We conclude it will be better spent when the bulk of it is raised and distributed by the States to their districts and schools," it said.

It would have been a big change. But of course, states did not, by and large, change how they collected revenues or how their schools were paid for. It may seem logical that a state would step in and try to fund poorer districts; states don't want to be known for low test scores and graduation rates, and will pay the price if their residents don't get a good education. But giving money from rich districts to poor ones is politically difficult, as Connecticut has learned. And money is increasingly tight as states struggle with budget issues and have to spend more money on corrections, infrastructure, and Medicaid than they once did.

More than 40 years after the Nixon report, another big group, the Equity and Excellence Commission, again recommended that the nation change its school-finance system. New federal funding could be directed toward high-poverty areas, it said, and the country could decide what resources are needed to make sure every student gets a good education, regardless of what money is available.

"This is a declaration of an urgent national mission: to provide equity and excellence in education in American public schools once and for all," Congressman Mike Honda wrote in the report's foreword.

Rebell, who served on the committee, says the group came up with a remarkable consensus, but that the report was ignored by Congress. Any bills related to the report have gone nowhere. Instead, advocates of school equity are left to fight on the state level.

Opponents of school-finance reform often argue that money isn't problem, and that increased spending won't lead to better outcomes at schools in poor districts. But studies show that after courts order public schools to spend more on low-income students, students begin to do better and better in school. There may be challenges that go beyond what more equitable funding alone can solve, but it's the best place to start.

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state department of education.the discrepancies

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greenwich’s elementary school library budget

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Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School

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The inequality at the heart of America's education system

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I was born and raised in Kathmandu. My parents moved to the capital from a village after they got married. Although they didn't get a chance to study, they made sure that my sister and I got the opportunity.

My grandmother wanted a grandson from my father. She was disappointed when I was born because I was the second child and they expected a son. Though my father was her eldest son, she never showed love towards us because she expected a grandson. I felt sad about this. However later I realised that this is not just my story; there are a lot of people who have faced gender inequality.

The first challenge a girl faces is her own family. Nowadays, more people support girls' education in Nepal. However, there are still a lot of uneducated families who have no idea about education and women's rights.

If we want equality then we need to involve boys as well as girls in advocacy. The boys should know how girls feel when they are teased, or when the boys are allowed to go out but girls have to stay at home after 7pm.

Biggest challenge: Balancing my studies with extra-curricular activities is one of my biggest challenges. My parents were happy to see how concerned I was about women's rights and my activities in community, but they always had a fear that it might affect my studies.

Proudest moment: Organising a flashmob with Hollaback, which campaigns to end street harassment, was one of my proudest moments. More than anything, for me being a part of Women Lead, the first and only leadership organisation for young women in Nepal, makes me proud. As a trainee and as an intern, I was able to interact with people from different backgrounds and spread the word about women's empowerment and at the same time learn from their experiences.

Currently, I am an undergraduate in Webster university in Thailand, majoring in management and international business. I want to pursue a career in social entrepreneurship. My dream is to transform Nepalese society through responsible solution-oriented business.

When we talk about women in business it is about more than sewing, knitting and household work. Some people in Nepal feel that women can't go beyond that. I want to change their misconception about women in business and as a whole.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Global Development Professionals Network

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"When we talk about women in business it is about more than sewing, knitting and household work," Menuka Gurung, 19

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Newsela: U.S. teen "unstoppable" in fight for girl power in Africa

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Newsela: U.S. teen "unstoppable" in fight for girl power in Africa

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela: These students have to go to a new school after just a few months

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Newsela: These students have to go to a new school after just a few months

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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The story of a girl activist - RwandaAnna Leach

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The story of a girl activist - RwandaAnna Leach

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In Rwanda, we have one of the most encouraging governments when it comes to empowering women. However, the ties that keep women down are mostly cultural. There isn't a lack of opportunities for women in Rwanda; there is a lack of will among Rwandan women to use those opportunities. That's what I fight to change.

I started getting interested in women's rights when I realised that I was facing cultural stereotypes about my inability to work in the sciences. The government does a lot to change that, but traditions that have held on for years can't be changed overnight.

Biggest challenge: I knew something needed to be done but nothing I could do seemed meaningful enough to change anything. That's when I read many books about challenges that women face worldwide, such as Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon. I started to see the problem as more global, but it made me feel more helpless.

Then I heard of the UN foundation Girl Up. After seeing a global problem, I saw that there might actually be a global solution coming from people of my age. This was the encouragement I needed to start working in my community.

Proudest moment: After that time, with the help of a friend, I opened a girl empowerment organisation. Our goal was to give seminars to younger girls to give a voice to the younger students and to form a united front of young girls ready to fight for every single other young woman who can't fight for themselves.

Even if it's a small change, I know that small change will bring a big change in some people's lives, and that's all I hope for.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Global Development Professionals Network

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"I started getting interested in women's rights when I realised that I was facing cultural stereotypes about my inability to work in the sciences," says Celeste Dushime, 18

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8 Fukushima schoolkids start a new life 200 miles away

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8 Fukushima schoolkids start a new life 200 miles away

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see”

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Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see”

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Newsela | Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see"

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Malala Yousafzai is juggling life as a college student, writer and peace messenger.

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Video: Learn the Issue: Girls’ Education.

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Video: Learn the Issue: Girls’ Education.

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Global Campaign For Education United States Chapter

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Worldwide, 132 million girls are out of school (2016). Of that 132 million, 34.3 million girls are of primary school age. Girls are more likely to have to stay at home and tend to younger siblings and other household chores, and 1 in 3 girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18. Ultimately, their earnings are often tied to men--from fathers, to brothers, to husbands to sons.

Even though they are marginalized throughout the world, investing in women and girls makes the difference. It is estimated that if every girl worldwide received 12 years of quality education, lifetime earnings for women could increase by US$15 trillion. One additional school year can increase a woman's earnings by 10% to 20% toward her future annual income, and adults girls are more likely to invest a far larger percentage of her income back into her family.

