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Non-animal methods are often cheaper, quicker and more effective

Replacing animal tests does not mean putting human patients at risk. It also does not mean halting medical progress. Instead, replacing animals used in testing will improve the quality as well as the humanity of our science.

Thankfully, the development of non-animal methods is growing, and fast. Due to innovations in science, animal tests are being replaced in areas such as toxicity testing, neuroscience and drug development. But much more needs to be done.

Once new non-animal methods have been developed, there are often massive bureaucratic hurdles to implementing and enforcing their use. One of the most important jobs the Cruelty Free International science team does is encourage regulators to accept and promote the use of non-animal methods to replace animal testing.

Types of non-animal methods

Cell cultures

Almost every type of human and animal cell can be grown in the laboratory. Scientists have even managed to coax cells to grow into 3D structures, such as miniature human organs, which can provide a more realistic way to test new therapies.

Human cells have been used to create innovative little devices called "organs-on-chips". These can be used instead of animals to study biological and disease processes, as well as drug metabolism. Devices have already been produced that accurately mimic the lung, heart, kidney and gut. The ultimate goal is to use these chips to create a whole "human-on-a-chip".

Cell cultures have been central to key developments in areas such as cancers, sepsis, kidney disease and AIDS, and are routinely used in chemical safety testing, vaccine production and drug development.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ANIMAL TESTING

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Alternatives to animal testing | Cruelty Free International

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Non-animal methods are often cheaper, quicker and more effective Replacing animal tests does not mean putting human patients at risk. It also does not mean halting medical progress. Instead, replacing animals used in testing will improve the quality as well as the humanity of our science.

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Action Against Hunger | Ending World Hunger & Malnutrition

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More than two million children die from hunger each year. Action Against Hunger works in more than 50 countries to save lives and help children grow strong. We lead the global movement to end hunger. We innovate solutions, advocate for change, and reach 24 million people every year with proven hunger prevention and treatment programs. As a nonprofit that works across 50 countries, our 8,300 dedicated staff members partner with communities to address the root causes of hunger, including conflict, inequity, and emergencies. We strive to create a world free from hunger, for everyone, for good.

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3/23: Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs a law that makes it easier to employ children

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3/23: Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs a law that makes it easier to employ children

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law this week rolling back requirements that the state verify the ages of workers under 16 and provide them with work certificates permitting them to work.

Effectively, the new law signed by the Republican governor applies to those who are 14 and 15 years old because in most cases Arkansas businesses can't employ those under 14.

Under the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, children under 16 don't have to get the Division of Labor's permission to be employed. The state also no longer has to verify the age of those under 16 before they take a job. The law doesn't change the hours or kinds of jobs kids can work.

"The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job," Sanders' communications director Alexa Henning said in a statement to NPR."All child labor laws that actually protect children still apply and we expect businesses to comply just as they are required to do now."

Workers under 16 in Arkansas have had to get these permits for decades.

Supporters of the new law say it gets rid of a tedious requirement, streamlines the hiring process, and allows parents - rather than the government - to make decisions about their children.

But opponents say the work certificates protected vulnerable youth from exploitation.

"It was wild to listen to adults argue in favor of eliminating a one-page form that helps the Department of Labor ensure young workers aren't being exploited," the group Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families wrote about the law in a legislative session recap.

Arkansas isn't the only state looking to make it easier to employ kids in a tight labor market and fill an economic need. Bills in other states, including Iowa and Minnesota, would allow some teenagers to work in meatpacking plants and construction, respectively. New Jersey expanded teens' working hours in 2022.

But the bills are also occurring alongside a rising tide of minors employed in violation of child labor laws, which have more than tripled since 2015, and federal regulators have promised to crack down on businesses that employ minors in hazardous occupations.

There's no excuse for "why these alarming violations are occurring, with kids being employed where they shouldn't even be in the first place," Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, told NPR in February.

Investigators from the Department of Labor found hundreds of children employed in dangerous jobs in meatpacking plants. Last month, Packers Sanitation Services paid a $1.5 million fine - the maximum amount - for employing 102 children to work in dangerous meatpacking facility jobs.

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Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs a law that makes it easier to employ children

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Under the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, those under 16 don't have to get the Division of Labor's permission to be employed. The state also doesn't have to verify their age anymore.

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Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S. - The New York Times

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child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry

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child labor in the chocolate industry - Tony's Chocolonely

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Child labor exists in the chocolate industry at an alarming rate.. still. Learn more about child labor in the cocoa industry and how we are working to end it.

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How to shop ethically | Ethical Consumer

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With a few small steps it's easy to start your journey to become an Ethical Consumer and shop ethically and sustainably. Here we list 10 easy to do things that can have a big impact.

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Video and Tips/Guide for buying ethically (no Child Labor)

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Video and Tips/Guide for buying ethically (no Child Labor)

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How to shop ethically | Ethical Consumer

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With a few small steps it's easy to start your journey to become an Ethical Consumer and shop ethically and sustainably. Here we list 10 easy to do things that can have a big impact.

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Bangladesh does not have the best track record for worker safety. Last week, eight people were reported dead after a roof collapsed on top of construction workers in Mongla, Bangladesh (for geographic reference, Mongla is a port city in the south-west region of the Asian nation). This deadly incident is the latest in a series of factory accidents within the country - and recalls thein 2013, when 1,100 textile workers died after a nine-story building collapsed.

While laws are in place in Bangladesh to protect workers, oversight is scant, and violations of working conditions are often overlooked, according to a BBC correspondent covering the disaster. Further, foreign investment is often involved in the products manufactured at factories in developing nations.

Worker safety standards are often overlooked for the poorest and most marginalized peoples (here is a to a GREAT article on poverty and workplace safety). And due to expanded globalization and product outsourcing, foreign influence is a large reason for the rapid expansion of poorly constructed factories. It's an issue of supply and demand, and with many Western and first-world nations craving cheap products, developing nations are meeting the need with inexpensive labor and shoddy factories.

So, what does that mean for consumers? Do we simply stop buying products made in developing nations? In my mind, the answer to this question is no, but the onus falls to consumers to demand accountability from companies that are outsourcing labor. While many corporations are beginning to look at their supply chains (a fancy way of saying where products are outsourced and made), much of this focus is new - and has been a response to customer demands. Additionally, many companies have become more responsible to preserve their image (also known as corporate social responsibility).

Below, I list a number of recommendations on responsible buying practices and awareness of supply chains. While this list isn't comprehensive, it does provide the framework for more responsible consumption.
1.) Look at where your products are made
This one may sound easy - but do you really know where your clothes are from? My current ensemble showcases jeans produced in Turkey, shoes cobbled in China, a leather jacket manufactured in France, and socks handmade in New York City from yarn spun in Ireland. Yeah, my wardrobe is better traveled than I am.

When shopping, I try to look for goods that are produced locally, or are second-hand, but this isn't always possible. So, when I do buy something new, I try to see where the product is being manufactured. Here is an example - If a plastic dish I am considering buying has been produced in Myanmar, where low-cost manufacturing is prevalent, and I don't know the specifics of the factory conditions, I will do some detective work before I buy. This firstly gives me a better idea of where I am buying from, but secondly, makes me accountable for the product I want to purchase. I have discovered numerous supply chain issues from companies I have considered buying from in the past, and as a result have written these corporations to increase responsibility for their products (I use twitter, email, and Facebook as a platform for activism).
2.) Buy sustainably, locally, or DIY
Buying sustainable products is largely associated with environmental concerns,but it also applies to people. Think about it this way- buying from a factory or brand that under-charges workers and isn't accountable for how its goods are produced isn't a sustainable business model. Corporations need to have an idea of how to manage supply chains, and most large brands are getting smart about this. And for those that haven't - it goes back to consumer power. Demand that corporations understand where their goods are being manufactured.

And what about local buying? It's not just for shopping at the farmers' market! Use me as an example - here in New York City, I will look for locally made clothing produced on recycled fabric. I know I may be sounding a bit Brooklyn hipster, but I don't buy locally to be on trend, I buy locally t because it makes sense. Not only am I supporting local designers, but with the supply chain closer to home, the product is more sustainable, environmentally friendly, and I know that I am paying a fair price for what I am purchasing. For all you New Yorkers, check out kaightshop.com and www.sustainable-nyc.com. It's easier than you'd think to find sustainable, fair-trade products.

As for the DIY aspect, remember those socks previously mentioned? Yeah, I made them myself. I also have several ceramic bowls and mugs I created using a kiln at a local pottery house (not doing much for my hipster argument...).
3.) Know the supply chain policy of brands
Corporations and brands are becoming increasingly more accountable to laborers and consumers, working to ensure that goods are manufactured in safe conditions. While it would be nice to simply assume that all corporations outsource their labor and production to factories that comply with global worker safety laws, this is not always the case. To be a responsible consumer, look at the supply chain policy of companies (for instance, big brands like H&M and Target have been leaders in corporate social responsibility. Or check out http://www.free2work.org to see the stories behind the barcodes).
4.) Campaign for worker's rights
As consumers, it's our job to support the health and wellbeing of workers. With increasing news coverage on factory disasters such as the one profiled in Mongla, we, global citizens, have to have an awareness of the conditions people are working under. It is important to understand how consumers can affect important change in worker's rights - and that our buying power has, well... power. By understanding the conditions that our goods are produced in, we can help to support better conditions for laborers across the globe. Campaigns like www.cleanclothes.org and www.laborrights.org are great ways to support laborers, and demand accountability from companies on worker's rights.
5.) Consume less
I love buying new clothes....and books....and STUFF. It's a guilty pleasure, but in recent years, I have tried practicing "mindful" buying. Instead of shopping to pass time, I only buy what I need, and try to purchase higher quality clothing that will last longer, look for flatware from local potters, and use the public library as opposed to running out to bring home the newest hard-back novel.

How does consuming less relate to labor standards? It goes back to my argument of supply-and-demand. The developed world is increasingly asking for more and more cheap products, and developing nations are answering the demand because of their ability to supply cheap labor. While I am thrilled to see all nations moving onto the global market, I question the role of consumerism in making these connections. Particularly if demand for goods are producing unsafe conditions for laborers, and lack of accountability from the corporate sector. It's a tricky balance - everyone deserves to work, and it's amazing to see emerging industries, but not at the expense of workers' health, happiness, and safety.

We all buy things, and shopping can be fun. But we, global citizens, should also be aware of worker's rights and the sustainability of where the things we consume originate. Being thoughtful, mindful, and also advocacy oriented in our buying is not only good for our pocketbooks, it's good for laborers.

It may be time for nations to begin thinking of consumer culture as a hindrance to development. While everyone should be able to have the ability to purchase and consume in the ways they see fit, the desire to buy often impacts our ability fully relate to one another. While it is wonderful that workers in developing nations are able to find jobs, is it really the right kind of work? What does it mean that the source of income and labor for many individuals are linked to the needs of foreign consumption?

Whatever you feel about supply chains, corporate social responsibility, and consumerism, the bottom-line is this: worker's rights matter. And it is our duty as global citizens to make sure that all people have safety in all aspects of their lives - including the workplace.

Share your thoughts in the comments section. What ways do you feel are best to make sure worker's rights are being met?

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Bangladesh does not have the best track record for worker safety. Last week, eight people were reported dead after a roof collapsed on top of construction workers in Mongla, Bangladesh (for geographic reference, Mongla is a port city in the south-west region of the Asian nation).

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Jane Turner looks at the indelible footprint left by 'forever chemicals' (PFAS) used to make clothing waterproof and investigates what companies and the government are doing about it, and what consumers can do.

Boycotting brands that are complicit in Palestinian human rights violations is a powerful form of consumer activism, but how ethical is the product you buy instead?

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Your personal ethical consumer guide. Independent product guides, research, information and analysis since 1989.

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Thousands of Products Improving Millions of Lives

Fair Trade Certified™ is an award-winning, rigorous, and globally recognized sustainable sourcing model that improves livelihoods, protects the environment, and builds resilient, transparent supply chains.
Why Fair Trade

The Impact of Fair Trade Certification

When you see our Fair Trade Certified label on a product, you can trust that it was made according to rigorous standards that protect the livelihoods of farmers, fishers, and other producer communities and the environment.

Farmers, fishers, and workers are not guaranteed a minimum price or adequately compensated for their production; they are often not made aware of their rights or aren't encouraged to provide feedback on improvements or needs.

Less visibility into supply chains and lack of standards can result in exploitation of workers and the environment

No extra income provided for community investments

Guaranteed minimum price that acts as a safety net for coffee farmers and producers when the market prices are low

Rigorous Fair Trade Certified standards ensure safe and healthy working conditions, the elimination of forced/child labor, fair and consistent compensation, and environmental protections and product traceability

Producer communities receive additional compensation through Community Development Funds

Without Fair Trade
Certification

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Fair trade products are constantly expanding into new categories and retail locations, making it easier than ever to shop your values! Use your purchasing power for good by choosing from the thousands of items that feature the Fair Trade Certified label.

We work with more than 1,500 trailblazing partners that have transformed their business with Fair Trade Certified. As a leading third-party certifier of fair trade products, our model is based on rigorously-maintained standards that set the global benchmark for sustainable sourcing.

Ricardo Crisantes, Co-Owner and CCO

Producer, Brand | Wholesum

"Fair trade is one of the most credible and effective certification models on the market that helps farmers improve their lives and develop their communities more sustainably. I've seen it's powerful impact first hand on our family's farms."

Learn about Certification

By partnering with us, you'll be joining a diverse network of producers, companies, shoppers, and advocates who are committed to building a more equitable model of trade.
What We Certify

Join Us

The Fair Trade Community is a gathering place for fair trade shoppers, advocates, allies, and donors, united as changemakers creating a better world.
Fair Trade Community

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Fair Trade Certified is an award-winning sustainable sourcing model that improves livelihoods and builds resilient transparent supply chains.

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Buying Fairtrade - Fairtrade Foundation - Where to find Fairtrade products

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There are over 6,000 Fairtrade products from coffee and tea to flowers and gold, so when you shop, look for the FAIRTRADE Mark.

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The world is facing a plastics crisis. Plastic pollution is found all around the globe. Plastics are negatively affecting people and the environment at each stage of their lifecycle - extraction of fossil fuel, production, manufacturing, use, recycling, and disposal. The impacts are felt in a wide range of areas, including on biodiversity, climate change, human health and human rights. This page focuses on the impacts of plastics and the chemicals they contain on human health.

World Health Assembly and Plastics

At the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly (WHA76) that took place in Geneva in May 2023, a resolution on the impact of chemicals, waste, and pollution on human health initially tabled by Peru, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Monaco, Switzerland, Uruguay, and the European Union and its Member States was adopted. The resolution, available on the WHA76 portal, includes notes and references to various ongoing negotiations as well as UN Environment Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions. Among these, Plastic pollution and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in charge of developing a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. The resolutions requests to scaling-up work on plastics and health.

Read more on international collaboration on plastics and health:

Plastics and Health at a Glance

Humans are exposed to a large variety of toxic chemicals and microplastics through inhalation, ingestion, and direct skin contact, all along the plastic lifecycle. According to WWF, an average person could be ingesting approximately plastic causes diseases, disability and premature death 5 grams of plastic every week. While the health impacts of plastics is still a rather new research area, scientific results to-date do indicate at very stage of its life cycle. The toxic chemical additives and pollutants found in plastics threaten human health on a global scale. Scientifically-proven health effects include causing cancer or changing hormone activity (known as endocrine disruption), which can lead to reproductive, growth, and cognitive impairment. Many of the toxic chemical additives have several other known health impacts, persist in the environment, and bioaccumulate in exposed organisms. Research also revealed that microplastics can harm our health, and act as vessels for pathogens to enter our system, increasing the spread of diseases.

Health impacts are also observed all along the plastic value chain. Examples include pollution at extraction sites, workers exposure to chemicals, air pollution from waste incineration, and water and soil contamination. Vulnerable groups, including children, women, workers in the informal waste sector and marginalized communities are particularly exposed, thus raising concerns of human rights and environmental injustice. The adverse effects of plastic are particularly acute children in the womb and young ones, with increased risks of prematurity, stillbirth, birth defects of the reproductive organs, neurodevelopmental impairment, impaired lung growth, and childhood cancer (Finally, plastics contribute to the numerous health risks associated with warming temperatures and extreme weather events due to climate change. The effects of plastic production on human health also have important monetary costs, recently Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Health, 2023). estimated to more than $250 billion in 2015 globally and more than $920 billions in the USA alone for diseases and disability caused by the plastic-associated chemicals PBDE, BPA and DEHP.

General resources on the impacts of plastics on human health:

Does plastic makes us sick? | Plastic Health Coalition

IPEN's Toxic Plastics Campaign | IPEN

Plastic Health Umbrella Review | Minderoo Foundation | 20 August 2024

Microplastic presence in dog and human testis and its potential association with sperm count and weights of testis and epididymis | Chelin Jamie Hu, Marcus A Garcia, Alexander Nihart et al. | Toxicological Sciences | 15 May 2024

"We're Dying Here" | The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone | Human Rights Watch | 25 January 2024

The global plastics treaty: an endocrinologist's assessment | Marina Olga Fernandez, Leonardo Trasande | 14 November 2023

Plastics Health Map | Minderoo Foundation | October 2023

How Plastics Are Poisoning Us | Elizabeth Kolbert | 26 June 2023

Demand for recycled plastic in packaging is growing. So are concerns about potential health risks | Packaging Dive | 26 June 2023

Forever Toxic: The science on health threats from plastic recycling | Greenpeace | 24 May 2023

Hazardous Chemicals in Plastic Products and Food Chain in Kenya | CEJAD, IPEN, Arnika | 2 May 2023

Our Way of Life is Poisoning Us | The New York Times | 20 April 2023

The links between pollution and miscarriage: 'This is the stuff nightmares are made of' | Isabelle Oderberg | The Guardian | 28 March 2023

The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health - Report | Philip J. Landrigan et. al | 21 March 2023

Global Bottled Water Industry: A Review of Impacts and Trends | United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health | 16 March 2023

Living in the Plastic - Age Perspectives from Humanities, Social Sciences and Environmental Sciences | Johanna Kramm, Carolin Völker (eds.) | 24 January 2023

Plastics and health - An urgent environmental, climate and health issue | Human Health Without Harm | November 2022

The Invisible Global Crisis: Exceeding the Limits of the Pollution Planetary Boundary - New Science and Opportunities to Tackle Threats to Human and Marine Life | Geneva Beat Plastic Pollution Dialogues & UN Ocean Conference Side Event | IPEN, University of Gothenburg, SIME, WIOMSA & GEN | 27 June 2022

Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities | L. Persson, B. M. Carney Almroth, C. D. Collins, S. Cornell, C. A. de Wit, M. L. Diamond, P. Fantke, M. Hassellöv, M. MacLeod, M. W. Ryberg, P. Søgaard Jørgensen, P. Villarrubia-Gómez, Z. Wang, and M. Zwicky Hauschild | Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (3), 1510-1521 | January 2022

New global studies show health threats throughout the plastics supply chain | IPEN | 13 December 2021

Plastics in soil threaten food security, health, and environment | FAO | UN News | 7 December 2021

Geneva Beat Plastic Pollution Dialogues - Plastics and Health | Geneva Environment Network | 21 January 2021

Ocean pollution threatens the health of more than three billion people | Earth.com | 6 December 2020

Human Health and Ocean Pollution | Philip J. Landrigan, John J. Stegeman, et al. | Annals of Global Health | 3 December 2020

Is plastic a threat to your health? | Harvard Women's Health Watch | December 2019

Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet | CIEL | February 2019

Impact of plastics on human health and ecosystems | Arizona State University | 20 March 2010

Exposure to Plastics

While scientific gaps remain on exact numbers, there is no doubt that humans are exposed to plastics through daily life products, plastic-based medical supplies, as well as through the food chain and airborne plastic pollution. Workers in the extraction, manufacture, transportation and waste sector and local communities where these activities are conducted are further exposed. Through these various pathways, we are exposed to microplastics and the chemical additives they contain. Recent studies have found microplastics in human blood, lungs, and placenta. As 99% of plastics are created from chemicals of fossil origin, oil-associated toxicological short and long term health hazards from respiratory symptomps to adverse neurological effects, including stress and generalized anxiety disorder are part of the plastic value-chain.

Health Risks of Microplastics

Micro- and nanoplastics in the human body may have harmful effects on health. The main microplastics exposure route for humans is ingestion, followed by inhalation and dermal exposure. Although there is no scientific certainty of the amount of plastics humans ingests, estimation guesses around 0.1-5 g/week, while inhalation can amount between 26 and 170 airborne MNPs of per day and up to 22,000,000 micro- and nanoplastics inhaled by humans annually. Studies on animals indicate that plastic particles can cross the gut barrier and travel through the body. While this field of study is rather recent, recent studies have found a correlation between ppresence of microplastics in the human body and inflammatory bowel disease symptoms, respiratory complications among others which still require further study. Additionally, plastics increase disease risk by acting as a vessel for human pathogens which have a particularly strong bind to plastic waste.

Source: Breathing Plastic: The Health Impacts of Invisible Plastics in the Air | CIEL | 27 March 2023

Toxic Chemicals in Plastic

To date, it has been estimated that more than 16,000 chemicals are used to make plastic, of which at least 4200 are chemicals of concern. This number shows a both a growth in the number of used chemicals and an improvement in their identification, as it departures from the 13,000 chemicals found by UNEP and BRS in 2023.

A growing body of evidence points to the health risks posed are not only caused by plastic additives, as humans are also directly exposed to plastic materials in the form of microplastics and nano-plastics ( Project TENDR, 2024). Exposure to plastics and chemicals can happen through ingestion through food and waste, chemicals leaching and accumulation in air and dust. These act as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are linked to infertility, obesity, diabetes, prostate or breast cancer, thyroid problems and increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, among others. Other health conditions linked to additives include reproductive, growth, and cognitive impairment and neurodevelopment disorders. The technical report Chemicals in Plastics released by UNEP and the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions Secretariat in May 2023, highlights how women and children are particularly susceptible to these toxic chemicals. Exposures can have severe or long-lasting adverse effects on several key periods of a woman's life and may impact the next generations.

As hazardous chemicals can be released from plastics along the entire lifecycle, solutions must address all phases.

International Cooperation on Plastics and Health

Addressing plastic pollution is not only a environmental matter, but also about protecting human health from pollutants. Following the adoption of a landmark resolution to end plastic pollution at the UN Environment Assembly in March 2022, the process to develop a new treaty on the matter kicked off in 2022. The treaty could be an opportunity to better protect human health from the risks associated with plastics. The resources below present various initiatives in Geneva and beyond aimed at strengthening the links between plastics and health, and addressing the plastic crisis to protect human health.

GEN Events

More on the Plastics Crisis

Our special series "Plastics and the Environment" provides resources on the status of the global plastic pollution, its impact on people and the environment, and international cooperation to address the plastics crisis.

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Plastics and Human Health | Plastics and the Environment Series

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Plastic pollution threatens not only the environment, but also our health and that of future generations. This page is part of our Plastics and the Environment series, a set of online resources on the plastics crisis, its impact on people...

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reta Thunberg cut a frail and lonely figure when she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament building last August. Her parents tried to dissuade her. Classmates declined to join. Passersby expressed pity and bemusement at the sight of the then unknown 15-year-old sitting on the cobblestones with a hand-painted banner.

Eight months on, the picture could not be more different. The pigtailed teenager is feted across the world as a model of determination, inspiration and positive action. National presidents and corporate executives line up to be criticised by her, face to face. Her skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate) banner has been translated into dozens of languages. And, most striking of all, the loner is now anything but alone.

On 15 March, when she returns to the cobblestones (as she has done almost every Friday in rain, sun, ice and snow), it will be as a figurehead for a vast and growing movement. The global climate strike this Friday is gearing up to be one of the biggest environmental protests the world has ever seen. As it approaches, Thunberg is clearly excited.

"It's amazing," she says. "It's more than 71 countries and more than 700 places, and counting. It's increasing very much now, and that's very, very fun."

A year ago, this was unimaginable. Back then, Thunberg was a painfully introverted, slightly built nobody, waking at 6am to prepare for school and heading back home at 3pm. "Nothing really was happening in my life," she recalls. "I have always been that girl in the back who doesn't say anything. I thought I couldn't make a difference because I was too small."

She was never quite like the other kids. Her mother, Malena Ernman, is one of Sweden's most celebrated opera singers. Her father, Svante Thunberg, is an actor and author (named after Svante Arrhenius, the Nobel prize-winning scientist who in 1896 first calculated how carbon dioxide emissions could lead to the greenhouse effect). Greta was exceptionally bright. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with Asperger's.

"I overthink. Some people can just let things go, but I can't, especially if there's something that worries me or makes me sad. I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn't do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head."

She has come to accept this as part of who she is - and made it a motivating force instead of a source of paralysing depression, which it once was.

At about the age of eight, when she first learned about climate change, she was shocked that adults did not appear to be taking the issue seriously. It was not the only reason she became depressed a few years later, but it was a significant factor.

Thunberg on strike last August. Photograph: Michael Campanella/The Guardian

"I kept thinking about it and I just wondered if I am going to have a future. And I kept that to myself because I'm not very much of a talker, and that wasn't healthy. I became very depressed and stopped going to school. When I was home, my parents took care of me, and we started talking because we had nothing else to do. And then I told them about my worries and concerns about the climate crisis and the environment. And it felt good to just get that off my chest.

"They just told me everything will be all right. That didn't help, of course, but it was good to talk. And then I kept on going, talking about this all the time and showing my parents pictures, graphs and films, articles and reports. And, after a while, they started listening to what I actually said. That's when I kind of realised I could make a difference. And how I got out of that depression was that I thought: it is just a waste of time feeling this way because I can do so much good with my life. I am trying to do that still now."

Her parents were the guinea pigs. She discovered she had remarkable powers of persuasion, and her mother gave up flying, which had a severe impact on her career. Her father became a vegetarian. As well as feeling relieved by the transformation of their formerly quiet and morose daughter, they say they were persuaded by her reasoning. "Over the years, I ran out of arguments," says her father. "She kept showing us documentaries, and we read books together. Before that, I really didn't have a clue. I thought we had the climate issue sorted," he says. "She changed us and now she is changing a great many other people. There was no hint of this in her childhood. It's unbelievable. If this can happen, anything can happen."

The climate strike was inspired by students from the Parkland school in Florida, who walked out of classes in protest against the US gun laws that enabled the massacre on their campus. Greta was part of a group that wanted to do something similar to raise awareness about climate change, but they couldn't agree what. Last summer, after a record heatwave in northern Europe and forest fires that ravaged swathes of Swedish land up to the Arctic, Thunberg decided to go it alone. Day one was 20 August 2018.

"I painted the sign on a piece of wood and, for the flyers, wrote down some facts I thought everyone should know. And then I took my bike to the parliament and just sat there," she recalls. "The first day, I sat alone from about 8.30am to 3pm - the regular schoolday. And then on the second day, people started joining me. After that, there were people there all the time."

She kept her promise to strike every day until the Swedish national elections. Afterwards, she agreed to make a speech in front of thousands of people at a People's Climate March rally. Her parents were reluctant. Knowing Thunberg had been so reticent that she had previously been diagnosed with selective mutism, they tried to talk her out of it. But the teenager was determined. "In some cases where I am really passionate, I will not change my mind," she says. Despite her family's concerns, she delivered the address in nearly flawless English, and invited the crowd to film her on their mobile phones and spread the message through social media. "I cried," says her proud dad.

Thunberg ... 'They are still not doing anything.' Photograph: Michael Campanella/The Guardian

People with selective mutism have a tendency to worry more than others. Thunberg has since weaponised this in meetings with political leaders, and with billionaire entrepreneurs in Davos. "I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act," she told them.

Such tongue-lashings have gone down well. Many politicians laud her candidness. In return, she listens to their claims that stronger climate policies are unrealistic unless the public make the issue more of a priority. She is unconvinced. "They are still not doing anything. So I don't know really why they are supporting us because we are criticising them. It's kind of weird." She has also been withering about leaders in the US, UK and Australia who either ignore the strikers or admonish them for skipping classes. "They are desperately trying to change the subject whenever the school strikes come up. They know they can't win this fight because they haven't done anything."

Such blunt talk has found a broad audience among people jaded by empty promises and eager to find a climate leader willing to ramp up ambition. Thunberg's rise coincides with growing scientific concern. A slew of recent reports has warned oceans are heating and the poles melting faster than expected. Last year's UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spelled out the dangers of surpassing 1.5C of global warming. To have any chance of avoiding that outcome, it said, emissions must fall rapidly by 2030. That will require far more pressure on politicians - and nobody has proved more effective at that over the past eight months than Thunberg.

The girl who once slipped into despair is now a beacon of hope. One after another, veteran campaigners and grizzled scientists have described her as the best news for the climate movement in decades. She has been lauded at the UN, met the French president, Emmanuel Macron, shared a podium with the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and has been endorsed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

No, I am not more hopeful than when I started. The emissions are increasing

You may think this would put the weight of the world on the 16-year-old's shoulders, but she claims to feel no pressure. If "people are so desperate for hope", she says, that is not her or the other strikers' responsibility.

"I don't care if what I'm doing - what we're doing - is hopeful. We need to do it anyway. Even if there's no hope left and everything is hopeless, we must do what we can."

In this regard, her family see her Asperger's as a blessing. She is someone who strips away social distractions and focuses with black-and-white clarity on the issues. "It's nothing that I want to change about me," she says. "It's just who I am. If I had been just like everyone else and been social, then I would have just tried to start an organisation. But I couldn't do that. I'm not very good with people, so I did something myself instead."

While she has little time for chit-chat, she gets satisfaction from speaking to a big audience about climate change. Regardless of the size of the crowd, she says she does not feel the least bit nervous.

She seems incapable of the cognitive dissonance that allows other people to lament what is happening to the climate one minute, then tuck into a steak, buy a car or fly off for a weekend break the next. Although Thunberg believes political action far outweighs individual changes to consumer habits, she lives her values. She is a vegan, and only travels abroad by train.

At its best, this sharpness can slice through the Gordian knot of the climate debate. It can also sting. There are no comfortable reassurances in her speech, just a steady frankness. Asked whether she has become more optimistic because the climate issue has risen up the political agenda and politicians in the US and Europe are considering green New Deals that would ramp up the transition to renewable energy, her reply is brutally honest. "No, I am not more hopeful than when I started. The emissions are increasing and that is the only thing that matters. I think that needs to be our focus. We cannot talk about anything else."

Some people consider this a threat. A handful of fossil fuel lobbyists, politicians and journalists have argued Thunberg is not what she seems; that she was propelled into prominence by environmental groups and sustainable business interests. They say the entrepreneur who first tweeted about the climate strike, Ingmar Rentzhog, used Thunberg's name to raise investment for his company, but her father says the connection was overblown. Greta, he says, initiated the strike before anyone in the family had heard of Rentzhog. As soon as she found he had used her name without her permission, she cut all links with the company, and has since vowed never to be associated with commercial interests. Her family says she has never been paid for her activities. In a recent interview, Rentzhog defended his actions, denied exploiting Greta and said that climate change, not profit, was his motive.

On social media, there have been other crude attacks on Thunberg's reputation and appearance. Already familiar with bullying from school, she appears unfazed. "I expected when I started that if this is going to become big, then there will be a lot of hate," she says. "It's a positive sign. I think that must be because they see us as a threat. That means that something has changed in the debate, and we are making a difference."

She intends to strike outside parliament every Friday until the Swedish government's policies are in line with the Paris climate agreement. This has led to what she calls "strange contrasts": balancing her maths homework with her fight to save the planet; listening attentively to teachers and decrying the immaturity of world leaders; weighing up the existential threat of climate change alongside the agonising choice of what subjects to study in high school.

It can be gruelling. She still gets up at 6am to get ready for school. Interviews and writing speeches can leave her working 12- to 15-hour days. "Of course, it takes a lot of energy. I don't have much spare time. But I just keep reminding myself why I am doing this, and then I just try to do as much as I can." So far, this does not appear to have affected her academic performance. She keeps up with homework and is in the top five in her class, according to her father.

And now that she is active on climate, she is no longer lonely, no longer silent, no longer so depressed. She is too busy trying to make a difference. And enjoying herself.

This Friday, when she takes her usual spot outside the Swedish parliament, she will be joined by classmates and students from other schools. "It's going to be very, very big internationally, with hundreds of thousands of children going to strike from school to say that we aren't going to accept this any more," she says. "I think we are only seeing the beginning. I think that change is on the horizon and the people will stand up for their future."

And then the activist slips back into being a teenager. "I'm looking forward to it and to see all the pictures the day afterwards. It's going to be fun."

This article was amended on 11 March 2019 to revise an explanation of mutism. An earlier version of the piece said: "People with selective mutism typically do not suffer from an inability to talk; rather, they choose not to engage in conversations they do not consider worthwhile." This is not the accepted definition. The National Health Service, for example, notes: "Selective mutism is a severe anxiety disorder where a person is unable to speak in certain social situations , such as with classmates at school or to relatives they don't see very often ... A child or adult with selective mutism doesn't refuse or choose not to speak, they're literally unable to speak."

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Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: 'Some people can let things go. I can't'

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One day last summer, aged 15, she skipped school, sat down outside the Swedish parliament - and inadvertently kicked off a global movement

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Nelson Mandela once said: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

And it's true, education is one of the greatest resources the world has to offer. Unfortunately, young girls and women ― half of world's the population ― are rarely given the same opportunities as boys to learn, study and succeed.

Globally, /abcnews.go.com/International/10-facts-girls-education/story?id=20474260","lnid":"65 million girls"}}">65 million girls are not in school. Out of the 774 million people who are illiterate around the world, /en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/girls-factsheet-en.pdf","lnid":"two-thirds are women"}}">two-thirds are women. There are /abcnews.go.com/International/10-facts-girls-education/story?id=20474260","lnid":"33 million fewer girls in primary school"}}">33 million fewer girls in primary school than boys. And education really does save lives: If every woman around the globe had a primary and secondary education, childhood deaths would be cut in half.

To celebrate International Women's Day and honor the importance of global education, we've rounded up 60 photos of girls going to school around the world.

The photos feature girls of all ages from Iran to Somalia to the U.S. to Japan getting an education ― something all children should have a right to, no matter their gender.

This Women's History Month, remember that we have the power to make history every day. Follow along with HuffPost on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in March using #WeMakeHerstory.

BEFORE YOU GO

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60 Stunning Photos Of Girls Going To School Around The Globe

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Nelson Mandela once said: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." And it's true, education is one of the greatest resources the world has to offer. Unfortunately, young girls and women ― half of world's the population ― are rarely given the same opportunities as boys to learn, study and succeed.

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Teen Goes #OneStepFurther to Educate Girls | The Queen Latifah Show

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Newsela | Caresse's Copy of '"I Am Malala" by Malala Yousafzai'

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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 amplifies voices of refugee girls in "We Are Displaced"

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You can watch this movie on Amazon Prime video if you have a subscription.

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He Named Me Malala Official Trailer 1 (2015) - Documentary HD

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Minor Activists Are Important Too Minor Activists While Malala is one key girls' education activist , there are also a lot of minor activists...

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Everyone who laid eyes on Malala Yousafzai knew the Pakistani schoolgirl was something special. When her mountain town of Mingora, in the Swat Valley, fell under Taliban rule, her courage made her a powerful symbol. And now, after last fall's near-fatal attempt to silence the 15-year-old, she is more dangerous to Pakistan's status quo than ever before. Marie Brenner learns how the media handed a megaphone to a kid who wanted more from her country.