By investing in girls you are investing in their future, their family's future and their country's future.
More resources on girls' education:
12 Years of Quality Education for All Girls: A Commonwealth Perspective (2019), The University of Cambridge

Missed Opportunities : The High Cost of Not Educating Girls Report (2018), The World Bank, Global Partnership for Education
Gender and EFA 2000-2015 Achievements and Challenges EFA Global Monitoring Report
Gender Education Monitoring Report Gender Review 2018, United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI), UNESCO

Evidence Review: Mitigating threats to girls' education in conflict affected contexts - current practice, The United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI), Overseas Development Initiative (ODI)

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Girls' Education | Global Campaign For Education United States Chapter

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Girls around the world are often left out of the conversation. In 2000, girls accounted for nearly two thirds of children out of school. Now it stands at half and work is continuing.

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Newsela: Pakistani teacher gives poor kids a school under the sky

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Newsela: Pakistani teacher gives poor kids a school under the sky

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Newsela - Pakistani teacher gives poor kids a school under the sky

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By teaching poor Pakistani kids outdoors, this man honors a promise to his dying father.

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Malala Yousafzai is a Woman of the Year because... "By targeting her, extremists showed what they feared most: a girl with a book. Malala embodies the power of education to build peace. She is truly a role model for the world."
-Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations__
Update: Malala wins the Nobel Peace Prize "

For most of us, her story began on October 9, 2012, the day a young man with a handkerchief over his face boarded a bus filled with 20 singing, chatting girls on their way home from school in the lush Swat Valley of northern Pakistan. "Who is Malala?" the man asked. When the girls unwittingly glanced toward their 15-year-old friend near the back, he lifted a black Colt .45 and fired three shots, sending a bullet through her head.

But who is Malala? Her real story, she told me, started years before.

When Malala Yousafzai-named, fittingly, after Malalai, a female Afghan martyr who died in battle-was born, her father, a teacher named Ziauddin, refused to grieve the way fathers in his culture were expected to upon having daughters; instead, he wrote her into his clan's family tree-a distinction usually reserved for boys. And Malala's sense of justice came young. When, at an early age, she saw children living on a garbage dump, she wrote a letter to God. "Give me strength and courage," she pleaded. "I want to make this world perfect."

Malala's valley had always been conservative; she remembers disliking having to cover her face, and bristling at the fact that while boys and men could walk freely around town, her mother could not go out without a male relative, "even if it was a five-year-old boy!" But real danger only came to her peaceful region when she was 10-in the form of the Taliban. Then, says Malala,"I got afraid. Not of the Taliban, but because they were banning girls' education." Schools closed; many were bombed; bodies of dissenters piled up in a town square. The local Taliban leader used his radio show to congratulate by name those girls who dropped out of school. The school Malala's father ran stayed open, but for safety, it removed its signs and the girls stopped wearing their uniforms, which would have made them targets.

And that's when Malala really became Malala. When a BBC journalist asked her father to recommend a teacher or student willing to document the terror, no one volunteered-except his own daughter. "I thought, What a great opportunity," she recalls. "Terrorism will spill over if you don't speak up." Under the pen name Gul Makai, she wrote frank, detailed diary entries about her life under the Taliban. Though many urged her to stop, and some have since criticized her father for allowing her to do it, Malala wasn't worried. The Taliban, she remembers, "had never come for a girl."

Emboldened, she began giving speeches across Pakistan in favor of education. She won the country's National Peace Prize and met the prime minister, presenting him with a list of demands on behalf of children-rebuilt schools, a girls' college-but keeping her expectations low. "I told myself, 'I shall not wait for any prime minister-when I'm a politician, I will do these things myself,'" she says. Malala led a double life: In one world, she was an Ugly Betty fan known for her spot-on impersonations of teachers and friends; in the other, a rising voice of dissent against terror. She started to realize her work could be risky. "I used to think that one day the Taliban would come [for me]," she told me. "And I thought, What would I do? I said to myself, 'Malala, you must be brave. You must not be afraid of anyone. You are only trying to get an education-you are not committing a crime.' I would even tell [my attacker], 'I want education for your son and daughter.' " Her own mother decided to take classes to learn to read and write.

And then came October 9.

Her parents rushed to her bedside. "My brave daughter, my beautiful daughter," lamented her father, leaning over her. But his brave daughter recovered, thanks in part to two visiting British doctors who were able to take her to a hospital in Birmingham, England. Around the world, women, men, and children prayed for her. Thousands of letters piled up (one addressed simply to "The Girl Shot in the Head, Birmingham"), and people everywhere asked: Would she be okay? Could she lead a normal life again?

It turns out that for Malala, normal was never the goal. In the year since her attack, she has spoken, written, and fought her way into history, becoming the world's leading advocate for educating girls. Not normal-extraordinary.

At the United Nations in July, she brought the general assembly to its feet. "One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world," she said. Since then she has Skyped with Syrian children, written the memoir I Am Malala, charmed Jon Stewart and Barack Obama, and become one of the youngest-ever nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout it all, she has stayed focused: Let girls go to school.

The issue certainly needs a hero right now. Around the world an estimated 66 million girls are being denied the right to an education. Fix that, scholars have long said, and you could change the course of human history. "There's a saying," says Sheryl WuDunn, coauthor of Half the Sky, "that when you educate boys, you educate boys; when you educate girls, you educate a village." Educated girls are safer from sexual assault and childhood marriage; they go on to raise more-educated children themselves. Her Muslim faith, Malala points out, is in her favor: "Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated," she says. "I don't know why the Taliban have forgotten it."

For that sensibility, and for her unstoppable drive to change the world, Malala is Glamour's 2013 Women of the Year Fund honoree. The money raised goes to the project she is most passionate about, The Malala Fund, which aims to help children all over the world get the education that is their birthright. The fund recently made its first grant, supporting the educations of 40 girls in the Swat Valley-an achievement that thrills Malala, who wants to expand to other regions and countries (she cites Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria). "Nothing can happen when half the population is in the Stone Age," she says. "I believe that when women are educated, then you will see this world change."