One day in November 2007, on an editing console in the Dawn television news bureau in Peshawar, Pakistan, the bright brown eyes of a young girl popped from the computer screen. Just three hours to the northeast, in the Swat Valley, the mountain town of Mingora was under siege. Walking by the desk of the bureau chief, a reporter named Syed Irfan Ashraf stopped to take a look at the edit, which was being translated into English for that night's news, and heard the girl's voice. "I'm very frightened," she said crisply. "Earlier, the situation was quite peaceful in Swat, but now it has worsened. Nowadays explosions are increasing We can't sleep. Our siblings are terrified, and we cannot come to school." She spoke an Urdu of startling refinement for a rural child. "Who is that girl?," Ashraf asked the bureau chief. The answer came in Pashto, the local language: " Takra jenai, " which means "a shining young lady." He added, "I think her name is Malala."

The bureau chief had driven to Mingora to interview a local activist, the owner of the Khushal Girls High School & College. On the roads, Taliban soldiers in black turbans pulled drivers out of cars at checkpoints, searching for DVDs, alcohol, and anything else in violation of Shari'a, or strict Islamic law. In a lane near the market, a low wall protected the two-story private school. Inside, the bureau chief visited a fourth-grade class, where several girls shot up their hands when asked if they wanted to be interviewed. Seeing girls speak out in public was very unusual, even in the Swat Valley, a cultivated, 3,500-square-mile Shangri-la with 1.5 million inhabitants. That night, the brown-eyed girl's sound bite led the news.

Later that evening the bureau chief ran into the school's owner, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who said, "The girl who spoke on your broadcast. That Malala is my daughter." The highly educated Yousafzai clearly understood that in the rigid class system of Pakistan he was an invisible member of the rural underclass, unseen by the elite of Lahore and Karachi. For his family, a moment on national news was huge. Like his daughter, Ziauddin spoke excellent English. Ashraf, who had been a professor at the University of Peshawar, could not get the image of Malala's piercing gaze out of his mind. "She was an ordinary girl, but on-camera extraordinary," he said. His beat at Dawn television included covering the bombings that were devastating remote villages all through Swat, and he determined to meet Malala and her father the next time he was on assignment in Mingora.

Last autumn, I contacted Ashraf at a computer lab in Carbondale, Illinois, where he is studying for a doctorate in media studies at Southern Illinois University. On October 9, he had seen in a news flash the horrifying image of Malala Yousafzai lying bandaged on a stretcher, after having been shot by an unknown extremist on her school bus. For the next three days, Ashraf did not leave his cubicle as the world grieved for this teenager who had stood up to the Taliban. Then he wrote an anguished column in Dawn, Pakistan's most widely read English-language newspaper, which seemed like a profound mea culpa. Ashraf was savage regarding his role in Malala's tragedy. "Hype is created with the help of the media while the people wait for the dénouement," he wrote. He decried "the media's role in dragging bright young people into dirty wars with horrible consequences for the innocent." On the telephone he told me, "I was in shock. I could not call anyone." He described his mute agony watching the TV coverage. "It is criminal what I did," he said in an apoplectic tone. "I lured in a child of 11."

Ashraf had watched the news as Malala was later rushed to a hospital in Birmingham, England, where army trauma victims are treated. She was mysteriously separated from her family for 10 days. Many wondered why no relative had been allowed to travel with her. In Pakistan, thousands held candlelight vigils and carried posters that read: we are all malala. Before she was flown to Birmingham, General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistan Army chief and former head of the all-powerful Inter-services Intelligence agency (ISI), had gone to the hospital in Peshawar where she struggled for life on a ventilator. The question arose: Why would the most powerful man in Pakistan's military rush to the provincial capital? Other girls had been assaulted, and the government had hardly reacted.

A country of conspiracy theorists, Pakistan has a long history of Kabuki theater masking the ISI's and the army's possible involvement in silencing anyone who attempts to expose the military's links with extremists. At least 51 journalists have been killed there since 1992.

The attack on Malala exposed not only the dark side of an army unable to provide security but also the abysmal quality of education in Pakistan. Only 2.3 percent of its gross domestic product is allocated to education. Pakistan spends seven times more on its military. According to a recent U.N. study, 5.1 million children are out of school-the second-highest number in the world-and two-thirds of them are female.

"We have a national lie. Why do we have to tell the truth to the world?" says Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States. "The national lie is that the Swat Valley has been liberated from the bad Taliban. Young Malala and her father mess up that narrative."

Suddenly a 15-year-old who traded copies of The Twilight Saga with her friends was being talked about as a possible future prime minister, if she could just recover from the bullet wound she had sustained while sitting on her school bus after taking an exam on the Holy Koran.

I told Ashraf I wanted to understand how a girl from a remote village had become a cosmic force for change as well as a focus for a number of complex agendas. He said, "We had to get the story out. No one was paying attention to what was happening in Mingora. We took a very brave 11-year-old and created her to get the attention of the world. We made her a commodity. Then she and her father had to step into the roles we gave them." At first I thought he must be exaggerating.

The Gifted Child

The capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, Peshawar in 2007 was a boomtown for local journalists. At the Pearl Continental hotel, reporters jockeyed for the services of a freelance professor or writer who might want to earn $200 a day to guide them safely into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a poor, mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and long a refuge for the Taliban and other jihadists from around the world. Editors who had interviewed Osama bin Laden a decade earlier could command $500 for a three-hour session with a reporter from the West. In 2006, Dawn had begun hiring for the launch of its national TV channel in an effort to grab a market share of Pakistan's recently deregulated airwaves. The explosion of cable networks set off a hiring frenzy for instant experts who could do a decent two-minute stand-up on the terrorist chiefs, the al-Qaeda-related Haqqani network, and the dozens of Taliban groups that passed between Afghanistan and Pakistan. To interview the Taliban commanders and tribal chiefs, foreign reporters darkened their hair, grew beards, and went with a Pashtun fixer who could use his contacts to ensure their safety.

You entered another world when you drove from Peshawar into the mountains. no foreigners allowed past this point, warned signs along the entrances to FATA. Pakistan's history of intrigue, coups, and assassinations had long paralyzed its dealings with the frontier.

In the lower Swat Valley was the town of Mingora, a remote getaway for much of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Many of Pakistan's most popular Pashtun singers, dancers, and musicians came from the area, and in summer, tourists from around the world would arrive in Mingora for its Sufi music and dance festivals. The area was close to a UNESCO site of ancient Gandhara Buddhist art and ruins. In recent years, however, the Taliban had changed all that; the Pearl Continental hotel was now empty except for a few reporters and their fixers.

On a cement wall at a corner on Haji Baba Road, the red sign of the Khushal school carried the school crest-a blue-and-white shield with Muhammad's words in Arabic: oh, my lord, equip me with more knowledge-as well as the Pashto phrase learning is light. Inside, beneath a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, some of the girls would remove their headscarves and throw their backpacks on benches. Zahra Jilani, a young American working at a local NGO, recalled walking into the school for the first time: "I heard all this laughter, and girls running in the halls." She told Malala and her class on one visit, "Girls, you must speak up for what you believe." Malala asked her, "What is it like in America? Tell us!" The question was hardly casual. Malala had spent years observing her teachers shrouding themselves in burkas to shop at the bazaar, as if they were living under the Taliban in the 1990s. In Islamabad many young women went to work without even scarves.

Down the alley from the school, Malala lived in a concrete house with a garden. Small rooms opened off a central hall, and Malala kept her royal-blue school uniform on a hook near her bed. At night, her father often read the poetry of Rumi to her and her two younger brothers. Yousafzai was himself a poet, and recitation had played a large part in his education. "I have the right of education. I have the right to play. I have the right to sing I have the right to speak up," Malala would later tell CNN. As a young teenager, she was reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and watching her favorite show, My Dream Boy Will Come to Marry Me, on Star Plus TV-until the Taliban cut all cable to the valley.

The Khushal school was an oasis of enlightenment, a tiny dot in a surrounding theater of war, where classes were taught in English. The city of 180,000 had 200 schools for girls. The curriculum at the Khushal included English, Pashto, Urdu, physics, biology, math, and Islamic studies, imposed by General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, the religious fanatic who seized power in a 1977 coup and later declared Islamic law.

Mingora has long been dominated by tribal culture dictated by the vast number of Pashtun inhabitants, whose religion and tradition braided together. For outsiders, one of the most difficult aspects of the culture to understand was Pashtunwali, a personal code that stamps every aspect of Pashtun life, including morality, hospitality, independence, and revenge. Pakistan's Pashtuns were closely connected to Afghanistan's, making the frontier a staging area for the military and the ISI well before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in 1979. In recent times, the Pashtuns have been divided between extremists and pro-democracy nationalists who push for greater autonomy. It was commonly known that the army's and ISI's links to jihadist groups such as the Taliban ran far deeper than was ever acknowledged. There were frequent explosions in the area, and power could be cut for days. The Taliban became a well-established presence in Swat. A decade earlier it had taken over the Mingora airport.

Arriving in Mingora in 2007, Ashraf quickly grasped the danger in the surrounding hills. "The most important district official refused to come on-camera," he said. " 'Appearing on TV is not Islamic,' he told me. This was the government representative." The musicians who had made the city a tourist draw were now putting ads in the newspapers pledging to lead pious lives. Swat was a microcosm of the shifting loyalties in a dusty war for control of Pakistan among the military, the Islamists, and the progressives.

Everyone in Swat understood the significance of the name of Yousafzai's school. As a young man, Yousafzai had learned to be a passionate nationalist in part by reciting the verse of Khushal Khan Khattak, the 17th-century Pashtun warrior-poet known for his courage against the conquering Moguls. The man to see in Mingora, Yousafzai served on the city's Qaumi Jirga, or assembly of elders, and fought a constant battle with the army and the local authorities over the woeful conditions in the city-power outages, unclean water, unsanitary clinics, inadequate education facilities. Funds for textbooks took months to arrive and were often stolen by bureaucrats. The vast gulf between Pakistan's cities and its rural areas was a travesty; FATA and Swat were ruled by Draconian laws based on tribal practice and a code that dated back to the colonial era. Yousafzai wrapped himself in optimism, convinced that he could make a difference in the city by applying the principles of peaceful dissent promoted by the 20th-century Pashtun leader Abdul Ghaffar (Badshah) Khan, known as "the Frontier Gandhi," who also fought for the establishment of an autonomous nation-Pashtunistan.

"I used to warn him, 'Ziauddin, be careful. There are people out to get you.' He never listened," said the author Aqeel Yousafzai, a war reporter based in Peshawar. Ziauddin named Malala after Malalai, the Afghan Joan of Arc, who died in battle, carrying ammunition to the freedom fighters at war with the British in 1880.

As a teenager, Ziauddin had experienced the changes when Swat became the training ground for jihadists on their way to fight in Afghanistan. His favorite teacher tried to persuade him to join the crusade. "I had nightmares all through those years," he said recently. "I loved my teacher, but he tried to brainwash me." Education saved him, and he determined to spend his life trying to improve schools for children, especially girls. A man with a desperate mission, he would drive every few weeks to Peshawar to alert the media to the increasing danger in his area, and he sent reporters there e-mails describing the failure of the army to keep order and the anarchy created by a new Taliban squad on the edge of Mingora. The Taliban presence in Swat, he told the writer Shaheen Buneri, "was not possible without the tacit support of the government and Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Both view militant organizations as strategic assets."

'Are you an actress or a circus performer?" the tutor to the young Prince of Swat asked Life photographer Margaret Bourke-White when she visited the principality in 1947. No one in Swat, Bourke-White noted in her book Halfway to Freedom, had ever seen a woman in slacks. For years Swat was a British princely state, under the rule of an appointed regent, the Wali of Swat. The bearded wali, whom Bourke-White photographed, ruled his feudal land of 500,000 subjects with a few telephones connecting his fortresses. But his son, the prince, was determined to bring the outside world into Swat.

The wali had been known for his English suits and his rose garden. In 1961, Queen Elizabeth II visited the enchanted Brigadoon and praised it as "the Switzerland of the British Empire." Each morning the new wali toured his principality-about the size of Delaware-to see how he could help his subjects. Passionate about education, the wali built tuition-free colleges, which every child could attend. Swat became a province of Pakistan in 1969, and its universities turned out many freethinkers, including Ziauddin Yousafzai, who was the president of the Pashtun Student Federation.

"Right from the beginning, Malala was my pet," Yousafzai told me. "She was always in the school and always very curious."

"They went everywhere together. Ziauddin loves all children too much. And no one more than Malala," said Maryam Khalique, the principal of Khushal school, who lived next door to the family. Ziauddin teased his young sons by calling them "those naughty little boys," but his daughter was special. For the first years of Malala's life, the family lived in a two-room apartment in the school. She had the run of all the classrooms. "She would sit in the classes when she was only three, listening, her eyes sparkling," Khalique said. "A little girl taking in the lessons of the older children."

Malala's mother was traditional and chose to remain in purdah, but in private she backed Malala's independence, friends say. Later, in front of reporters, Malala would listen quietly when her father was chided for not allowing her mother the freedom he encouraged in his students. Ziauddin once asked Zebu Jilani, a granddaughter of the last wali and founder of the Swat Relief Initiative, who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, to speak to his Jirga. "Five hundred men and I, the only woman? And an American woman at that?" she asked him. Ziauddin obliged her by taking his wife, completely covered. As a child, Malala could go anywhere as long as she was escorted by a male relative, usually her father. She would even sit by his side when he met in the house with the Jirga.

"He encouraged Malala to speak freely and learn everything she could," one teacher told me. She wrote long compositions in perfect penmanship. By the fifth grade she was winning debating contests. Urdu poetry was part of the curriculum, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the revolutionary poet and former editor of the Pakistan Times, was a favorite writer: "We shall witness [the day] that has been promised when ... the enormous mountains of tyranny blow away like cotton." Khalique had one strict rule for her students: no shortwave radio from the two channels that broadcast Maulana Fazlullah, the shock jock who had declared himself the leader of the Swat Taliban.

The Rising Terror

'We need to fight against America! We need to stop the NATO forces. They are infidels!" In the autumn of 2007, the big get for Peshawar's TV journalists was the hard-line radio mullah who was terrorizing the Swat Valley. Fazlullah's emblematic white horse grazed outside his compound. One of Ashraf's first assignments for Dawn TV was to get Fazlullah on-camera. Why, Ashraf wondered, would anyone take seriously a fat killer who had dropped out of his madrassa and for a time run the local chairlift? In the villages, Taliban squads with Kalashnikovs stood by cots covered with gold jewelry that Fazlullah's followers had been exhorted to donate for his cause. "Turn off your TV," he told his listeners. "Shows like Dallas are the instruments of the Great Satan." Ziauddin said of him, "He was not a sane person. He was against polio vaccinations. He burned TVs and cassettes A crazy madman. And one has to speak out against that." At first, "Maulana Radio" was considered a joke, a Talib cartoon with gaps between his teeth. Shortwave and battery-operated radio was crucial in rural Pakistan, where few could read and there was hardly any electricity. Fazlullah hijacked two FM channels for his twice-daily broadcasts, and he threatened to kill anyone who tried to compete on the area's 40 stations. For Swatis, Fazlullah's harangues became a favorite entertainment. Pakistan's think tanks warned of "Talibanization" in rural areas, but mullahs such as Fazlullah were perceived as Robin Hoods, who promised to fight the endless corruption and decrepit infrastructure of the frontier.

There was only one public, dial-up computer in Mingora. Every day Ashraf struggled to get online, trudging through Green Square, where Fazlullah's thugs would dump the bodies of apostates they had flogged. Crowds would gather at Fazlullah's mosque to witness the floggings. "The government says we shouldn't do things like this public punishment, but we don't follow their orders. We follow the orders of Allah!," Fazlullah screamed into his P.A. system. New Yorker writer Nicholas Schmidle, as a young visiting scholar, was able to penetrate the area with a fixer. He saw men on roofs with rocket launchers, scanning the rice paddies and poplar fields for anyone who opposed them. "Are you ready for an Islamic system? Are you prepared to make the sacrifices?," Fazlullah would yell. " Allahu Akbar! [Allah is the greatest!]" the crowd responded, raising their fists in the air.

It could take Ashraf four hours to transmit 28 seconds of film when the computer was able to connect, but there were days with no power. By the summer of 2007, women had been told not to leave their houses. There were rumors that a revered dancer had been found dead in the town square. "I had the story more or less to myself," Ashraf said, but no one paid much attention. A news editor in Islamabad said, "Why is no one else reporting this?"

By November 2007 they were. Islamabad's Red Mosque was in ruins, badly damaged in July, when the government sent troops to clean out hundreds of extremists. The mosque was a few blocks from the ISI headquarters, a symbol to many of how complex the political alliances were. Soon Fazlullah declared an all-out war on Swat. The first target was a girls' school in a town 20 minutes from the Khushal school. The explosions occurred at night, when there were no children in school, for Pashtuns believe that children must never be harmed in an act of revenge.

In December 2007 former prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan to seek re-election, and millions turned out to greet her. In one of her last interviews Bhutto said that al-Qaeda could be "marching on Islamabad in two to four years." In late December she was assassinated by terrorists, and the country erupted. There were more than 500 attacks in a two-year period, aimed at politicians, reporters, hotels, mosques, and civilians.

Soon terror chiefs were living openly in Lahore. In Mingora, girls whose schools had been destroyed now attended the Khushal school. Government schools were not an option. The monthly budget of two dollars per student that Pakistan allots "could not cover the community schools in the poorest areas, not even in the refugee camps," said the author Fatima Bhutto, a niece of Benazir Bhutto. "Teachers were political appointees chosen for their loyalty to the ruling party." Rarely shielded from seeing the injured and the dead, Malala learned to navigate in a war zone, taking on her father's determination to change the lives of Swatis.