Malala's own world has changed hugely, from a small town to the global stage. She plans to go to college-Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Harvard, "to learn and learn and learn"-and into politics; one of her heroes is the assassinated Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose scarf she wore during that address at the United Nations.

But the place she'd most like to go is home. She misses it dearly. "I miss my room, I miss the traffic-I even miss that garbage dump!" she says. But it's far too dangerous for her there. "We will target her again and attack whenever we have a chance," a Taliban spokesperson told reporters in October. So Malala and her family-her mother, father, and younger brothers Khushal and Atal-are changing the world from abroad. "If Malala can do what she did-take on the Taliban, at risk to her own life," notes 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner (and Woman of the Year) Jody Williams, "then there is really no excuse for the rest of us not to get up off our butts and work to make the world a better place."

The last time I spoke to Malala (by Skype, with her family milling about behind her), I asked her what she wanted Glamour's 12 million readers to know. "You can tell them a story from my imagination!" she said cheerfully. "When God created man and woman, he was thinking, Who shall I give the power to, to give birth to the next human being? And God chose woman. And this is the big evidence that women are powerful. Women are strong. Women can do anything. Come out and struggle for your rights; nothing can happen without your voice.

"Do not wait for me to do something for your rights. It's your world, and you can change it."

__Read more:

* Glamour Women of the Year 2013

* The Malala Fund

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Malala Yousafzai is a Woman of the Year because... "By targeting her, extremists showed what they feared most: a girl with a book. Malala embodies the power of education to build peace. She is truly a role model for the world." -Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations

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eing a young woman growing up in a rural community in Fiji has always been a challenge. How I view this challenge has changed since I became a part of Roshika Deo - Be the Change, a campaign for equal representation, equal rights and treatment, equal access to basic necessities.

Since we women, youth and children represent more than half of the country's population, we believe we have the right to be heard and have a say in everything that concerns us. That is what I am fighting for.

In my community girls are seen as fragile and we do not have a say in village meetings. When we speak, we are growled at for speaking up and told to be a "girl" and to sit quietly and listen to elders. Also when a teenage girl is pregnant she is pointed at and not the other party - she is driven out of school while the guy walks about freely.

The main challenges faced by girls in my community is that they don't have options or second chances. Once they fail school they have no other option but to stay home and help out with the household chores. Also they are not motivated by their parents.

I want to change the mindset of young girls to help them see that they can achieve so much, even after they drop out of school. Their lives do not always have to revolve around their home and domestic duties. I want them to realise that their voice is as important as their elders.

Biggest challenge: The lack of co-operation from the girls themselves because they adhere more to what they are told rather than what they want.

Proudest moment: Seeing young men join our group to fight for equality.
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eing a young woman growing up in a rural community in Fiji has always been a challenge. How I view this challenge has changed since I became a part of Roshika Deo - Be the Change, a campaign for equal representation, equal rights and treatment, equal access to basic necessities.

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“I created a resource mobilisation project called Pencil Mountain that has delivered over half a million school resources to Ethiopian children,” Hannah Godefa, 15

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Newsela: First lady announces U.S. pledge to aid Pakistani girls' education

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Newsela: First lady announces U.S. pledge to aid Pakistani girls' education

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Newsela | U.S. pledges to help Pakistani girls' education

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Newsela: A lost generation of Syrian schoolchildren

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Newsela: A lost generation of Syrian schoolchildren

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Newsela | Civil war makes a lost generation of Syrian schoolchildren

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Children are suffering from three years of war. Poor nutrition and illness stunt their growth, and a lack of schooling derails their education.

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Greta Thunberg: Who is the climate activist and what has she achieved?

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The climate activist has been arrested in Sweden and the UK as a result of her protests.

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Clay McMullen, teen passionate about saving the environment: Community Heroes 2011 (video)

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Clay McMullen, a senior at West Geauga High School, has turned his passion for the environment into a crusade. He is one of The Plain Dealer’s community heroes.

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A fire burns trees and brush along the road to Jacunda National Forest, near the city of Porto Velho in the Vila Nova Samuel region, which is part of Brazil's Amazon. (Eraldo Peres/AP)

As Brazil and the world mobilize soldiers and finances in response to a wave of wildfires in the Amazon, far more is at stake than Brazil's international reputation.

The Amazon - nearly four times the size of Alaska - is a vast sink for storing carbon dioxide and a key element of any plan to restrain climate change. Any increase in deforestation there would speed up global warming as well as damage an important refuge for biodiversity.
Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.
Studies show the 2.2 million-square mile rainforest in the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, at which large fragmented portions of the rainforest could transform into an entirely different, drier ecosystem, leading to the acceleration of climate change, the loss of countless species and disaster for the indigenous populations that call the tropical rainforest home.

What does the Amazon have to do with the fight to slow climate change?

The trees and plants of the Amazon forest pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as part of photosynthesis. Destruction of the forest releases carbon stored in the trees and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide used by them.

Cap. Mario Vergotti with the Rondonia State firefighters in Brazil said Aug. 26 that the numerous small fires blazing in the Amazon present a challenge. (Video: The Washington Post)

"The Amazon forest holds something like 90 billion tons of carbon, and if that ends up in the atmosphere it's not a good thing," says Thomas Lovejoy, senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and professor of environmental science at George Mason University.

Paulo Moutinho, senior fellow at the Woods Hole Research Center, says that would equal a decade's worth of global carbon emissions at current rates.

The world's atmosphere is currently holding about 415 parts per million of carbon, and the destruction of the Amazon would add roughly 38 parts per million, Lovejoy estimates.

The August fires in the Amazon Rainforest have already had a devastating impact and there could be dire long-term environmental effects. (Video: The Washington Post)

"It's a big number," Lovejoy says, and the destruction of the rainforest would turn the Amazon into grasslands and savanna.

What caused the recent outbreak of Amazon fires?

People.

Unlike the United States and Canada, where many wildfires are ignited by lightning strikes during the summer, large fires are not a typical, natural occurrence in the Amazon, particularly during non-drought years such as this one.