All that year, terror came to Mingora. By December 2008, helicopters and tanks scoured the area, but 10,000 army troops could not take out Fazlullah's 3,000 guerrillas. One third of the city fled. "The rich have moved out of Swat, while the poor have no place but to stay here," Malala later wrote. She dreaded Fridays, "when suicide attackers think that killing has special meaning." Reporters struggled to persuade people to talk on the record, and Ziauddin always would. "There was never any sign of fear," my colleague Pir Zubair Shah, who then worked for The New York Times, recalled. Shah, who is from a prominent Pashtun family, knew where to get a true sense of what was transpiring. "I would come to see Ziauddin, and Malala would serve us tea," he said.

The Right Girl

'Would you consider hiring on for a month or so to work with the video journalist Adam Ellick?," New York Times documentary producer David Rummel e-mailed Ashraf in December, after meeting him in Peshawar. Ellick had reported from Prague, Indonesia, and Afghanistan, and was now producing short videos that took viewers inside a compelling personal story. Flying into Islamabad from Kabul, Ellick had the bushy beard of a Talib, but he had little if any experience in Pakistan. He could appear oblivious to tribal codes and brisk to Ashraf when the reporter went through the elaborate greetings dictated by Pashtunwali. "I was used to being called 'sir' by my students," Ashraf told me, "and suddenly someone younger would say to me, 'Focus on your work. When we work, we work. Why are you shaking hands all the time?' "

Working with Ellick was a big break for Ashraf. In graduate school, Ashraf had written his thesis on how Pakistan was perceived in The New York Times. For hours, the two would sit together as Ellick coached him on editing and interviewing techniques. It was a dangerous time for reporters in Pakistan. Working on the links between Taliban extremists and the army, New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall was attacked in her hotel room in Quetta by ISI agents, who took her computer, notebooks, and cell phone. Pir Shah was held by Talib commanders for three days in FATA. Aqeel Yousafzai was almost killed in a Taliban camp outside Peshawar. Brutally beaten, he lost half his teeth before he was rescued. As conditions in FATA grew worse, Dawn's bureau chief had Ashraf focus completely on Mingora.

The tipping point there came in January 2009 when a dancer named Shabana was murdered, her bullet-ridden body left on display in Green Square. Malala saw it all. "They cannot stop me," she would later say on-camera. "I will get my education, if it is home, school, or any place. This is our request to all the world. Save our schools. Save our world. Save our Pakistan. Save our Swat." The English teacher at the school, before announcing that he was leaving, asked Ashraf, "How can I teach these children Keats and Shelley when such things are happening three blocks from our school?" Over the next six months, a million refugees would flee. Then Fazlullah decreed that, as of January 15, all of the girls' schools in Swat would be closed.

Ashraf saw this as a call to action. "I went to Adam Ellick and I convinced him this is what we should launch as part of the video forum. Education is the most important issue to me, not militancy. I met him in Islamabad, and he said, 'Go for it.' Adam asked, 'Who could be the protagonist who could carry this story?' " Ashraf suggested Malala. "When Adam said yes, I went to Ziauddin and said, 'We can launch this issue in a global forum.' " Did it occur to him, I asked, that Malala could be in danger? "Of course not," he said. "She was a child. Who would shoot a child? The Pashtun tradition is that all children are spared from harm."

As a fixer, Ashraf had often been fearful of putting foreign reporters in danger. Now he no longer considered himself just a reporter, but a partisan. Along with his closest friend, the BBC's Abdul Hai Kakar, he was part of a secret resistance operation with Ziauddin and several others. "We would write and report from Fazlullah's camp half the day and try to stop him the other half of the day," Ashraf said. He compared their situation to that of the French Resistance. "I was undercover 15 days of the month. I would tell everyone in Mingora I was leaving for Peshawar, but I would stay, trying to gather information about what was going on." He and Kakar developed good relations with Fazlullah's deputies and frequently interviewed the cocky mullah himself, who hoped to use the reporters for propaganda. "Fazlullah, your ambitions will do you in," Kakar warned him. "They will riot in Islamabad if you try to stop the schools." By then Malala and her cousins had been forbidden to leave their house, a four-minute walk from school.

'I'm looking for a girl who could bring the human side to this catastrophe. We would hide her identity," Kakar told Ashraf. "An Anne Frank?," Ashraf answered, going on to explain the power of the girl in Amsterdam who became an icon through her diary. Meanwhile, Kakar and Ashraf got many queries from French and English news organizations, asking if they knew fixers who could get into the region.

In New York, Dave Rummel saw how powerful a story on the closing of the Swat schools could be. He knew Pakistan well, however, so he was concerned about safety in an area controlled by the Taliban. From Islamabad, Ellick e-mailed Ashraf:

We need a main character family to follow on both the final days of school (jan 14-15) and again on the possible new days of school (jan 31-feb 2) We want it to play out like film, where we don't know the ending That is narrative journalism. And most of all, the family and daughters should be expressive and have strong personalities and emotions on the issue. They must care! ... Remember, as we discussed several times on Monday, safety first. Don't take any risks. ... If you have fear, that is ok. Simply stop reporting.

Ashraf read the e-mail many times and kept coming back to the term "narrative journalism." He told me, "I had no idea what it meant." But he had exactly the family in mind he believed would cooperate.

Narrative journalism is almost unknown in India and Pakistan, where stories are told mostly through facts and critical analysis. The intimate narrative-its requirements of real-life emotions and private moments-could be considered a violation in a very traditional area, and for a Pashtun, schooled in hospitality, it would be incomprehensible that such a sensitive line would be crossed. The complexities of personality are considered the work of novelists.

"If this is O.K. with Ziauddin, let's do it," Ellick told him. Ashraf said, "I had to convince Ziauddin. I told him it was important for both of us-and for our cause." Ziauddin rushed to Peshawar with Malala to discuss the idea, since it was too dangerous for foreign reporters to enter Mingora. Ashraf would be the co-producer and make every decision in Mingora.

Ashraf told me, "Ziauddin was very reluctant. He thought it was going to be about all of the schools in Mingora. I kept telling him in Pashto, 'Don't worry about the security.' This was criminal on my part." At their meeting, Ellick pressed Ziauddin about the danger involved, but no one had to tell a Pashtun about danger. "I will give up my life for Swat," he told Ashraf on-camera. "Fortunately or unfortunately, Malala answered questions very quickly," Ziauddin later said. At one point, Malala answered in perfect English, "The Taliban are trying to close our schools."

"I was opposed," said Ziauddin. "I did not want to impose my liberalism on my daughter, but a close friend said, 'This documentary will do more for Swat than you could do in 100 years.' I could not imagine the bad consequences." Later, under an assumed name, Malala would give a speech, "How the Taliban Is Trying to Stop Education," that was reported in the Urdu press. Inside the Times there was tremendous concern about the risk. "All of the editors were pulled in," said Rummel. They finally agreed that-given the urgency of the situation-Ziauddin's role as an activist made the risk one they could take.

What Ashraf didn't know was that Ziauddin had already decided on his own to reach out to the international media. "Would you consider allowing one of your students to blog about this order [to close the schools]?," Abdul Kakar had asked him a few weeks earlier. "The BBC needs to broadcast this to the world." No parent that Ziauddin approached was willing to take part, however. "Would you consider allowing my daughter?," Ziauddin finally asked. "She's young, but she can do it." To protect her identity, Kakar chose the name Gul Makai, the heroine of a Pashto folktale. Her conversations with Kakar would be brief-only a few minutes, just time enough for him to take down a paragraph or two.

Kakar always called her on a special line that would be difficult to trace. "I would start off with her in Pashto. 'Are you ready? Let's start.' " Then they would switch to Urdu. Later, there would be accusations that Kakar had coached her. "They ran unedited," he told me.

On January 3, Malala posted, "On my way from school to home, I heard a man saying 'I will kill you.' I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back [to see] if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile." There would be 35 entries in all, the last on March 4. Malala was cautious, but in one entry, she criticized the army: "It seems that it is only when dozens of schools have been destroyed and hundreds [of] others closed down that the army thinks about protecting them. Had they conducted their operations here properly, this situation would not have arisen." In one entry she almost tipped her hand: "My mother liked my pen name Gul Makai and said to my father 'why not change her name to Gul Makai?' ... I also like the name, because my real name means 'grief stricken.' My father said that some days ago someone brought the printout of this diary, saying how wonderful it was. My father said that he smiled but could not even say it was written by his daughter."

The Last Day of School

Ashraf drove to Mingora in the middle of the night with his cameraman. He had 24 hours to get in and out of the city. "To be seen with a camera was an invitation to be killed," he told me. Coming over the mountains in the darkness, Ashraf heard the muezzins' call to prayer. "I had a sense of disaster," he said. Just before dawn, as he approached the city, Ashraf called Yousafzai. "It is too early," Ziauddin said. "I was not expecting you." He told Ashraf that Malala's uncle was staying with them, and he was strongly opposed to having journalists present on this last day of school. There was no mention of Malala's blog. Ashraf was completely unaware of the calls she had made with Kakar. "I told no one," Kakar later said.

It was clear to Ashraf, however, that something had happened to frighten Yousafzai. "He was clearly upset. He did not want me there." From a friend's house, just before dawn, Ashraf called Ellick. "Adam said, 'Shoot everything from the moment Malala gets up and has her breakfast to every moment of her last day at school.' Nothing was to be left out." Ashraf told him, "Ziauddin is reluctant." Ellick said, "But he has promised us." Ashraf was suddenly caught in a dilemma: upset his close friend or fail. "I didn't know what to do," he said. "I decided I must try to convince him directly."

Terrified that he might be stopped by soldiers, he hurried to Yousafzai's house. "What are you doing here?," Yousafzai said, clearly angry that Ashraf was putting his family in danger. "It was criminal on my part," Ashraf said later. "I talked to him about the danger we were in, and that this was the moment he could alert the world. I explained that we needed to stay with Malala all day, shooting her, and Ziauddin said, 'What!' " It was clear he had never understood that Malala would be the star of the video. "I was in a panic," Ashraf told me. "He said, 'I thought it would be only about all the other schools.' I said, 'No, to make this important, we need to follow Malala and you the entire day.' "

Ashraf now believes that the code of Pashtunwali made it impossible for Yousafzai to refuse. A worried father, he was also driven by nanawatai, the obligation to give shelter. When Malala woke up, Ashraf and the cameraman were in her bedroom, setting up for a shot. Outside the window was the sound of shelling. "Malala did not understand what we were doing there," Ashraf said. "She was shy. I had to say to her, 'Malala, imagine this is your last day of school.' It was her last day, but we had to work with her. Trying to brush her teeth, she kept looking at us. I said, 'Be natural. Don't look at the camera. Pretend we are not here.' It took her hours to understand. We helped to mold her into a part-a part she very much believed."

Ashraf's voice broke as he described to me the rush of adrenaline that came over him as they struggled to get every shot. Half the classes at the school were empty, and there were nearby explosions all day. For hours, the camera stayed on Malala and her father, who sat in his office calling parents who had pulled their children out. "Pay us some of your dues," he said.

"Ziauddin was adamant. He did not want us taking pictures of the girls at school. Soon he said, 'Enough. You must leave.' " But after Ziauddin left the school, Ashraf continued to film in the courtyard, where one scene would jump out at viewers. Wearing headscarves, eight girls line up, and one with a veiled face reads her essay directly into the camera, demanding, "Why the peace and innocent people of the valley are targeted?" Ashraf recalled with emotion, "I arranged that. I grouped them in the courtyard and said, 'Girls, tell me how you feel about your school.' " What guided him, he said, was his trust in Islam: "Children are never attacked. They are sacred."

Watching "Class Dismissed," the 13-minute video, a viewer is struck by the raw power of Malala, timidly determined to express her deeply held beliefs, which would be very simple if she lived in the middle-class world of Lahore, or Karachi, or New York. At one point she declares, "I want to become a doctor. It's my own dream. But my father told me that 'you have to become a politician.' But I don't like politics." Ashraf would later have to deal with a question that plagues all journalists: What are the consequences of exposure? He would also have to ask himself a corollary question: What would have been the implications of deciding not to expose the horrors of Mingora? Ashraf still blames himself for teasing her strong beliefs out of a child who would be seen as an exemplary agent for change in one world and as a danger that had to be stopped in another.

All through February, Malala continued to blog. She reported on the peace negotiations as the army capitulated and signed off on turning Swat over to strict Islamic law. Britain and some other countries immediately protested; the United States did not. The Taliban seemed to be appeased, but they continued to kidnap government officials and assassinate reporters.

"In a valley where people do not even hear the voice of a girl, a girl comes forward and speaks a language that the local people cannot even think of. She writes diaries for the BBC, she speaks up in front of diplomats, on television, and her class follows," said Jehangir Khattak, the former news editor of Peshawar's Frontier Post. "Ziauddin allowed his daughter to rise in a society where she was seeing dead bodies every day. She didn't hear about the threat-she lived it. In a closed society, she did not mince words."

Going Public

'You are right now in a car going into a city where you are a wanted man," Ellick says off-camera in a second New York Times Web video, "A Schoolgirl's Odyssey," which is 20 minutes long. Six months had passed since the Taliban moved into Swat. The Yousafzais had fled, along with 1.5 million other refugees from the area. As many as one million moved into camps, where often the only relief organizations providing food were religious Islamic groups with ties to the Taliban, who delivered it with invective about foreign enemies. "There was no sign of the army or the police," Ziauddin told Ellick. Malala and her mother went to stay with relatives. Ziauddin, in Peshawar, moved in with three close friends from the Jirga. For months Mingora was under siege. And still the army could not-or would not-put the resources into annihilating the Taliban. That spring of 2009, Mingora became a ghost town as the Taliban advanced on nearby Buner, only 100 miles from the capital. Finally the army sent more troops, backed by helicopters and rockets, to the area.

In the video, Malala and her father return to the school and find total devastation. Discovering a message left in a student's composition book, Malala says, "They have written something." Then she reads, "I am proud to be a Pakistani and a soldier of the Pakistani Army." Looking angrily at the camera, she says, "He doesn't know the spelling of 'soldier.' " They find a letter intended for Ziauddin: "We have lost so much dear and precious lives of our soldiers. And this is all due to your negligence." Looking at a hole blasted in one wall, Malala says, "The Taliban destroyed us."

Later in the video, Malala and her father meet the late Richard Holbrooke, America's special envoy, in Pakistan to inspect the refugee camps. Holbrooke seems surprised by the tone the girl takes with him. "If you can help us in our education, please help us," Malala tells him. "Your country faces a lot of problems," Holbrooke replies. Later, Urdu bloggers would use this footage against her as proof that she was "a Zionist agent" and "a C.I.A. spy."

"I was sick when I saw the video for the first time," Ashraf told me. "In New York, the editors had added footage of Taliban floggings." Now convinced that Malala was a possible target, he e-mailed Ellick that he was alarmed. "I was thinking we were making a commodity out of this small and graceful shining little girl. This conflict should not have been fought by Malala-it should have been fought by my army, my military, my police. This should not have been Malala's job. That was a camouflage! This was an excuse for us to focus on Malala-not on the forces behind Malala, who were doing little to help the people of Mingora."

Fazlullah had fled to Afghanistan, but his troops remained in the hills. Interviewing in the refugee camps, Pir Shah and New York Times bureau chief Jane Perlez heard reports that the army was kidnapping and killing anyone thought to be an extremist. Footage of suspected army assassinations came to them and ran in the Times. Soon Perlez's visa was not renewed, and Shah, threatened by the ISI, left Pakistan.

Malala now spoke much more openly. In August, she appeared on Geo TV star anchor Hamid Mir's news show. She talked about the two years her city had been under constant shelling. "What would you like to be?," Mir asked her. "I would like to be a politician. Our country is full of crisis. Our politicians are lazy. I would like to remove the prevalent laziness and serve the nation."

As Pakistan imploded, Ellick filed story after story from Karachi and Islamabad. "At dinners and over tea, I would tell my urban middle-upper class friends about what I had witnessed in Swat-and about Malala," he posted on Facebook. "I could not get anyone to care. They looked at me like I had a contagious disease-as if I was describing an atrocity in a village in Surinam." In 2010, one year after making his film, he returned there during a period of devastating floods. "I found hundreds and hundreds of kids that were furious at the fact that their schools had not been rebuilt and they openly said to me, 'You know our government is corrupt.' "

It had become an open secret that Malala was the blogger known as Gul Makai. "I am going to apply Malala for the International Children's Peace Prize," Ziauddin told Kakar, referring to the annual awards of the KidsRights Foundation, in Amsterdam. Later, Kakar told him, "Do not chase after fame. Malala is already known and could go abroad to study." He explained, "I was worried they [reporters] would ask Malala a question: 'What would you do if the Taliban comes?' She would not know what to say. This question is not about education. Instead she would tell them, 'Listen to me, the Taliban is very bad.' "

As Malala increased her TV appearances, Pakistan's relationship with the United States deteriorated severely. In 2011, C.I.A. agent Raymond Davis was arrested and later released in Lahore, Osama bin Laden was assassinated, Pakistan cut NATO supply lines after an accidental bombing killed soldiers on the border, and drone strikes resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.

When Malala appeared on the talk show A Morning with Farah, she was dressed modestly in a pastel tunic and headscarf. Farah Hussain, glamorous in a black shalwar kameez and high heels, could hardly disguise her condescension. "Your Urdu is so perfect," she told Malala, and then brought up the Taliban. Malala said, "If a Talib is coming, I will pull off my sandal and slap him on his face." For a country girl of 14, she was approaching a dangerous line.

Ziauddin and Malala often received threats, and rocks were thrown over the walls of the school and their house. The government offered protection, but Ziauddin turned it down, saying, "We cannot have normalcy in our classes if there are guns." Malala used the consolation-prize money she had received from her own government to buy a school bus. In June the threats continued: "Malala is an obscenity." "You are befriending the kaffir [infidels]."

In May, the local newspaper, Zama Swat, reported the killings of numerous prisoners under mysterious circumstances while they were in police custody. For months, the menace from the army had gone unreported-the looting of forests by army patrols, assassinations without trials, local people roughed up at checkpoints.