Instead, most fires in the Amazon are caused by humans, set either accidentally or intentionally.

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research found the country has lost more than 1,330 square miles of forest cover to development since January, when President Jair Bolsonaro took office. That is a 39 percent increase over the same period in 2018. July in particular featured a huge spike in forest loss, with an area larger than the city of Los Angeles lost in a single month.

Who would want to harm the Amazon?

The biggest economic interest groups eating away at the Amazon are cattle grazers and soybean growers. "Directly after deforestation, mostly what we see is pasture," said Mikaela Weisse, a fellow at the World Resources Institute. Later, soybean growers expand by taking over pasture lands.

Mining, timber and development firms are also eyeing the region for expansion, encouraged by Bolsonaro's election.

Scientists are working to discern how many of the fires are burning on the border of deforested land that had been previously cleared to make way for cattle grazing or growing crops, especially soybeans.

Weisse says satellite photos show a "special pattern where we see a lot of fire hotspots clustered around roads, agriculture and pasture areas that have already been cleared. This confirms the idea that it's mostly due to humans."

Is this year's surge in fires unusual?

In the first eight months of the year, the number of fires in the Amazon has climbed to 156,000, the highest number since 2010, according to the Global Forest Watch.

Before that some years were worse than the current one. The Global Forest Watch's records go back to 2001, and the number of fires was greater in 2002-05 and 2007. That is why international efforts - led by major donors Norway and Germany - pressured Brazil to change its policies.

Brazil's government took action in 2004 and again in 2012 to discourage runaway deforestation - and in large part it succeeded. It bolstered law enforcement, protected more lands and penalized counties that did not reduce deforestation rates. Private companies also pledged to eliminate agricultural products raised on deforested lands from their supply chain.

From 2005 to 2014 deforestation rates dropped by 75 percent, Carlos Nobre, a senior researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, said in an email. "That was the greatest reduction in CO2 emissions on the planet," he said.

In 2015, then-President Dilma Rousseff pledged to restore 46,332 square miles of Brazil's forests - an area about the size of England - by 2030 while it also pursues "policies aimed at eliminating illegal deforestation."

But emissions actually increased instead, Nobre says, knocking out any chance of Brazil meeting its Paris accord targets of reducing annual rates to less than 1.2 thousand square miles by 2030.

Now Bolsonaro sees the Amazon as a place to develop, including a series of environment-altering dams. Roads and human settlement will follow. "Let's use the riches that God gave us for the well-being of our population," Bolsonaro said on a visit to the Amazon, where he proposed opening up an ecological reserve to mining.

Brazil initially spurned international community's offer of $22.2 million to fight the fires. Would it be enough?

Fighting thousands of fires in remote areas is an extremely challenging task that is likely to require thousands of people and many aircraft.

The cost of fighting wildfires in the American West last summer, where there are far more structures at risk, ran into the hundreds of millions. So a commitment of $22.2 million is largely a symbolic down payment and an expression of global concern. It will take far more money to put these fires out and, more importantly, prevent new ones from flaring up as farmers and ranchers seek to burn felled trees during the rest of the dry season.

As it stands, a feud erupted between French President Emmanuel Macron and Bolsonaro, who has said he would not accept any money until he gets an apology from Macron.

Is Brazil the only Amazon country seeing an uptick in fires now?

No. Fires are burning in other parts of the Amazon as well as other forest ecosystems in the region, including Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. But most of the international attention has been focused on Brazil, which contains about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest.

How long have fires been burning in the Amazon and what will it take to extinguish them?

The most recent fires in the Amazon broke out suddenly in early August, with a spike recorded by satellite imagery and reports from the ground during the first two weeks of the month. This coincides with the start of the dry season, which tends to last through October, as well as the typical surge in slash and burn agricultural operations. But scientists say the dry season, an annual event, has not been unusual.

As for what it is going to take to put out the fires, that is unclear. The sheer number of fires presents a huge challenge, though many of the fires are concentrated along existing roadways.

Ultimately, Moutinho says, stopping the fires requires changing the root causes: deforestation and slash and burn agriculture.

"The fire is a consequence of deforestation and if you're not going to address this deforestation you are just going to make some treatment that doesn't make any kind of effect in the long-term," he said.

What's all the fuss about 'fake' photos posted on social media?

Several viral images circulated on social media were not actually from this year, but from earlier years. For example, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, whose foundation works on rainforest conservation, shared a photo that was found to be from a stock photo catalogue taken as long ago as 2003. Macron and Greta Thunberg, the Swedish student climate activist, used the same photo. Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo posted a different photo from an earlier year.

But some only saw those errors as evidence of the long-running problem. After posting an image from Aug. 19, 2019, one reader tweeted "They're still burning!!!"

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What you need to know about the Amazon rainforest fires

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As Brazil and the world mobilize soldiers and finances in response to a wave of wildfires in the Amazon, far more is at stake than Brazil's international reputation. The Amazon - nearly four times the size of Alaska - is a vast sink for storing carbon dioxide and a key element of any plan to restrain climate change.

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Climate change has caused an 89% decrease in new coral in the Great Barrier Reef, study finds

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“We used to think that the Great Barrier Reef was too big to fail – until now”

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By Justin Worland | Photographs by XL Catlin Seaview Survey

Richard Vevers has traveled the globe to photograph coral reefs since quitting his advertising job. In 2011 he cofounded the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, a collaboration between the University of Queensland and a number of research institutions, photographing underwater corals as they adapt to climate change. He captured the Great Barrier Reef during its latest-and most devastating-mass die-off, and documented how coral off the coast of Belize had partially recovered thanks to a no-fishing zone.

But no dive has stunned Vevers as much as the sight of corals going white during an early March dive in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef, located about 1,000 miles from Australia's better-known Great Barrier Reef.

Coral die-offs-caused by a process known as bleaching-tend to look as bland and lifeless, in contrast to the vibrant rainbow colors of thriving coral. Bleached coral reefs usually appear as an endless stretch of white coral and eventually turn to dead brown coral. But in New Caledonia Vevers found something different.

The corals he captures lit up fluorescently as their color left them slowly but surely. The crew captured the moment using their underwater SVX camera system-a technology that captures 360-degree imagery underwater. "In the past people simply haven't gone to the right location at the right time," says Vevers. "I was blown away... I've never seen something so beautiful, but it's dying."

on your phone? Click "360" then move

The bleaching in New Caledonia represents just a small fraction of the total bleaching that has occurred across the globe since 2014. The ongoing bleaching event is the worst ever, with reefs affected from Florida to Australia, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It's also the longest bleaching event in recorded history, and scientists say it shows no evidence of ending any time soon. With the Our Ocean conference scheduled to start today in Washington, there's no better time to focus on one of the biggest threats to aquatic health.

A number of factors-from water pollution to disease-can irritate corals, causing them to expel the colored algae known as zooxanthellae that they live with symbiotically. Warm water temperatures caused by a combination of long-term climate change and short-lived weather phenomena like El Niño deserve the blame for the current bleaching episode.

Last year beat out 2014 as the warmest year on record and 2016 is on track to be even hotter. On top of that, sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific rose by more than 2°C (3.6°F) during the latest occurrence of the El Niño climate phenomenon. It only takes a sustained water temperature spike of 1°C (1.8°F) above average to upset corals and lead to bleaching.

"Rather than just being a single event tied to a single El Niño there has been continual bleaching in the Pacific," says Mark Eakin, a NOAA coral reef scientist. "It's unlike anything we've ever seen before."

The corals in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef have been lucky by most measures-a drop in local temperatures has allowed many of them to recover. But corals in other locations haven't been so fortunate. A recent survey of some areas of Australia's Great Barrier Reef suggested that more than a third of the corals in the region might have died, leaving a marine graveyard behind.

"The soft corals were just decomposing-animals literally dripping off the rocks," says Vevers of his dive in the Great Barrier Reef. "The most horrifying part was that we just absolutely stank of rotting animals. That's when you really realize that reefs are made up of billions of animals."

A full global accounting of how many corals have survived the latest bleaching episode will take months, if not longer, but coral scientists expect the worst. The consequences of losing coral reefs are catastrophic for the oceans. There's a reason scientists describe reefs as the rainforests of the sea.

Reefs occupy just 1% of the world's marine environment, but they provide a home to a quarter of marine species-including a unique set of fish, turtles and algae. Many of these species could be lost permanently, but with temperatures only expected to rise in the coming decades chances are slim that reefs will be able to rebuild from scratch.

"You can't grow back a 500-year old coral in 15 years," says Eakin. "In many cases, it's like you've killed the giant redwoods."

The death of coral also represents a huge loss-as much as $375 billion annually-for the local economies along the globe they support. Reefs support local tourism and the commercial fishing industry. They also protect coastlines from flooding during extreme storms.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of coral loss is what it suggests about the future. The fragile nature of coral reefs leaves them hypersensitive to climate change, but ecosystems above ground and beneath the ocean will also be vulnerable to rising temperatures in the coming years and decades. And while humans can still stave off the worst effects of climate change, some level of warming remains inevitable.

"If you think of corals as canaries [in a coal mine], they're chirping really loudly right now," said Jennifer Koss, NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program director, at a recent press conference. "The ones that are still alive, that is."
Graphic sources: World Resources Institute; XL Catlin Seaview Survey; NOAA Animation by Heather Jones for TIME

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Explore This Coral Reef Before it Disappears

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An underwater investigation of coral bleaching in the South Pacific

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Earth's climate is changing at an rate. As a result, storms and are becoming more intense. Temperatures are rising. Polar ice caps are melting. This is causing oceans to rise. Low coastal areas are flooding. Animals are losing their habitats. Scientists are sounding the alarm: If we don't make changes to halt global warming, the planet's climate will become increasingly unbearable.

Climate, unlike weather, describes long-term patterns in the conditions of the . Earth's climate as a whole has changed several times throughout history. In the past 650,000 years alone, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat. Most of these changes are a natural part of Earth's 4.5 billion-year history. They are due to tiny variations in the Earth's orbit, which alter the amount of solar energy reaching the planet.

Scientists say that recent changes in Earth's climate are not due to natural causes. According to NASA, 97% of climate scientists agree there is a direct connection between human activity and the changes occurring on our planet.

TAYLOR WEIDMAN-BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

The Human Impact

Over the past 150 years, humans have used more and more engines, vehicles, and other machines. These devices burn through fossil fuels like coal and oil. Fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

Normally, plants, trees, and the oceans absorb carbon dioxide and release it back into the atmosphere as oxygen. But an increase in fossil fuels has created more carbon dioxide than nature can take in. Adding to the problem are other human activities. Deforestation and the destruction of habitats also reduce the number of trees and plants. That makes it even harder to absorb all that carbon dioxide.

When too much carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, it causes problems for Earth's climate. Sunlight can pass through those gases. But the heat the sun generates cannot escape back out into space. So the gases end up trapping that heat. This then turns the planet into a giant greenhouse.

This greenhouse effect leads to changes in the climate, like increased temperatures. Average temperatures across the planet have not been increasing uniformly. But scientists observe a clear upward trend. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2001.

Scientists believe that climate change will have an impact far greater than milder winters and warmer summers. A warmer planet melts glaciers and other large bodies of ice faster than usual. Earth's glaciers help cool the planet. This means that as ice melts, temperatures will continue to rise. Rising sea levels, flooding, and stronger weather events will occur. And as the planet gets hotter, some places will become uninhabitable for people and animals.

These effects are already being felt around the world. Melting polar ice caps are causing huge chunks of ice to fall into the oceans. The melting ice is causing sea levels to rise about an eighth of an inch per year. That's according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Many coastal areas are in danger of flooding. Some scientists predict that if sea levels continue to rise at current rates, entire cities may be submerged in the next 100 years.