With the end of the school year, the Sufi dance festival resumed and field flowers covered the hills. Each year Yousafzai arranged a school picnic at the waterfall in Marghazar, 30 minutes away. Days later someone dropped a note over the wall: "You are giving our girls loose morals and spreading vulgarity by taking the girls to the picnic spot where they run around without purdah."

In June the owner of the Swat Continental Hotel, in Mingora, an outspoken critic of the army's failure to root out the extremists, was gunned down in the street. Then Zahid Khan, the head of the hotel association, was attacked on the way home from his mosque. "I wanted an inquiry," he told me. "Why were these Taliban not attacking anyone in the army? No one was arrested." The Jirga reacted by announcing that its members would not take part in the Independence Day celebration on August 14, when the military would demonstrate its presence in Swat. Immediately they were summoned to the base to have tea with the brigadier, which one member saw as a chilling threat. They decided not to accept the invitation, but Yousafzai persuaded them to negotiate. He later told a friend, "The meeting was a success. I cannot take on the Pakistani Army."

"Ziauddin, you are on a list to be killed," Aqeel Yousafzai told him in September. "You must stop allowing Malala to speak out in public. Or leave the country." Close friends had already advised Ziauddin to leave and get a scholarship somewhere for Malala. "I came early in the morning," Aqeel told me. "Malala was asleep. Ziauddin awakened her, and she came and joined us. 'Your uncle Aqeel thinks we are in a lot of danger,' he said. 'He thinks you should leave.' Malala looked at me and said, 'My uncle is a very good man, but what he is suggesting does not fit with the code of bravery.' "

"They want to silence every critic," said former presidential media adviser Faranahz Ispahani, the wife of former ambassador Husain Haqqani, who was once the target of a trumped-up smear. "So how do they do it? They silence dissident voices, whether it is Benazir Bhutto, [Punjab governor] Salman Taseer, or Malala. With my husband, they called him a traitor. Ziauddin would not shut up, so they put a bullet into his daughter. They did not expect that all of us Pakistanis have reached a point where pluralistic progressive Pakistan is standing up and saying, 'No more.' "

The Attack

On October 9 last year, Ziauddin was at the press club, speaking out against the local government, which was trying to impose control over private schools. "Hold my phone," he told his friend Ahmed Shah. Shah saw the number of the Khushal school on an incoming call, and Ziauddin indicated for him to answer it. The caller said, "Someone has attacked the bus. Come quickly." Shah told me, "We rushed to the clinic. Yousafzai said, 'It could be that someone has come after Malala.' The first sight of her there was blood coming out of her mouth. She was weeping. Then she passed out."

One officer described the shooter as a teenager with shaking hands, but the story changed constantly. A few moments after the bus left the school, the girls started singing. Someone in the road who looked friendly waved for the bus to stop, then asked, "Which one of you is Malala?" No one saw a gun in his hand. They looked toward their friend. Then the assassin put a bullet in Malala's head, and perhaps his unsteadiness saved her life. The bullet only grazed her skull, but it damaged the soft tissue underneath, which controls the face and neck. Two other girls were also badly injured.

"Look at this map," Aqeel Yousafzai told me in New York as he drew a diagram. "The checkpoint was a four-minute walk away. The driver screamed for help. No one came. Twenty minutes passed. No one came. Finally they had to rush from the school with the police. Why? Many people believe the military is responsible. The feeling is Malala and her father had to be silenced."

The Tehrik-I-Taleban Party, Fazlullah's umbrella group, took credit for the attack. By defying Pashtun tradition, Malala was "a clear sinner" who had violated Shari'a and "a spy who divulged secrets of the mujahideen and Taliban through BBC and in return received awards and rewards from the Zionists." They accused her of wearing makeup in interviews. In a seven-page statement, they announced that Ziauddin would be next. Reports in the press mentioned Yousafzai's desire for asylum.

Within hours of Malala's attack, Ashraf received a phone call from Ellick: "Are we responsible?" Later, Ashraf recalled, Ellick consoled him, saying, "We did nothing wrong. If you feel you must write about it, you should. It could be a catharsis." Ellick also e-mailed Ziauddin expressing his own sense of guilt, Yousafzai said. On WGBH, Boston's public-television station, discussing the ethics of putting a child on-camera, Ellick said, "I'm part of a system that continuously gave them awards ... which emboldened her ... and made her more public, more brash, more outspoken."

All over Pakistan, editorials demanded the obvious: Were the military's ties to extremists more important than human rights? Shouldn't the government guarantee a proper education for girls? Within 24 hours, General Kayani was in Peshawar.

Soon a curious counter-narrative began to grow in the Urdu press. Malala's picture with Richard Holbrooke was widely distributed. Yousafzai, who had always spoken openly with reporters, was suddenly incommunicado. In Mingora, posters were distributed with the headline: who is the bigger enemy, the u.s. or the taliban? The bullet in Malala's cranium had become a political instrument. At the hospital one doctor said, "We do not know if we can save her, but we think that if she lives she will be completely paralyzed." Ziauddin said, "My God, who could do this to a child?" He was in shock as the Peshawar hospital filled with dignitaries, including Interior Minister Rehman Malik. When Ziauddin finally appeared before the press, Malik was by his side. Ziauddin said he would not be seeking asylum, and he thanked General Kayani.

"I was not thinking about what general or what president I was in a great trauma," Ziauddin said. He was now dependent on the very establishment he had spent years criticizing. When he was finally allowed to fly to Birmingham, the hospital there arranged for a press conference. But Yousafzai took no questions.

In the last decade, 36,000 people have been killed in Pakistan, and the situation seems to worsen every week. In Birmingham, Ziauddin Yousafzai monitors the news from Pakistan as Malala recovers from two more delicate operations to replace part of her skull with a titanium plate. She plans to write a memoir. For Vital Voices, the women's organization that has raised $150,000 for the Malala Fund, she announced in a widely distributed video, "I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every child to be educated. For that reason we have organized the Malala Fund." Publishers have offered more than $2 million for the rights to her book. "I will not allow Malala's story to be used for someone's agenda I love Pakistan, and I loved my land before it was Pakistan," Ziauddin said.

Hamid Mir, who almost lost his life when he discovered a bomb under his car before it exploded, said, "Malala called me. She spoke very softly. She said I must not lose courage. I must fight." She also called Geo TV reporter Mahboob Ali in Mingora, the day Fazlullah's forces blew up a nearby mosque, where 22 were killed. "Please do not let them put anyone in danger," she said. "I don't want my name to cause harm." Meanwhile, in Mingora, the government renamed a school after Malala. Within a short time it was attacked.

In a phone conversation Ali had a day before Malala's video was launched, he said that Ziauddin seemed resigned to a life that was no longer his to control. He told Ali, "You are a person who can go from one place to another in our town. And I cannot now. Sometimes I become very desperate. I feel I should go back to Pakistan and be in my own village and my own state." Later he added, "This is a fourth life for me. I did not choose it. This is a great country with great values, but when you are taken from your own land, you even miss the bad people of your area."

In January, the Jirga demanded a full judicial commission to investigate "the mayhem that has occurred in Swat and is still happening"-an obvious reference to the military involvement, insiders say.

Not long after I spoke briefly with Yousafzai on the phone, it was announced that he was going to work as a global-education consultant for the Pakistan High Commission in Birmingham. Malala will remain in England, recovering from the damage caused to her speech and hearing. Her left jaw and facial nerves have been reconstructed. A cochlear implant will lessen the deafness in her left ear. Pakistan recently announced that, by the end of 2015, girls' education will be a compulsory legal right.

In February, Malala was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. If she recovers, she has been primed to campaign, as Benazir Bhutto once did, against all religious extremism. "That little girl stood up and was not deterred," said Faranahz Ispahani. "She paid a terrible price, but the price she paid may have awoken the world in a way that nothing else has."

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Malala Yousafzai: The 15-Year-Old Pakistani Girl Who Wanted More from Her Country

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Everyone who laid eyes on Malala Yousafzai knew the Pakistani schoolgirl was something special. When her mountain town of Mingora, in the Swat Valley, fell under Taliban rule, her courage made her a powerful symbol. And now, after last fall's near-fatal attempt to silence the 15-year-old, she is more dangerous to Pakistan's status quo than ever before.

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(Kabul) - Afghan government and international donor efforts since 2001 to educate girls have significantly faltered in recent years, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Sixteen years after the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan ousted the Taliban, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school.

"The Afghan government and donors made bold promises in 2001 to get all girls into education, but insecurity, poverty, and displacement are now driving many girls out of school," said Liesl Gerntholtz, women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs a renewed focus to ensure all girls have a school to attend or risk these gains being lost."

The 132-page report, " I Won't Be a Doctor, and One Day You'll Be Sick: Girls' Access to Education in Afghanistan," describes how, as security in the country worsens and international donors disengage from Afghanistan, progress made toward getting girls into school has stalled. It is based on 249 interviews in Kabul, Kandahar, Balkh, and Nangarhar provinces, mostly with girls ages 11 to 18 who were not able to complete their education.

Girls' education has often been highlighted as a success story by donors and the Afghan government, and millions more girls are in school today than were in school under Taliban rule. But the stated aim of getting all girls into school is far from realized, and the proportion of students who are girls is now falling in parts of the country. According to the government, 3.5 million children are out of school, and 85 percent of them are girls. Only 37 percent of adolescent girls are literate, compared to 66 percent of adolescent boys.

Afghanistan's government provides fewer schools for girls than boys at both the primary and secondary levels. In half the country's provinces, fewer than 20 percent of teachers are female - a major barrier for the many girls whose families will not accept their being taught by a man, especially as they become adolescents. Many children live too far from a school to attend, which particularly affects girls. About 41 percent of schools have no buildings, and many lack boundary walls, water, and toilets - disproportionately affecting girls.

Khatera, 15, raised in rural Samangan province, told Human Rights Watch, "It was very far to the nearest girls' school - it was in another village.... On a donkey or horse, it would take from morning until noon."

Girls are often kept home due to discriminatory attitudes that do not value or permit their education. A third of girls marry before 18, and once engaged or married, many girls are compelled to drop out of school.

But many families are also fighting desperately to educate their daughters in the face of enormous obstacles, and deserve support. Human Rights Watch spoke to families who moved across cities and even across the country to find a school for their daughters, who separated to allow girls to study, and who had older brothers make the dangerous trip to work illegally in Iran to pay school costs for their younger sisters back home.

Afghan law states that education is compulsory through class nine, when children normally would be about 14 years old, though in reality many children have no access to education to this level - or sometimes, to any level. Administrative barriers and corruption create additional obstacles, especially for displaced and poor families. Even when tuition is free, there are costs for sending children to school and many families simply cannot afford to send any of their children or choose under financial constraints to favor educating sons. About a quarter of Afghan children work to help their families survive desperate poverty, and many girls weave, embroider, beg, or pick garbage rather than study.

The Taliban and other insurgents now control or contest more than 40 percent of Afghanistan's districts. Fighting between Taliban and government forces has driven thousands of families from their homes, and more than a million Afghans are internally displaced. In areas under Taliban control, the Taliban often limits girls to only a few years of schooling, or bans them from education altogether. In contested areas, girls seeking to attend school face heightened security threats. The conflict has been accompanied by lawlessness, as militias and criminal gangs have proliferated, and girls face threats including sexual harassment, kidnapping, and acid attacks, as well as targeted attacks and threats against girls' education. In this environment, education is increasingly affected, and girls are disproportionately harmed.

Donors have worked with the Afghan government to develop innovative models that allow girls to study even amidst escalating conflict, Human Rights Watch said. "Community-based education" is a network of classes, often held in homes, that allow children, particularly girls, to access education in communities far from a government school. But because these specialized classes are funded solely by donors and implemented by nongovernmental organizations, they have no consistent connection with the government school system and come and go due to the unreliable cycles of funding to nongovernmental organizations.

"Integrating these community-based schools in the government education system, with sustainable funding and quality controls, would be a lifeline for many girls," Gerntholtz said.

According to international standards established by UNESCO, the government should spend at least 15 to 20 percent of total national budget, and 4 to 6 percent of GDP, on education. The United Nations urges that least developed countries, of which Afghanistan is one, should reach or exceed the upper end of these benchmarks. As of 2016, 13 percent of Afghanistan's public expenditure, and 4 percent of GDP, was spent on education.

The Afghan government, with its international donors, should increase girls' access to education by better protecting schools and students; institutionalizing and expanding education models that help girls study; and taking concrete steps to meet the government's international obligation to provide universal free and compulsory primary education and help make secondary education free and available to all. They should also encourage and intensify "fundamental education" for those persons who have not received or completed the whole period of primary (or basic) education.

"Even amidst the great difficulties Afghanistan faces, the government can and should be working to ensure that girls and boys have equal access to education and to integrate girls' community-based education into the national school system," Gerntholtz said. "Donors should commit to long-term support for girls' education and need to ask more hard questions about how their funds are being spent."
Selected Quotes
"By the time we walked to school, the school day would end." - Najiba, 15, explaining why she and her eight siblings did not go to school in Daikundi, Mazar-i Sharif, July 2016

"The Taliban is near our house. If we go to school, they will kill us. If the government can provide security, we will be very interested to go to school." - Paimanah, 12, who studied at a community-based education center hidden in a family home near her house, Kandahar, July 2016

"The road to the government school has many thieves and bad boys." - Hakim, 13, class 3 student at Community Based Education, Kandahar, July 2016

"The most important thing is to convince fathers to let their daughters go to school." - Manija, 17, class-three student at a community-based education program, Kandahar, July 2016

"Men would disturb and threaten small girls. The men would touch us and do other actions with us, so we left. They were local men living nearby. No one tried to stop them - it happened to a lot of us. Lots of girls left school because of this - more than a hundred left. Kandahar people won't allow their girls to go to school." - Chehrah, 16, lived only 100 meters from a school in Kandahar. The harassment led to her asking her father if she could go to another nearby school in an area she believes is safer, but instead he removed her from school permanently, at age 12.

"It happened on the road right in front of the school.... Some students lost their eyes - their faces were burned...All the family decided no girls in our family will go to school...But for years I fought them and continued." - Maliha, 17, was in class five at a government school when her classmates were the target of an acid attack. Fifteen students were injured, four seriously.

"We have 395 schools without buildings. This is a big challenge for female students because these schools don't have a perimeter wall - they are open. In these areas, in most districts, people won't send girls without a building and a perimeter wall." - Provincial education official, Jalalabad, July 2016

"In many areas there are no female teachers." - Provincial director of education, July 2016

"We sell fruit for 20 to 30 Afghanis [US 29-43 cents]. The kids here run around the market and eat peels from the ground. We are destitute. All the kids are illiterate...Should they take care of food, or education? ... If your stomach is empty, you can't go to school." - A community leader from an informal settlement in Kabul of Kuchi people, who were formerly nomadic, explained why in his community few children go to school. He has five or six grandchildren living in the settlement, none of whom go to school.

"I don't have money for a pencil for my son, let alone my daughter." - A community-based education program staff member recounting a common response of fathers for why their daughters do not go to school

"We need peace and we need equal schools for boys and girls and equal education for boys and girls. I think boys [now] have more rights to get education." - Qasima, 13, community-based education program student, Mazar-i Sharif, July 2016
In response to the evolving situation in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch has decided to edit visual elements of this publication temporarily for security reasons.

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Afghanistan: Girls Struggle for an Education

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(Kabul) - Afghan government and international donor efforts since 2001 to educate girls have significantly faltered in recent years, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Sixteen years after the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan ousted the Taliban, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school.

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Nigeria's failing university system

When Peru had three presidents in one week

Q&amp;A with Bhumika Regmi, Malala Fund's digital manager

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Malala Fund | Working for a world where all girls can learn and lead

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How young women in Argentina won the fight to legalize abortion What's your favourite slang word? A week in the life of a 15-year-old gardener in Canada Making the most of college during COVID-19 The rise of antisemitism in the US and how you can fight it Five years from now, what do you hope you're doing?

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Jr. Scholastic: Learning to Skate in a War Zone

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Jr. Scholastic: Learning to Skate in a War Zone

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January 18, 2021

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Learning to Skate in a War Zone

In the war-torn country of Afghanistan, a unique school that combines skateboarding and education is giving kids hope for a brighter future

August 2021 Update on the War in Afghanistan
In August 2021, as the United States was completing its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, the Taliban-the terrorist group the U.S. and Afghan militaries had been fighting there-regained control of the country. Within days, Taliban forces had toppled the Afghan military and captured several cities, including the capital of Kabul. On August 15, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, effectively surrendering to the Taliban. Many people around the world, including those in Afghanistan, now worry about what lies ahead for the nation and its citizens.

As You Read, Think About: What important life skills can be learned from skateboarding?

The War in Afghanistan: This conflict, the longest in U.S. history, began in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., which killed nearly 3,000 people. That October, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan because the country's Taliban government had given safe haven to Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for those attacks. Since then, more than 2,200 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and civilians have been killed in the war. This past fall, the Taliban and the current Afghan government met for the first time to begin working on a peace deal to end the conflict.

The War in Afghanistan: This conflict, the longest in U.S. history, began in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., which killed nearly 3,000 people. That October, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan because the country's Taliban government had given safe haven to Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for those attacks. Since then, more than 2,200 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and civilians have been killed in the war. This past fall, the Taliban and the current Afghan government met for the first time to begin working on a peace deal to end the conflict.

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Skip to main content Announcements & Tutorials We'll send you updates on digital features and tips here throughout the year. Check out Junior Scholastic At Home for our favorite stories and tools to kick off your year. Dismiss Check back soon for more announcements and tutorials.

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Emma Watson interviews Malala Yousafzai Nobel Peace Prize

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Malala Interview on The Daily Show, 10/10/2013

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Malala Interview on The Daily Show, 10/10/2013

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The Daily Show - Malala Yousafzai Extended Interview

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Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who was shot and almost killed by the Taliban for promoting girls' right to an education and who, at age 17, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize, graduated from Oxford University this weekend.

"Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics, and Economics degree at Oxford," Malala, now 22, tweeted on Friday. She added, "I don't know what's ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading, and sleep."