In warm, dry regions, increased temperatures are causing severe drought. This leads to wildfires, food shortages, and water insecurity. Global warming has also led to coral bleaching of nearly two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The corals provide a habitat for nearly 1,500 different species of fish. This loss of sea life also affects the hundreds of millions of humans who rely on marine creatures for food.

Climate change is also creating more extreme weather events. This puts people and in danger. Scientists believe that global warming is responsible for hurricanes of greater intensity. Other results of global warming include more frequent and severe heat waves, droughts, blizzards, and rainstorms.

CHRIS SEWARD-RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER/TNS/GETTY IMAGES

Taking Action

Governments, companies, and individuals are working to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Countries are joining to fight climate change and its effects. Innovators are working to create Earth-friendly fuels and power sources. And more and more people are using electric and hybrid vehicles. They are also turning to wind and solar power for alternative energy sources.

But humans still need to deal with the large amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. One solution being tested is called carbon sequestration. Through this process, carbon dioxide can be captured and stored underground before it goes into the atmosphere. Another proposal is to store carbon by planting more trees-nature's carbon trap.

Time will tell the true impact that climate change has on Earth. But how humans respond and adapt to a warming planet will set the course for years to come.

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Earth's climate is changing at an unprecedented rate. As a result, storms and droughts are becoming more intense. Temperatures are rising. Polar ice caps are melting. This is causing oceans to rise. Low coastal areas are flooding. Animals are losing...

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Deforestation and Forest Degradation | Threats | WWF

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Learn how you can help support WWF’s conservation work which addresses direct and indirect threats, including deforestation, in order to conserve biodiversity and reduce humanity’s ecological footprint.

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This Teen Activist Is Suing the Government Over Climate Change

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The teen explains why armchair activism isn’t enough.

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Air pollution happens when solid and liquid particles-called aerosols -and certain gases end up in our air. These particles and gases can be bad for the planet and for our health, so keeping track of them is important.

Where do aerosols come from?

Any particle that gets picked up into the air or is formed from chemical reactions in the air can be an aerosol. Many aerosols enter the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels-such as coal and petroleum-and wood. These particles can come from many sources, including car exhaust, factories and even wildfires. Some of the particles and gases come directly from these sources, but others form through chemical reactions in the air.

Aerosols can come from other places, too, such as ash from an erupting volcano. Dust, pollen from plants and mold spores are also examples of aerosols.

What else causes air pollution?

Certain gases in the atmosphere can cause air pollution. For example, in cities, a gas called ozone is a major cause of air pollution. Ozone is also a greenhouse gas that can be both good and bad for our environment. It all depends where it is in Earth's atmosphere.

Ozone high up in our atmosphere is a good thing. It helps block harmful energy from the Sun, called radiation. But, when ozone is closer to the ground, it can be really bad for our health. Ground level ozone is created when sunlight reacts with certain chemicals that come from sources of burning fossil fuels, such as factories or car exhaust.

When particles in the air combine with ozone, they create smog. Smog is a type of air pollution that looks like smoky fog and makes it difficult to see.

How does air pollution affect Earth's climate?

Aerosols can impact how the Sun's light hits Earth. For example, some aerosols reflect sunlight while others absorb sunlight. It depends on the color of the particle.

Dark surfaces-whether it's a black t-shirt or a dark particle in the atmosphere-absorb the Sun's heat. Lighter-colored surfaces reflect heat from the Sun.

A white t-shirt reflects the Sun on a hot day, making you feel cooler. In the same way, light-colored particles that reflect the Sun's light and heat away from Earth can make the global temperature cooler. Dark-colored particles that absorb the Sun's light can make the global temperature warmer.

How does air pollution affect our health?

Breathing in polluted air can be very bad for our health. Long-term exposure to air pollution has been associated with diseases of the heart and lungs, cancers and other health problems. That's why it's important for us to monitor air pollution.

How is NASA monitoring air pollution?

NASA uses satellites orbiting Earth to keep an eye on air pollution. In fact, air quality forecasters use information about aerosols from NASA's Aqua, Terra and Suomi-NPP satellites.

NASA also is developing a new instrument called the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols, or MAIA, to fly aboard a future spacecraft mission. MAIA will help scientists understand the size, makeup and quantity of aerosols in our air. Eventually, scientists will be able to compare this information with health records. This can help us better understand the relationship between aerosol pollution and human health.

Related NASA Missions

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Air pollution is caused by solid or liquid particles and certain gases suspended in the air. These particles and gases can come from car and truck exhaust, factories, dust, pollen, mold spores, volcanoes and wildfires.

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Pollution is a major threat to sea turtles. Learn more here.

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Youths bring lawsuits to stop climate change

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Youths bring lawsuits to stop climate change

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Find the best eco-friendly advice for parenting infants to teens, plus tips on pregnancy, activities, family dynamics, and environmental education.

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Plastic is an amazing man-made material - it's cheap to produce and has many uses! But half of the plastic we produce is designed to be used just once and then thrown away - and even plastic that can be reused or recycled gets chucked out, too!
Much of our unwanted plastic ends up in the ocean - around 8 million tonnes of it every year, in fact! And because plastic takes 400 years to break down, it stays there for a long, long time, putting our friends beneath the waves in serious danger. Let's dive in and take a closer look...

700...

different species of animals are believed to be severely threatened because of plastic pollution in the ocean.

tonnes of a gas called carbon dioxide (CO ₂) is absorbed by the ocean each day because of rubbish. The ocean has always sucked up CO ₂ from the air as part of nature - but our waste means more is being absorbed than before. As a result, the water is becoming more acidic, which could make it harder for fish to breath and for creatures like crabs, lobsters and coral to grow their shells.

of all dead animals found in beach cleanups worldwide have been entangled in plastic bags.

animals and birds were found trapped by marine debris (such as old ropes, nets, mesh and wires) during a recent international coastal cleanup.

5 trillion...

pieces of plastic (not including microbeads - minuscule plastic balls found in toiletries like face washes and toothpaste) are estimated to be floating in the world's seas.

of seabirds eat plastic rubbish, mistaking it for food.

of fish found during a recent expedition had plastic in their stomachs.

of sea turtles worldwide have accidentally eaten plastic rubbish in the ocean.

The facts and figures are pretty shocking, right? The good news is that people around the world are working to together to reduce plastic waste. Join the mission and check out our 10 tips to reduce plastic pollution!

What did you think of our Plastic in the Ocean feature? Will you be helping to solve the plastic problem? Leave a comment below and let us know!

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Plastic in the Ocean - National Geographic Kids

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Get facts and figures on how plastic pollution is harming marine life. How much plastic is in the ocean? Why is plastic pollution dangerous?

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The Clock Is Ticking: Youth and Environmental Activism

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The Clock Is Ticking: Youth and Environmental Activism

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Young people have a unique relationship with the environment: They are often the first affected when something goes wrong, yet the least represented when decisions are made.

They, more than any other generation, have been raised to feel a responsibility toward the environment. And that's important because they will be the first generation in charge of correcting the problems caused by the widespread pollution of the atmosphere and rampant misappropriation of natural resources.

Youth today feel the "clock is ticking in terms of the amount of time we have to deal with the major issues like clean air, clean water and global warming," says Sharon Smith, program director of Brower New Leaders at the Earth Island Institute, a support group for youth environmental campaigns and initiatives.
Growth in activism
Smith has seen firsthand the growth in environmental activism. "I graduated from college in 1999, and right in my first year out of college I went to an eco conference, which at that time was held in the Northeast. It was one of the largest environmental youth conferences held to date, and it had about a thousand people."

Contrast that with a 2009 conference that drew 12,000 young people from all 50 states, she said. "You can really see the growth of the environmental movement even over the past decade by looking at these conferences and the trainings designed and led and initiated by young people."

Canon Envirothon has seen similar growth in youth activism. A nonprofit specializing in the delivery of environmental education for high school students, the program has grown from three states in 1988 to 54 states and provinces in North America today.

Young people are "looking for avenues where they can make a difference and become knowledgeable, and then they can take and share that knowledge and experience," said Clay Burns, executive director of Canon Envirothon in Mississippi. They need to be "willing and prepared to work toward achieving and maintaining a balance between the quality of life and the quality of the environment."
Raising new leaders
But an increase in youth activism is not enough to stave off environmental peril - we need new ideas and new leaders, according to Eban Goodstein, economics professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., and co-director of the 2009 National Teach-In on Global Warming, a nationwide network of teachers at all educational levels that, on Feb. 5, engaged more than a million Americans in a "solutions-driven dialogue."

Eban says the U.S. must act aggressively in the next year or so to reduce global- warming pollution and invest in clean energy technologies or "you guys are going to be looking at a very different world in 2050," when the world will be 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher.

"To put that number in perspective, during the last Ice Age, it was only nine degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is on average today," he explained.

Goodstein says youth need to move beyond being the front lines of environmental activism to being the visionaries. Both the Brower New Leaders and Canon Envirothon have devoted more than two decades training them to do just that.

Earth Island Initiative was founded in 1982 by renowned environmentalist David Brower to support young people who have new strategies for saving the earth. In 2000, the organization started the Brower Youth Awards, which honor six youth ages 13 to 23 each year for their leadership and activism with a gala ceremony, campout and $3,000 prize.

"We felt like young people so often are sort of the workhorses of these campaigns and aren't always recognized, aren't always supported at a critical time in the development of their careers, in the development of their activism," Smith said.

The Canon Envirothon also honors young environmentalists in a yearly competition that engages more than 500,000 high school students throughout North America. The Envirothon works in partnership with local conservation districts, forestry associations, educators and natural resource agencies to organize and conduct competitions on the local, regional, and state and/or provincial level. This year's hands-on problem-solving competition is Aug. 2-6 at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where local finalists will compete for recognition, scholarships, and prizes.
Issues addressed
While recycling clubs abound at all age levels, more and more youth are expanding their efforts in other directions. In Massachusetts, young people involved in Gardening in the Community promote organic gardening and bicycle use. In Florida, a young man developed an interactive curriculum to educate youth about the plight of loggerhead turtles. In California, youth helped pass a bill requiring cosmetic companies to alert the Department of Health if their products contain carcinogens.

These are just a few examples. Youth across the country are cleaning up local wetlands, shutting down toxic waste sites, promoting clean energy and combating landfills. They have educated their peers, parents and the public on carbon emissions, reusable goods and conservation of resources.

Brower New Leaders have dealt with many such issues, and the Earth Island Institute currently oversees 60 projects, ranging from "Project Coyote" to the "Sacred Land Film Project," in 26 countries worldwide.

Students involved in Canon Envirothon pay special attention to natural resources, specifically those related to soils and land use, aquatic ecology, forestry and wildlife.

"Conservation is the big thing that we're involved in," Burns said, explaining that such work is more grassroots, and thus a more viable venue for youth activism.

And while most youth activism is local, many are entering the political realm to effect long-lasting change.

"There's a recognition that this is a time when we need major action from government if we're going to sort of lay the foundation and give you guys the tools that you're going to need to transform the world," Goodstein said.
New worldview coming?
Goodstein envisions a day soon when people automatically think about the environmental impact of their actions before they act. "We'll move on to a phase where we just sort of naturally mimic nature and create things that are in harmony with nature and don't produce waste and pollution."

Smith shares his optimism because she's seen the changes enacted by the youth involved in her program. "Just this year we were looking at the past 10 years of awardees, and at least 87 percent of our award recipients are still in leadership roles in the environmental movement. So it's a great sign that these young folks were committed when they applied to do this work and that hopefully the support we provided ensured they could stay committed and rise as leaders," she said.

The presidency of Barack Obama gives more reasons for hope. "It's rejuvenated the environmental movement in a number of ways," Smith said. "People have been really hitting their heads against the wall for eight years trying to push forward environmental initiatives."
Click here to read these Y-Press profiles:
Grind for the Green, San Francisco, CA
Urban Roots, East Austin, TX
West Oakland Urban Students Uprising against Pollution, Oakland, CA
Click here to read how students at two high schools are recycling and promoting environmentalism.