Along with her tweet, Yousafzai posted two pictures. In one, she is celebrating with her family in front of a graduation cake. The other was taken after a "trashing," an Oxford tradition where students are covered with food and confetti after completing their exams.

Yousafzai began studying at Oxford in October 2017, after being formally accepted by one of its colleges, Lady Margaret Hall, where Pakistan's first female prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, studied in the 1970s.

The news was greeted from congratulatory notes from an array of celebrities, including the former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, himself an Oxford grad. "Congratulations @Malala!," tweeted Buttigieg. "You had already achieved more than most do in a lifetime before you even began at Oxford, but completing PPE exams is no small thing and will serve you well as you continue to inspire and lead." And the singer Shakira tweeted, "I'm so happy for you @Malala! This is an incredible achievement. I'm so excited to see what you do next, but until then, enjoy some me ("you") time!"

In 2018, when she was entering her second year at Oxford, Yousafzai wrote for British Vogue about how far she felt she had come since those early years fighting for an education and how she wished that other young girls would soon be able to travel that same road. "I know how lucky I am to have access to an incredible education, lectures, art, sport, and new perspectives," Yousafzai wrote. "At 11 years old, I woke up one morning and could not go to school because the Taliban had banned girls' education in Swat, the region of Pakistan where I was born. I am so pleased that I spoke out and for my years of campaigning that have followed. Now 21, I am able to study at a prestigious university-but I want to live in a world where every girl is able to weigh her future career options in the way I hope to when I graduate."

A year later, she talked to Teen Vogue about the thrill of seeing teenage activists like Emma González, a survivor of the Parkland High School shootings, and Greta Thunberg, the climate activist who had just been named Time's person the year. "We have seen huge progress over the last few years, and now to see that young girls like Emma and Greta are coming forward and they're talking about climate change, they are talking about gun violence, and they're talking about these different issues that are impacting all of us and especially what's going to affect the future generations," Yousafzai told Teen Vogue. "There are hundreds and thousands of women and girls in all parts of the world who are standing up. Some of them we don't even know-their names would never be known-but they're changing their communities."

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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai Graduates From Oxford

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Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who was shot and almost killed by the Taliban for promoting girls' right to an education and who, at age 17, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize, graduated from Oxford University this weekend.

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Mrs. Kaplenko's read aloud on Greta Thunberg

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Mrs. Kaplenko's read aloud on Greta Thunberg

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Greta Thunberg Read Aloud- Climate Change Topic

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Greta Thunberg full speech at UN Climate Change COP24 Conference

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Greta Thunberg: The disarming case to act right now on climate change

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In this passionate call to action, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why, in August 2018, she walked out of school and organized a strike to raise awareness of global warming, protesting outside the Swedish parliament and grabbing the world's attention. "The climate crisis has already been solved.

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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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When it comes to moving home, hermit crabs are experts, often swapping shells for the optimal abode.

But now researchers have found that exposure to microplastics disrupts this key behaviour. The finds are the latest to suggest such pollution could be having an impact on the world's marine creatures.

"Usually a so-called 'normal' hermit crab will always want to go for the better shell," said Dr Gareth Arnott, co-author of the new research from Queen's University Belfast, adding such shells are typically those of sea snails.

"The striking thing in this study was when [we offered them a better shell], lots of the crabs that had been exposed to the microplastics didn't make the optimal decision to take [it]," he said.

Microplastics - pieces of plastic 5mm or smaller - are a growing subject of research, with previous studies showing they are present even in the depths of the ocean and are ending up in the bodies of living organisms, from seals to crabs and seabirds.

However, while there is some evidence that exposure to such pollution has affected growth and reproduction in some animals, research into specific effects on animal behaviour and cognition remains scarce.

Arnott and his colleagues placed 29 female hermit crabs in a tank containing seawater, seaweed and 4mm-diameter polyethylene beads, at a concentration akin to levels found in the environment. Another 35 female hermit crabs were placed in a similar tank, but without the polyethylene beads.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the team report how they kept each group in the tanks for five days, before removing each crab from its shell and giving it a new shell - crucially, these shells were about half the ideal weight for each crab.

After two hours in their new shell, each crab was then put into a deep dish of seawater and the team presented it with another shell, this time of an ideal weight.

The team found that 25 of the crabs who had not been exposed to the microplastics explored the optimal-sized shells, with 21 of the crabs - 60% - taking up residence in them.

By contrast, crabs that had been exposed to microplastics took longer to begin such exploration and far fewer did so: just 10 made contact with the optimal-sized shells and only nine - 31% of the group - moved home.

This suggests exposure to microplastics affects the shell selection behaviour of hermit crabs, the team say, indicating that pollution could be affecting cognition.

"This shell selection behaviour is an example of a cognitive process - the animal has to gather information about the shell and it has to then decide how it is going to use that information," said Arnott, adding that he was surprised by the results.

However, the team say there is more to be done, including looking at whether different types of microplastic have a similar effect, exploring whether the microplastics actually enter the crab, and unpicking the mechanism for the effect.

"We hypothesize that either some aspect of the polyethylene is getting into them to affect their decision making, or else it is an indirect effect that the presence of the plastic in the tank might be influencing their feeding behaviour, for example," Arnott said.

He added that the study only looked at hermit crabs, and it will be important to explore whether the behavioural changes observed in the laboratory are seen in the wild and have real-world implications.

"Based on the striking finding [in this study] this would suggest that there could be a long-term impact in the natural world, but we need to do more work on that," he said.

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Microplastics disrupt hermit crabs' ability to choose shell, study suggests

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When it comes to moving home, hermit crabs are experts, often swapping shells for the optimal abode. But now researchers have found that exposure to microplastics disrupts this key behaviour. The finds are the latest to suggest such pollution could be having an impact on the world's marine creatures.

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An Irish study found that pollution affects cognition and they're unable to detect an ideal shell when they see one.

Hermit crabs are pros when it comes to moving house. As soon as they outgrow a shell, they scope out new options and upgrade to a bigger size. They have this down to a fine art, with entire groups of crabs lining up from biggest to smallest and waiting till the right moment to exit their too-small shell and beeline for the bigger one. Needless to say, this behavior is essential to their survival. Crabs are vulnerable without their shells and they're always growing.

But plastic debris is wreaking havoc with their ability to choose new shells, and it goes beyond mistaking plastic containers for shells, which Melissa wrote about several months ago. New research from Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland, has discovered that exposure to microplastic particles in the water actually inhibits a crab's ability to assess the potential of a new shell. As study co-author Dr. Gareth Arnott explained, "The striking thing in this study was when [we offered them a better shell], lots of the crabs that had been exposed to the microplastics didn't make the optimal decision to take [it]."

The study, published in Biology Letters, describes the research process. Two groups of female crabs were placed in two separate tanks, one with 29 and one with 35. Both tanks were filled with seawater and seaweed, but one contained 4mm-diameter polyethylene beads. The crabs remained in the water for five days, then were removed, taken out of their shells, and given new shells to move into - except that these were not shells that the crabs would've chosen themselves, "about half the ideal weight for each crab." Two hours later the crabs were presented with new shells of suitable size. The researchers were surprised by their observations:

"The team found that 25 of the crabs who had not been exposed to the microplastics explored the optimal-sized shells, with 21 of the crabs - 60 percent - taking up residence in them. By contrast, crabs that had been exposed to microplastics took longer to begin such exploration and far fewer did so: just 10 made contact with the optimal-sized shells and only nine - 31 percent of the group - moved home."

This suggests that exposure to plastic particles changes the way in which crabs perceive their shells; in other words, pollution is affecting cognition, which is deeply troubling, considering the extent of plastic pollution on beaches around the world and that being capable of keen assessment is an essential survival skill for hermit crabs.

Arnott said, "We hypothesize that either some aspect of the polyethylene is getting into them to affect their decision making, or else it is an indirect effect that the presence of the plastic in the tank might be influencing their feeding behavior, for example."

Further research will delve into the actual mechanism at play, whether other crab species are affected, if all microplastic types have the same effect, and whether this sad interaction is playing out in the wild as it did in the laboratory. And in case you were wondering, all of the crabs used in this study were returned to the beach in Ireland unharmed.

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Microplastics Inhibit a Hermit Crab's Ability to Choose Shell

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An Irish study found that pollution affects cognition and they're unable to detect an ideal shell when they see one. Hermit crabs are pros when it comes to moving house. As soon as they outgrow a shell, they scope out new options and upgrade to a bigger size.

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Out in the field, the researchers chose a particularly rough and stormy section of French coastline along the Bay of Biscay to search the air for microplastics. They set up two kinds of collectors: one that could pull particles out of the water droplets that make up sea spray, and another that filtered just the dry air of onshore winds. And sure enough, there they found microplastic particles, as many as 19 per cubic meter on a misty autumn day.

The ocean, then, isn't sequestering microplastics, as scientists previously believed-it seems to be actively ejecting them into the atmosphere, spreading them around the planet. The Allens' previous research has shown that winds can carry microplastics far and wide, transporting them from European cities onto the supposedly pristine mountaintops of the French Pyrenees. This new research makes that bad news all the worse. "There's an awful lot of water in the world," says Deonie Allen. "So if you can see water surfaces as not just a sink, but also a source, then that's a really large surface area that could then be influencing the amount of microplastics that are not just in the atmosphere."

This work goes a long way towards illuminating a microplastic pollution cycle that's far more complex than previously believed. "Previous studies have shown that plastics and microplastics can be washed onshore from the oceans, and that larger plastics can be blown onshore. But this is the first study to show that sea spray can release microplastics from the ocean," says University of Manchester earth scientist Ian Kane, who researches how deep-sea currents transport microplastics, but who wasn't involved in this new work. "Even if blown onshore, it is likely that much will make its way, eventually, into watercourses and the sea. Some may be sequestered into soil or vegetation and be 'locked up' indefinitely."

So when you eat vegetables, you may also be eating microplastics that once flowed to the sea, then were ejected from the water and blown back onto land. The air you breathe may likewise be contaminated both with microplastics shed from objects around your home, as well as from microplastics that once floated in the ocean.

The Allens' work brings with it another troubling implication that demands more research. If microplastics can "seed" clouds, like other particulate matter from the sea does-acting as the foundation on which moisture accumulates to build a nice big fluffy cloud-what does that mean for the transportation of water on Earth?

"If there's enough of it, it can change the size of the cloud, and also the albedo of the cloud," says Steve Allen. That is, the whiter a cloud is-thanks to those microplastics attracting more moisture-the more of the sun's energy it can bounce back into space. And that might actually help cool the planet. "So that'll have a positive effect for us for climate change," he says.

On the other hand, he points out, this extra sequestering of water into clouds might also change rainfall patterns. "It'll gather the moisture that's in the air,and not produce rain," Allen continues. "That rain can move somewhere else. So we would get rain somewhere it doesn't belong, and we don't get rain where we need it."

Plus, think about what the scientists couldn't see. Plastic doesn't just disappear entirely-as it degrades in the environment, it breaks into ever smaller pieces, meaning there could be even tinier particles that are slipping through researchers' filters. "The smaller it gets, the easier it will be to get into the atmosphere, which is troubling," says Scripps Institution of Oceanography microplastic researcher Jennifer Brandon, who wasn't involved in this work. "Especially because in the atmosphere, it can travel really far." For example, sand from the Sahara readily travels across the Atlantic and lands in South America. If microplastic is moving just as freely around the globe, it's hard to imagine an ecosystem that'd be safe from contamination-no matter how remote it may be. And that could have untold implications for the organisms that live there.

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That Fresh Sea Breeze You Breathe May Be Laced With Microplastic

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Out in the field, the researchers chose a particularly rough and stormy section of French coastline along the Bay of Biscay to search the air for microplastics. They set up two kinds of collectors: one that could pull particles out of the water droplets that make up sea spray, and another that filtered just the dry air of onshore winds.

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"These...swarms...are terrifying," Albert Lemasulani narrated breathlessly as he recorded a video of himself swatting his way through a crush of desert locusts in northern Kenya this April. The insects, more than two inches long, whirred around him in thick clouds, their wings snapping like ten thousand card decks being shuffled in unison. He groaned: "They are in the millions. Everywhere...eating...it really is a nightmare."

Lemasulani, 40, lives with his family in Oldonyiro, where he herds goats that survive on shrubs and trees. He'd previously heard of locusts only from stories passed down in the community. That changed earlier this year when the largest invasion of the voracious insects in decades descended on East Africa. With their seemingly bottomless appetites, locusts can cause devastating agricultural losses. An adult desert locust can munch through its own bodyweight, about 0.07 ounces, of vegetation every day. Swarms can swell to 70 billion insects-enough to blanket New York City more than once-and can destroy 300 million pounds of crops in a single day. Even a more modest gathering of 40 million desert locusts can eat as much in a day as 35,000 people.

This is the worst "upsurge"-the category of intensity below "plague"-of desert locusts experienced in Ethiopia and Somalia for 25 years and in Kenya for 70 years. The region's growing season is underway, and as the swarms have grown while the coronavirus complicates mitigation efforts, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates up to 25 million East Africans will suffer from food shortages later this year.

Some 13 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, and Eritrea already suffer from "severe food insecurity," according to the FAO, meaning they may go without eating for an entire day or have run out of food altogether.

"We fear for our future because these kinds of swarms will mean we don't have anything to feed our animals," Lemasulani says. Farmers are equally worried about their crops. "We pray God will clear the locusts for us. It's as terrifying as COVID-19."

In the beginning

Desert locusts flourish when arid areas are doused with rain, because they seek to lay their eggs in damp, sandy soil near vegetation that can sustain the young until their wings develop enough for the insects to forage farther afield.

Usually, when locusts have space to spread out, they actively avoid one another. But in favorable circumstances, desert locust populations can multiply 20-fold every three months. Crowding together as a result of this increased breeding triggers a behavior change. No longer loners, they turn into social or "gregarious" creatures, forming large swarms.

Recently, conditions for procreation and migration have been not just favorable- but ideal. In 2018 and 2019, a series of cyclones that scientists link to unusually warm seas rolled in off the Indian Ocean and soaked a sandy desert in the Arabian Peninsula known as the Empty Quarter. A locust boom followed.

"We often think of deserts as environments that are very harsh and low productivity, which they are a lot of the time," says National Geographic grantee Dino Martins, an entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and executive director of the Mpala Research Centre in northern Kenya. The center is working to sequence the desert locust's genome to to learn what environmental and genetic factors may prompt the locusts' transformation from solitary to gregarious. "When [deserts] have the right conditions, they can flip, and you can move to a situation with lots of biological activity. That's basically what we're seeing now," he says.

By June 2019, large swarms were on the move, traveling over the Red Sea to Ethiopia and Somalia. Aided by uncommonly heavy rains that buffeted East Africa from October to December, the insects spread south to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Since the locusts first reached East Africa, favorable breeding conditions have continued, and the swarms have expanded. "I can't tell you if it's by 20 times, but [the population] is much bigger," says Cyril Ferrand, Resilience Team Leader for East Africa at the FAO, which monitors the desert locust situation globally.

When the first wave of locusts arrived in the region in late 2019, most of last year's crops had reached maturity or been harvested. But the timing of the current, so-called "second generation"-an even more massive wave-is especially worrisome.

That's because East Africa's primary growing season begins around mid-March, and the emerging plants are particularly vulnerable to locusts, says Anastasia Mbatia, the technical manager of agriculture at Farm Africa, a charity that works with farmers, pastoralists, and forest communities in East Africa. "When [locusts] feed on the germinating leaves, the crop cannot grow," she says. "Farmers would need to sow seeds again." But a second planting in the weeks ahead likely would not be successful, as the best growing weather has already passed.

Spraying for relief

To stem the explosion of locusts, governments often spray pesticides-either from the air or directly on the ground. FAO's Ferrand says sourcing such chemicals during the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge. "We have had delays in supply. That means managing the [pesticide stocks] today is a very different reality because there are fewer planes moving globally," he says.

Even more difficult in places such as Kenya that have little experience with gigantic locust invasions is deciding where to spray. Depending on the winds, which largely determine locust flight patterns, a swarm might travel 80 miles in a day. (In 1988, desert locusts were found to have crossed from West Africa to the Caribbean in just 10 days.)

To chase down these highly mobile swarms, the FAO is relying increasingly on information provided by local people, including Lemasulani, who began voluntarily tracking locust swarms in January.

Drawing on an extensive network of contacts who call him when they spot pockets of the insects, Lemasulani hires motorbike taxis to speed him to swarms. When he finds them, he enters their coordinates in a mobile phone app called elocust3m that was released in late February by David Hughes and his colleagues at Penn State University's PlantVillage program, an open access public resource for smallholder farmers. Hughes developed the app at the request of the FAO, whose field staff have operated a similar tracking program on specialized tablets since 2014. The data are then shared with the government, which can decide how best to react.

Until recently, when PlantVillage began paying him a stipend to cover his transport and telephone costs, Lemasulani paid for his locust scouting out of his own pocket. (His travels have been exempted from COVID-19 restrictions, as are training sessions for new elocust3m volunteers-residents in areas where swarms are expected-who nonetheless must wear masks and stay six feet apart.)

As Lemasulani wraps a red shawl around his shoulders to protect himself from the rain that has begun to fall outside his home, he says over video chat, "I come from a poor family background and got sponsored by the Catholic church in Oldonyiro though my primary and high school years. I was sponsored by a person I have never met. There is no way I can pay my sponsor back, but I feel noble giving back to my community."

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Gigantic new locust swarms hit East Africa, threatening millions with hunger

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"These...swarms...are terrifying," Albert Lemasulani narrated breathlessly as he recorded a video of himself swatting his way through a crush of desert locusts in northern Kenya this April. The insects, more than two inches long, whirred around him in thick clouds, their wings snapping like ten thousand card decks being shuffled in unison.

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billions of people could live in areas too hot for humans by 2070

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Billions of people could live in areas too hot for humans by 2070, study says

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If the planet continues to warm at current levels over the next 50 years, up to 3 billion people could be living in areas that are too hot for humans, a new study has found.

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Elora Hardy: Magical houses, made of bamboo

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You've never seen buildings like this. The stunning bamboo homes built by Elora Hardy and her team in Bali twist, curve and surprise at every turn. They defy convention because the bamboo itself is so enigmatic. No two poles of bamboo are alike, so every home, bridge and bathroom is exquisitely unique.

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Welcome to San Ramon Valley Unified School District

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Welcome to San Ramon Valley Unified School District

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Log in through the srvusd student portal.

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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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Ask your teacher for login info.

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What's Inside

Ready-to-Go Teaching Kits for Every Text

Immerse your students in the most exciting reading experiences. Every Scope text is carefully crafted for students' interests and abilities and is packaged with rich multimodal support tools for joyful teaching and learning.

Plus! You'll always be confident that you're reaching every reader with an ever-expanding set of differentiation tools, like thoughtfully leveled texts, audio read-aloud support, and much more.
EXPLORE AN ISSUE

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Scholastic Scope | A complete multigenre language arts teaching package

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Take your students' ELA skills to the next level with Scope!

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"Plastic" simply means pliable and easily shaped. It only recently became the name for a category of materials called polymers (" of many parts"), which refer to long chains of molecules arranged in repeating units. There are lots of naturally occurring polymers -- many of which have long been exploited by humans -- including silk, wool, rubber and cellulose, the material that makes up the cell walls of plants. Even DNA is considered a polymer. The length and shape of the molecular chains makes them particularly strong, flexible and lightweight.

It wasn't until the early 1900s that chemists began figuring out how to mimic the structures of natural polymers and create entirely synthetic ones in laboratories. Today, plastic broadly refers to any number of commonly used synthetic polymers, most of which are derived from oil or natural gas.

Click here for a good rundown of the seven major types of consumer plastic, and which ones are easily recyclable.

Plastic has undoubtedly revolutionized society, introducing a huge amount of convenience and affordability, and allowing for the development of things like computers, cell phones and most modern medical advancements.

But our obsession with it also comes at a steep cost. Although originally hailed as a miraculous innovation that could reduce a rapidly industrializing society's reliance on scarce natural resources, plastic has also created a monumental environmental mess. Worldwide, more than 400 million tons of the stuff are churned out annually, generating a huge amount of waste of which less than 10 percent is recycled. The rest either ends up in landfills, where it will take an average of 500 years to decompose, or in waterways and oceans.

And as this latest Above the Noise episode on microfibers makes clear, that has become a mounting environmental crisis.

Scroll through this timeline for a brief history of how synthetic plastics emerged and came to dominate our lives.
Sources

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How Plastic Took Over The World (and Created A Big Mess): A Brief, Disposable History

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"Plastic" simply means pliable and easily shaped. It only recently became the name for a category of materials called polymers (" of many parts"), which refer to long chains of molecules arranged in repeating units.

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The tiny village of Newtok near Alaska's western coast has been sliding into the Ninglick River for years. As temperatures increase - faster there than in the rest of the U.S. - the frozen permafrost underneath Newtok is thawing. About 70 feet of land a year erode away, putting the village's colorful buildings, some on stilts, ever closer to the water's edge.

Now, in an unprecedented test case, Newtok wants the federal government to declare these mounting impacts of climate change an official disaster. Villagers say it's their last shot at unlocking the tens of millions of dollars needed to relocate the entire community.

"We just need to get out of there," says Romy Cadiente, the village relocation coordinator. "For the safety of the 450 people there."

Cadiente spoke while in Anchorage recently, where he met with state officials about moving the village, which includes a school built in 1958 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that drew nearby subsistence hunters and fishers to settle.

Coming to terms with climate's impact on the Alaska Native village has been gut-wrenching for many. But a new village has been chosen 9 miles away, and several houses are already built.

Cadiente says the problem is money: The Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it will cost $80 million to $130 million to relocate key infrastructure.

"The price tag on this village move is astronomical, and what we have right now is nowhere near," he says.

Many of Alaska's villages are dealing with erosion and thawing permafrost. But Newtok's needs may be the most immediate. It has already lost its barge landing, sewage lagoon and landfill. As river water seeps in and land sinks, it expects to lose its source of drinking water this year, and its school and airport by 2020.

After years trying to piece together state and federal funding to relocate, Cadiente says Newtok has run out of other options.

Usually, the president, with input from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, declares a disaster after a specific catastrophic event. But Newtok is asking for the declaration based on mounting damage from erosion and thawing permafrost over the past decade.

"My first reaction is, it's exciting," says Rob Verchick, who teaches disaster law and climate adaptation at Loyola University in New Orleans.

He says Newtok's request is likely a long shot. But he thinks it needs to be done. "And I think that it is going to lead to a very important conversation that we need to be having," he says.

Verchick says FEMA has pushed communities to plan for climate change, but the federal government doesn't have policies to deal with issues like relocation. As more places face the problem, Verchick says they - like Newtok - may need to get creative in seeking a legal solution.

A recent change gave federally recognized tribes like Newtok the right to request a disaster declaration from the White House directly. Mike Walleri, Newtok's attorney, argues that nothing in the law prevents the president from declaring a disaster for a multiyear event.

"You know, disasters are not planned," Walleri says. "They don't come in one size fits all."

If there's no money to relocate the whole village together, Newtok residents could be forced to scatter, with some even moving 500 miles away to Anchorage.

George Carl, the 66-year-old village council vice president, says it's not just houses that are at stake, but his community, culture, Yup'ik language and identity.

"Being born an Eskimo from that village, you know, that's my life," he says. "Place me to another village or city, it's not for me."

The ultimate decision on whether to declare a disaster lies with the president. Newtok's leaders hope to get an answer before President Obama leaves office next week.
This report comes from Alaska's Energy Desk, a public media collaboration focused on energy and the environment.

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Alaskan Village, Citing Climate Change, Seeks Disaster Relief In Order To Relocate

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The tiny village of Newtok near Alaska's western coast has been sliding into the Ninglick River for years. As temperatures increase - faster there than in the rest of the U.S. - the frozen permafrost underneath Newtok is thawing.

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While the movie Interstellar doesn't exactly state the world is ruined by global warming, it is eye-opening to see that the planet and atmosphere we call home could one day turn against us. Global warming has increased in vast increments in the last decade. In fact, in the last 50 years, the earth's global temperature has increased by 3%. Pollution caused by the release of carbon dioxide into the air creates a blanket over the atmosphere. Global warming can cause a whole chain of events to rupture ecosystems, weather patterns, and a variety of other factors. We all play a part in our future.

More from global warming:

Here are 35 common yet practical and easy ways to stop or prevent global warming and not have to seek colonization on another planet.

1. Replace Regular Incandescent Light bulb: Replace regular incandescent light bulb with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. They consume 70% less energy than ordinary bulbs and have a longer lifetime.

2. Drive Less or Carpool: By driving less you are not only saving fuel but also helping in reducing global warming. Also, look out for other possibilities, e.g.: carpooling. If you have colleagues who live in the same area then you can combine trips. If you need to go to a local market then either walk or go by cycle. Both of them are a great form of exercise. The biggest pollution emitting fumes are caused by oil and gasoline. Cutting down consumption is a huge step to reducing energy wastes.

3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Reduce your need to buy new products resulting in a smaller amount of waste. Even if you need to buy, consider buying eco-friendly products. It is most effective of the three R's. It simply says cut back from where are you now.

Reuse bottles, plastic containers, and other items bought at the grocery store. Reusing water bottles, yogurt cups, bread ties, and other items is being conscious about what is already out there. It will lessen having to purchase other items that would fulfill the same function. Try to use disposable products into some other form. Just don't throw them away.

Recycling unwanted paper, bottles, etc. is a great earth saving tip. If possible, upcycle tables, furniture, and other outdated items to keep landfills clean. You can recycle almost anything for e.g.: paper, aluminum foils, cans, newspapers. By recycling, you can help in reducing landfills.

4. Go Solar: Many people have caught the energy efficient bandwagon of solar energy. Having solar panels installed is something readily possible and available. Incentives and discounts given by government agencies and energy companies make solar energy something to look into.

5. Buy Energy-Efficient Appliances: Always buy products that are energy efficient as they can help you save a good amount of money on your energy bill. Energy-efficient products can help you to save energy, save money and reduce your carbon footprint.

6. Reduce Waste: Landfills are the major contributor of methane and other greenhouse gases. When the waste is burnt, it releases toxic gases in the atmosphere which result in global warming. Reusing and recycling old items can significantly reduce your carbon footprint as it takes far less energy to recycle old items than to produce items from scratch.

7. Use Less Hot Water: Buy energy saving geysers and dishwasher for your home. Avoid washing clothes in hot water. Just wash them in cold or warm water. Avoid taking frequent showers and use less hot water. It will help in saving the energy required to produce that energy.

8. Avoid Products With Lot of Packaging: Just don't buy products with a lot of packaging. When you buy such products you will end up in throwing the waste material in the garbage, which then will help in filling landfill sites and pollute the environment. Also, discourage others from buying such products.

9. Install a Programmable Thermostat: A programmable thermostat doesn't cost much and its cost can be recovered from the amount that you save by reducing energy. The easiest and most cost-effective advice is simply adjusting your thermostat up 1 degree down in the winter and up by 1 degree in the summer. Lower your thermostat 2 degrees in the winter. Instead of making your home a burning furnace, try putting on extra layers.

10. Turn Off the Lights: Duh! If you're not using a room, there's no need for the light to be on.

11. Turn off Electronic Devices: Turn off electronic devices when you are moving out for a couple of days or more. Unnecessary usage of electronic appliances will not only save fuel i.e. coal by which we get electricity but also increase the lifetime of your gadgets.

12. Plant a Tree: Planting trees can help much in reducing global warming than any other method. They not only give oxygen but also take in carbon dioxide, during the process of photosynthesis, which is the main source of global warming.

13. Use Clean Fuel: Electric, smart cars, cars run on vegetable oil, etc...are great examples for using renewable energy. Supporting companies that provide these products will help the rest of the mainstream manufacturing companies convert over.

14. Look for Renewable Fuel Options: If you can't afford an electric car, buy the cleanest gasoline as possible. When car shopping, look at the benefits of options that provide renewable fuel. Although it may be a pretty penny now, you're on the ground level of forwarding thinking.

15. Save Energy: When you consume less, the less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Setting your thermostat using your smartphone or changing the type of light bulb you use is a great start.

16. Replace Filters on Air Conditioner and Furnace: If you haven't, not only are you wasting energy but breathing in dirty air. Cleaning a dirty air filter can save several pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Using energy star appliances will not only save money but also the amount of energy wasted in your home. Have a look at various ways to go green.

18. Tune Your Car Regularly: Regular maintenance will help your car function properly and emit less carbon dioxide.

19. Download Earth Saving Apps: Apps like Kil-Ur-Watts and Wiser EMS not only help calculate your energy costs but provide tools and ways to save energy and money.

20. Conserve Water: This is a tired tip, but ever so important. If we added up the water wasted by the millions of Americans brushing their teeth, we could provide water to more than 23 nations with unclean, drinking water. Remember, it takes energy to draw and filter water from underground.

Taking a quick 5-minute shower will greatly conserve energy. The type of shower head used, will also aid in combating global warming. Take showers instead of baths. Showers use less water than baths by 25%. Over the course of a year that's hundreds of gallons saved.

21. Stop Idling Your Car: It might be freezing outside, but unless your car is buried in snow, start your car as usual. It may take longer to warm up, but the world isn't just about you.

22. Eat Less Hamburger: Besides carbon dioxide, methane introduced into the air contributes to global warming. With meat consumed by the seconds, the number of cows breathing out methane is a huge contributor, thanks to our carnivorous diet and the billion-dollar meat industry.

23. Use Clothesline to Dry Your Clothes: Think of your grandmother when you do this. Most clothes shouldn't be put in the dryer anyway.

24. Eat Naturally: Not only do the health benefits speak wonders for those who eat naturally, but it cuts down the energy costs used by factories who produce processed food.

25. Ride Your Bike: Not only is bike riding, healthy it reduces the amount of CO2 released into the air. Walking is another easy way to reduce global warming.

26. Use a Kitchen Cloth Instead of Paper Towels: Paper towels produce nothing but wasted energy. Think of factory pollution, as well as tree consumption.

27. Reuse Towels: Hang towels to dry, instead of popping them back in the wash after a few uses.

28. Check Your Tires: Make sure your tires are inflated properly when you drive. If not, then your vehicle might consume more fuel which in turn release more CO2 in the atmosphere. Keep your engine properly tuned and drive less aggressively. Aggressive driving and frequent applying of brakes hampers the engine and can even lower the mileage of your car.

29. Take Lunch in a Tupperware: Each time you throw away that brown paper sack, more brown paper sacks are being produced in a factory as we speak.

30. Wrap your water heater in insulation: By keeping the energy in the water heater condensed, less energy is emitted into the air. This not only helps the earth but your pocketbook.

31. Get Home Energy Audit Done: Call a home energy audit company and get an audit done for the home that will help you to identify areas that consume a lot of energy and are not energy efficient at all.

32. Become Part of the Global Warming Community: Connecting with others will help you become more conscious of the impact we all have. The Climate Change National Forum and Global Humanitarian Forum are great avenues to know the latest facts, statistics, and efforts in making a difference.

33. Celebrate Arbor Day and Earth day: Although most of us hear about these days in passing, see what the buzz is all about. Plant a tree, pick up trash, or join a forum.

34. Become Aware of Your Contribution: With technology within your fingertips, finding information about protecting the environment is everywhere. To help emit less CO2, the first step is being aware of how much you contribute.

35. Spread the Awareness: Always try your best to educate people about global warming and it causes and after effects. Tell them how they can contribute their part by saving energy that will be good for the environment. Gather opportunities and establish programs that will help you to share information with friends, relatives, and neighbors.

By being just a little more mindful, we all can play our part in combating global warming. These easy tips will help preserve the planet for future generations. Scientists won't have to defy the space-time continuum to keep life on planet earth from continuing.

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35 Easy and Simple Ways To Stop Global Warming - Conserve Energy Future

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While the movie Interstellar doesn't exactly state the world is ruined by global warming, it is eye-opening to see that the planet and atmosphere we call home could one day turn against us. Global warming has increased in vast increments in the last decade.

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

The Science

Science paints a clear picture: Climate change is happening; it is caused mostly by humans; and it creates many serious and damaging effects. The primary cause of climate change is human activities - like driving cars, creating electricity, and cutting down forests - not natural changes in the climate. These human activities release gases into the atmosphere called greenhouse gases, which slowly warm the planet, creating climate change.

The climate is very complex, and there are still some things we don't know about it. But through centuries of studies and experiments, we've been able to create a strong understanding of how the system works, and how humans are changing it.

The Greenhouse Effect

Imagine a greenhouse made of glass used to grow plants, like flowers and vegetables. The greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm even when it's cold outside because it traps heat from the sun. The earth's atmosphere acts like a greenhouse: When light from the sun passes through the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the Earth's surface to heat it, but some heat is also trapped in our atmosphere by certain gases. These heat-trapping gases are called greenhouse gases, and they act like a blanket, keeping the earth warm. This greenhouse effect is a natural process that makes the planet comfortable to live.

But human activities are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. One type of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has reached a level in our atmosphere that the Earth hasn't seen for more than 400,000 years! Plants, soils, and the ocean can absorb carbon dioxide, but they can't keep up with all the extra greenhouse gases that we have been releasing. And some greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time, from hundreds to even thousands of years. All these gases are making things hotter than natural, so we need to stop producing them to avoid climate change.

Weather vs. Climate

Weather refers to the state of the atmosphere in a short period of time, like minutes or days. It includes lots of things we are familiar with, like temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind speeds. The weather changes every day, but the climate is much more consistent because it measures the patterns of weather over long periods of time (at least several decades). Let's say you were going to visit Florida for a few days in June. You would expect it to be hot and humid, because that's what the climate of Florida is usually like in June. It might turn out to be hot during your trip, or it could rain or be cloudy. All of those are examples of possible weather during those days.

The Greenhouse Effect Explained

Where do greenhouse gases come from?

Up until about 150 years ago, humans did not produce many greenhouse gases. That changed as the human population grew, we cut down forests to make way for cities and farms, and important inventions and technology, like in-home electricity and cars, transformed the way we live.

These inventions and technologies need energy. Some types of energy called fossil fuels - like coal, oil, and natural gas - have become important sources of that energy. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We call the release of these gases emissions.

Today in the United States, electricity and transportation (cars, trucks, and planes) are responsible for almost 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The rest comes from agriculture, industry - such as factories that make products we use - and from energy we use in our homes and businesses.
Learn more about U.S. greenhouse gas emissions here.
Greenhouse Gases

The most common types of greenhouse gases are:

Carbon Dioxide (CO ₂): Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas created by human activities. It makes up 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere when fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) are burned for electricity and transportation, and because of other processes like making cement. Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored when it is absorbed by plants, soils, animals, and the ocean as part of the carbon cycle.
Learn more about how energy emissions are controlled in the United States.

Methane (CH ₄): Methane is the next most common greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. It makes up 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most methane emissions come from raising livestock (like cows), but methane is also released when coal, natural gas, and oil are produced and transported, and when organic waste (like food) decays in landfills. Methane is a stronger gas than carbon dioxide, meaning it creates more warming, but it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time.
Learn more about how industrial greenhouse gases like methane are controlled in the United States.

Nitrous Oxide (N ₂ O): Most nitrous oxide is emitted by agricultural activities, like applying fertilizer, but it also comes from industrial activities, burning fossil fuels, and other sources. It makes up 6 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions. Nitrous oxide is even more powerful than methane and carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6): Try saying these gases three times fast! They're called "fluorinated gases" for short. These gases combined make up only 3 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That may sound small, but they are very important to solving climate change because they stay in the atmosphere for a very long time (sometimes for thousands of years!) and are much more powerful warmers than all other gases. These gases are made by humans and are used to cool our refrigerators, freezers, buildings and cars.