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Researchers from the United Negro College Fund went to West Virginia last year and asked 62 high school dropouts in the federal Job Corps program a simple, open-ended question. ¨What was it about school,¨ they wanted to know, ¨that caused you to quit?¨

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EarthTimes: Various Articles on Pollution

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EarthTimes: Various Articles on Pollution

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First, global markets consume rainforest products that depend on sustainable harvesting: latex, cork, fruit, nuts, timber, fibers, spices, natural oils and resins, and medicines. In addition, the genetic diversity of tropical forests is basically the deepest end of the planetary gene pool. Hidden in the genes of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria that have not even been discovered yet may be cures for cancer and other diseases or the key to improving the yield and nutritional quality of foods-which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be crucial for feeding the nearly ten billion people the Earth will likely need to support in coming decades. Finally, genetic diversity in the planetary gene pool is crucial for the resilience of all life on Earth to rare but catastrophic environmental events, such as meteor impacts or massive, sustained volcanism.

Soil Impacts

With all the lushness and productivity that exist in tropical forests, it can be surprising to learn that tropical soils are actually very thin and poor in nutrients. The underlying "parent" rock weathers rapidly in the tropics' high temperatures and heavy rains, and over time, most of the minerals have washed from the soil. Nearly all the nutrient content of a tropical forest is in the living plants and the decomposing litter on the forest floor.

When an area is completely deforested for farming, the farmer typically burns the trees and vegetation to create a fertilizing layer of ash. After this slash-and-burn deforestation, the nutrient reservoir is lost, flooding and erosion rates are high, and soils often become unable to support crops in just a few years. If the area is then turned into cattle pasture, the ground may become compacted as well, slowing down or preventing forest recovery.

Social Impacts

Tropical forests are home to millions of native (indigenous) people who make their livings through subsistence agriculture, hunting and gathering, or through low-impact harvesting of forest products like rubber or nuts. Deforestation in indigenous territories by loggers, colonizers, and refugees has sometimes triggered violent conflict. Forest preservation can be socially divisive, as well. National and international governments and aid agencies struggle with questions about what level of human presence, if any, is compatible with conservation goals in tropical forests, how to balance the needs of indigenous peoples with expanding rural populations and national economic development, and whether establishing large, pristine, uninhabited protected areas-even if that means removing current residents-should be the highest priority of conservation efforts in tropical forests.

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First, global markets consume rainforest products that depend on sustainable harvesting: latex, cork, fruit, nuts, timber, fibers, spices, natural oils and resins, and medicines. In addition, the genetic diversity of tropical forests is basically the deepest end of the planetary gene pool.

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Tropical coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystems on earth, giving shelter to thousands of animal species. Many millions of people depend on fisheries, tourism and coastal protection provided by healthy coral reefs. Yet today, coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate all around the globe

Corals build the reef structure and provide the basis for a functioning coral reef ecosystem. Without corals, reefs will degrade and vanish within years. At present, coral reefs are facing multiple stresses such as pollution, overfishing, and, overall, the ongoing climate change―consequently raising sea water temperatures and causing coral bleaching worldwide. As a result, over 50 percent of the world's coral reefs have died in the last 30 years and up to 90 percent may die within the next century-very few pristine coral reefs still exist.

The impact of our changing climate on coral reefs was manifested by the third global bleaching event in 2015/16. This event has caused a mass die-off of corals; for example along the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, there is a clear pattern of severe bleaching events increasing in frequency, to a point where there is now inadequate intervals for corals to recover in between.

A world without corals means not only will we have a less diverse and less beautiful ocean, but it will also be an economic disaster for many people-predominantly in developing countries. Fisheries and tourism provide important livelihoods that directly depend on healthy coral reefs. Reefs are nurseries for many fish species, including commercial ones, and attract millions of tourists every year. Coral reefs offer natural coastal protection, especially in areas frequently impacted by hurricanes and tropical storms. The great biodiversity of coral reefs serves as an important source for new medicinal remedies.

Altogether, coral reefs comprise an area of almost 300 000 km² and are estimated to have an economic value of US$100 000 - 600 000 per km², thus providing one of the most high-value ecosystems. Coral reefs are among the most complex ecosystems and are revealing the degraded status of coastal environments. Their alarming status represents the poor health of our oceans and if coral reefs disappear other marine realms will follow.

Corals have existed for more than 400 million years; yet stresses and changes from human activities are happening faster than their ability to adapt. Corals may not survive the intensity and swiftness of these ongoing changes. A matter of vital importance is sexual reproduction of corals; as it is for most species. Sexual reproduction maintains genetic diversity and, in turn, enables species to adapt to a naturally dynamic environment in the long-term. Corals under stress are likely to stop sexual reproduction, which puts their survival at risk.

SECORE is working to give coral reefs a future.

Apart from urgent action to mitigate climate change on a global scale, it is increasingly evident that traditional conservation measures are inadequate to ensure the survival of this essential ecosystem. If we want to give coral reefs a fighting chance to survive and thrive for generations to come, we need active restoration measures to complement coral reef conservation.

Together with our lead partners, we initiated the Global Coral Restoration effort in 2017 to accelerate the development of new tools, methods and strategies to make coral restoration viable on larger thus meaningful scales.

SECORE's mission is to create and share the tools and technologies to sustainably restore coral reefs worldwide.

You can make a difference: your donation is vital for us to continue where we excel - creating the tools to sustainably restore coral reefs around the world.

read more:

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coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystem

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secore is working to give coral reefs a future

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SECORE International | Why coral reefs need our help

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Tropical coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystems on earth, giving shelter to thousands of animal species. Many millions of people depend on fisheries, tourism and coastal protection provided by healthy coral reefs. Yet today, coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate all around the globe

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From history and the arts to travel and fashion, we take a broad look at culture in the context of sustainability.