U.S. Greenhouse Gases by Gas Type and Sector, 2021

Impacts of a Changing Climate

Because of increases in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are rising. Each of the past four decades has been warmer than the previous one. 2016 and 2020 were the warmest years on record, and the six warmest years have all been since 2010.
Learn more about the relationship between extreme weather and climate change.
The following charts show how emissions and temperatures have gone up since 1900, and how they could continue to change in the future. If we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases, the temperature of the Earth will rise a lot - maybe as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Even if we reduce our emissions right now, the temperature of the Earth will still rise slightly, but we might be able to keep the rise below 2 degrees Celsius (or about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Two degrees might not sound like much, but scientists agree that even that small amount of warming can have large impacts on humans and the environment.

Past and Projected Changes in Carbon Emissions and Temperature

Rising global temperatures affect many things, like extreme weather, human health, food supply, and ecosystems. These impacts are already being felt today, and groups like the poor, elderly, and others are especially vulnerable.
Impacts of climate change include:

Heat waves. Heat waves are long periods of time with temperatures that are hotter than normal. As the Earth warms, more areas will be at risk for hotter and more common extreme heat waves. Learn more about the link between climate change and extreme heat.

Heavy precipitation and storms. Heavy precipitation - like rain or snow - is becoming more common in many locations, which can lead to flooding and other dangerous weather. As seas warm, coastal storms like hurricanes are also becoming more frequent and damaging. Learn more about the link between climate change and heavy precipitation and hurricanes.

Sea level rise. Sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1880 because glaciers and ice sheets are melting and seas are warming. Scientists predict that, with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, sea levels could rise by as much as 1.8 feet this century, which would harm communities living on islands and near coasts. These rises could be even higher if glaciers in Greenland or Antarctica melt very quickly.

Threats to habitats and animals. Warming temperatures, rising seas, melting ice, and other impacts of climate change can threaten the habitat of many plants and animals. Some species are moving to new habitats, but others may struggle to adapt and become endangered or extinct.

Ocean acidification. Extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic. This can make it difficult for corals and organisms that form shells to survive, which can create problems in the food chain for other sea animals.

Wildfires. These are fires that burn large amounts of forests and brush. When they are not controlled, wildfires can destroy homes and be deadly. The number of large wildfires and the length of the season when they're most likely and threatening have been increasing in recent years. Find out how climate change will worsen wildfire conditions.

Drought. A drought is a period with little rain and not enough water. Global warming will increase the risk of drought in some places and make it harder to grow food. Learn about the links between climate change and drought.

How can you help?

Even though climate change sounds scary, we still have time to avoid some of the worst impacts. Everyone can play a part, including government, businesses, and you.

There are two main things we need to do:

The first is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. By choosing cleaner ways to power our homes, offices, and cars, and being more efficient and less wasteful, we can produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

There are lot of things you can do to help, like turning off the lights when you leave a room to reduce the electricity you use, walking or biking where you can, or planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. If you do any of these things, make sure you communicate with other people (like your family, teachers, and friends) about why you're doing them! Communication can inspire more people to change their habits and help save the climate.

Look for more ideas on what we can do together and individually.

The second is to prepare for life in a changing climate. Even if we could stop creating greenhouse gases tomorrow, the climate would still change some because of our past emissions. So we need to make sure our buildings, roads, businesses, and communities are ready for the climate changes that we can't avoid. This includes things like helping cities on the coast prepare for floods, preventing wildfires in our forests, and more.

Learn how communities and companies are preparing.

The power of YOUth

Around the world, young people are learning about climate change and taking action. In fact, young people are some of the most important voices in the climate movement because you can inspire powerful people to create a better future for you.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a politician to make a difference in the fight against climate change. Whatever your talents are, there's a role for you to play. Some young people, like Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and others, are leading the Fridays for Future movement to tell their governments to create strong policies to fight climate change. Other students are inventing new technologies to cut emissions and reduce waste. And others are using their creativity to bring awareness to climate change by writing music and creating art.

You can also look for ways to get involved in your community - maybe you can help your school set up a composting program to keep food waste out of the landfill. Maybe your synagogue or mosque needs help switching to energy efficient lights. Maybe you can write a letter to your local government to encourage your community to prepare for extreme weather or wildfires. Everyone can do something to fight climate change.

Check out our Educator Resources page for activities you can do to learn more about how climate change works and how you can be a part of the solution.
C2ES thanks the Alcoa Foundation for its support, which allowed us to develop our Climate Classroom content. As a fully independent organization, C2ES is solely responsible for its positions, programs, and publications.

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

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This is part six of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.
Traveling 4,000 miles to look at plastic garbage on the beach everywhere can be hard on the senses. Yeah, the problem is really, really bad. It's overwhelming and somewhere right now an albatross is dying because someone littered a plastic bottle cap or a plastic lighter. How does one find some hope, especially when the exponent on ocean trash is growing? Answer: Learn from our children.

Jacob Hassett, Raphael Mawrence, Vallerie Whacker, and Kou Collins are some of the already distinguished members of the Team Marine movement. Team marine is a grassroots, student-run organization that looks at ocean issues at their core and offers solutions to battle the problem. Their main initiative focuses on plastic pollution and the group does outreach, education, cleanup, new media presentations, and even lobbies for better policy. They've developed a mantra: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Research, Re-educate, Reinvest, Refuel, Regrow, and Rethink. Commenting on the inadequacy of the three R model, Hasset says, "It's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle on steroids and meant to look at every aspect of the problem."

I met Team Marine at their home beach in Santa Monica while conducting a beach cleanup. What I found was inspiring: These kids actually wanted to be here, it wasn't just some after school requirement. They don't just pick up trash, they investigate and quantify it to better understand what kinds of plastic garbage are most prevalent-data which is useful when looking at what kinds of consumer products have the greatest impact on our oceans and how best to target pollution sources in campaigns. As we sit on a life guard stand after the cleanup, I ask the four about their fears and what they perceive to be the problem. Each kid enumerated valid concerns about consumer habits, corporate greed, and the usual laundry list of societal ills, but what resounded was a feeling of being confounded. They're not naïve, but they simply can't understand why so many people behave the way they do, especially when confronted with the ill that behavior causes. This point, I think, is where many activists lose their ambition. In the real world, logic and truth don't necessarily win. The kids understand this, but they don't see the future with cynical eyes; they see the future as one of their own making. "Eventually we will take over," Whacker says with Obama-like confidence.

I believe them already-the body of work Team Marine has created is impressive, rivaling many well funded nonprofits even though their organization is entirely student-based. Mawrence, with the help of his teammates, created a 14-minute film (called "The 10 R's") that's better than much of the work that more established groups use for their outreach and education. Besides beach cleanups and film making, Collins tells me that they develop course curriculum for other schools and train other students on the issue. Hassett is proud of their accomplishments thus far, "We have been written up in over 150 newspapers, have been on Nickelodeon, and have ultimately reached nine million people." Not bad for a bunch of kids, most of whom can't even vote yet. Check out Team Marine's film and a whole list of accolades at their website, teammarine.org.
Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next, Teenage WasteFans Part two: LA's Environmental Charter School.

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Teenage Waste Fans, Part One: Santa Monica's Team Marine

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This is part six of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here. Traveling 4,000 miles to look at plastic garbage on the beach everywhere can be hard on the senses. Yeah, the problem is really, really bad. It's o...

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Alex Lin was a boy who was just reading the newspaper one day. He read an article about something called e-waste. He learned that it is the waste generated as people upgrade electronic devices. When people are done with things like computers, phones, mp3 players, etc. and throw them away, that's e-waste. He also learned that e-waste is dangerous to the environment. Yet this was not something that was not widely known. Alex decided to do something about it.

To help stop e-waste, Alex got help from his community service group, the Westerly Innovations Network (WIN). WIN spread the message about e-waste and gave people a chance to recycling and refurbish it instead. Before long, Alex and WIN were saving thousands of pounds of e-waste from being thrown away! They helped recycle e-waste and refurbish computers to donate to those in need in America and in other countries. Alex and WIN are helping save the environment, one old computer at a time! This video tells all about Alex's great efforts.

Additional Resources:

Here is an article about Alex and his efforts.

Here is an interview with Alex.

Click here for more InspireMyKids stories about the environment.

Find great books in our store, like Acting for Nature, about how children can help the environment.

This video is about recycling e-waste.

Topics for Discussion:

Think about all the electronics families have. How often do they get replaced? Where do the electronics go after the family is done with them?

One of Alex's inspirations is the quote "Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something." Are there any "brick walls" in your life that you can get past if you just work harder on them?

Take Action:

Talk to family and friends about the danger of e-waste and tell them to recycle their old electronics!

Check out the Environmental Protection Agency website for information about how you can help recycle e-waste!

Teacher Features:

Here is a link to a Critical Reading Skills worksheet that you can use for elementary school students.

Here is a link to a Critical Reading Skills worksheet that you can use for middle school students.

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Alex Lin - Turning E-Waste Into E-Treasure - InspireMyKids

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Alex Lin was a boy who was just reading the newspaper one day. He read an article about something called e-waste. He learned that it is the waste

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Our Theory of change is to promote youth leadership in the environmental movement, especially among marginalized groups, by utilizing education, training, community building, and direct action. We work to center marginalized, tokenized, and underserved communities' voices, needs, and work in the climate justice movement by providing educational resources, micro-grants, network connections, public speaking opportunities, training, campaigns, partnerships, & mentorship to inspire intergenerational leadership. Earth Guardians' foundation is based on centering the experiences, knowledge, and voices of youth and other underserved communities, and we believe a global shift towards centering these perspectives is the key to healing the climate and environmental crisis.

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Our Theory of change is to promote youth leadership in the environmental movement, especially among marginalized groups, by utilizing education, training, community building, and direct action. We work to center marginalized, tokenized, and underserved communities' voices, needs, and work in the climate justice movement by providing educational resources, micro-grants, network connections, public speaking opportunities, training, campaigns, partnerships, & mentorship to inspire intergenerational leadership.

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Earth Guardians Founder's speech at age 6

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Earth Guardians Founder's speech at age 6

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Xiuhtezcatl 6 years old Speaking at National Global Warming Event

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A history of flooding in the sinking city of Venice - in pictures

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The Queen of the Adriatic is sliding into the sea at a rate of 2mm per year, but life for Venitians goes on as normal as the deluge washes through the historic cityInside Venice's bid to hold back the tide

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

detailed answer

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

"Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

References

References
Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner

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Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. How do we know it's happening? Here's the evidence.

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4ocean | The Global Movement to Reduce Plastic + Trash in Our Oceans

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Join the movement to clean up our oceans with 4ocean. Go plastic neutral, buy a bracelet, fund a cleanup, and become a part of the solution.

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Links are live in the text set; some links no longer work

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Links are live in the text set; some links no longer work

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The kit ($30, with resources for up to 30 individuals) is designed to encourage coming together for a common goal: to make stronger connections among community members to help create a healthier environment for all and prevent bullying.
Request a Kit
Beyond Sticks & Stones: How to Help Your Child Address Bullying

This 70-page comprehensive guide ($10) offers prevention strategies for children, and the information and practical tools parents and other adults need to take action to address and prevent bullying.
Order a Copy
Take the Pledge

Take the Pledge

Pledge to treat others with kindness and be more accepting and inclusive.

Kids Against Bullying website

Kids Against Bullying
website

Innovative, educational website for elementary school students to learn, engage in activities, and be inspired to advocate for self and others.

Teens Against Bullying website

Teens Against Bullying
website

A website created by and for middle and high school students, with ideas to address bullying, be heard, and lead change in an important social cause.

Questions Answered

Questions Answered

You asked, we answered! Response options include images, 60-second snapshot, longer articles, video and poll.

Students With Disabilities

Students With Disabilities

A comprehensive overview of addressing and preventing bullying and harassment of students with disabilities.

ALL IN

Free online, year round toolkit with a new classroom lesson each week! Create environments in which each student is INcluded, INvested and INvolved.

i was bullied in 8th grade and now i have a lot of kids sticking up for me. especially my friends i never told anybody but my friends did and i went to the police.
i will recomend you going to a teacher or councler or teacher.

david scot, 16, new york groton

I care because if others are getting bullied you can feel if you were how hard it would be. I've never bullied but I know how it feels if it was me and I have met people who bullied and it is just so wrong

allya, 12, newcastle

Hey! I'm from Spain and i was bullied when i was seven in school and at this sumer since one month ago...
Two of this persons was my ''best friends'' and hurted so much, maybe still hurting me even i know that i have to be strong.
indirects on twitter, leaving me alone, talking wrong to other abot me, callings...
Until  i say STOP, now i know i'm strong even i have to be alone, i know i can't, even hurts me. And i hope that the people who had or have bullying try to be strong :)

ivanelly, 16, Spain/Europe

I am So proud to have been apart of this entire project. Bringing people together for a greater cause is just something you can't forget. After seeing this website get so big,so fast. I can finally say that I was apart of something wayyy bigger than myself. I am just greatful it's reached this many people and become a tool for people.

Chelese, 16, MN

I've been bullied for several years. Infact I still am, and it's just not verbally, but also on the internet. Words DO hurt. I've been bullied for my size, they way I look, and just being diffrent. Pledgeing can make a diffrence even though it may not seem like it, but it does. Stand up for yourself. Understand that everyone is not gonna be your friend, so you don't need everyone to make your life happy.  Smile, cause your diffrent. and being diffrent is what makes a person a better person!

Katie, 13, Ky

I care about this because!
I have been through alot on my life , and I have being call weird , crazy , stupid .

And you need to be free , dont let no one , to destroy your self -esteem
you are gorgeous , free the way you are.

It's not your fault , But if you have being bullied
PLEASE FIND HELP.

we need to be against bullying
-x

v

Veronica Michelle, 17, Puerto Rico

Carmen's Corner

A series of six educational videos designed for young audiences. It features characters from PACER's Kids Against Bullying puppet program, highlights key concepts of bullying prevention, and promotes social-emotional learning. Educator guide and student worksheets accompany each video.
View the Latest Video
Become a Champion Against Bullying

Join the hundreds of nonprofits, schools, and community groups that collaborate directly with PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center by using and sharing our bullying prevention resources in their communities.
Submit your organization
Survey Monkey Contributes to NBPC

Sign up and you will receive surveys by e-mail from SurveyMonkey customers who need your opinion. For every survey you take, SurveyMonkey will donate 50 cents to PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, plus you'll get a chance to win $100 in an instant win game.
Join Survey Monkey in supporting PACER's NBPC

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PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center

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unites, engages, and educates kids, teens, parents and communities nationwide to address bullying through creative, relevant, and interactive resources.

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Keaton Jones, 11: I Hope My Viral Anti-Bullying Video Helps Other Kids | TODAY

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Emily-Anne Rigal was recently ranked as one of Newsweek 's 150 Most Fearless Women in the World. She's received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award from President Obama. And Lady Gaga has called the 19-year old her hero.

What's the best job for you?

Use The Muse to find a job at a company with a culture you love. Select the career path that aligns with you:

How many years of experience do you have?

What company benefits are most important to you?

Calculating your job matches...

So, what is the college student doing that's making such a splash?

Rigal is the founder of We Stop Hate, nonprofit dedicated to ending bullying by raising teens' self-esteem. Through posts on YouTube and other social media channels, the site gives bullying victims from all corners of the world a chance to open up about their experiences in a judgment-free zone.

In honor of National Bullying Prevention Month, we spoke with Rigal about her efforts fighting back against bullying and starting an organization at age 16.

What was your motivation to found We Stop Hate?

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied so badly that I had to switch schools. At my new school, I developed a new group of friends who became an amazing source of encouragement. The happier and more supported I felt, the more I wanted to help others feel that same way. So I started posting videos on YouTube to stand up for other kids who were bullied to give all of us a voice and provide a source of support.

You started the organization when you were just in high school-which couldn't have been easy! What were the greatest obstacles you faced?

The biggest challenge that I faced was not having a road map of what to do next and having to figure it all out along the way. The two things I knew when I started We Stop Hate was that I loved YouTube as a medium and that I had a real passion for spreading this message, since it was so personal to me.

I remember thinking, "Can I start this organization? I'm only 16!" Now, seeing what has happened and what the organization has grown into has been amazing.

We all know bullying doesn't necessarily stop after finishing school. What advice do you have for professionals who may be dealing with bullying in the workplace?

First, you have to realize that bullies have their own issues, insecurities, and agendas. What they say is not what matters, it's how you interpret and react to the situation. Having a small group of co-workers who are supportive and can help you keep focused on the work is important.

What is your top tip for people who are having a tough time at work to boost their confidence back up?

Do esteemable acts! Whether it's complimenting someone or making a small gesture that can boost another person's confidence, it will in return change how you are feeling about yourself for the better!

How can others help you on your mission with We Stop Hate?

I am really excited for the next phase of We Stop Hate, in which we are taking We Stop Hate into schools and starting Anti-Bullying Clubs so that kids can have that in-person support.

We also just kicked off a partnership with The Body Shop Foundation whereby proceeds from the sale of the company's Dragon Fruit Lip Butter will go to three nonprofit organizations-one of which being We Stop Hate. The organization with the most votes gets the largest amount of proceeds, so we have our fingers crossed! To vote, visit The Body Shop on Facebook.

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Emily-Anne Rigal: The 19-Year-Old Who's Banishing Bullying

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Ranked as one of Newsweek's "150 Most Fearless Women in the World," Emily-Anne Rigal is taking a stand against bullying.

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I used to go to an all-girls school and one of the biggest problems I faced there was the never-ending bullying I remember days where I come home crying.

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Bullies and Bystanders: What Teens Say - National Bullying Prevention Center

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Bullying is a fact of life for many kids and teens; research suggests almost half of teens have experienced bullying online or on their cell phone in the past year. But by standing up, instead of standing by, kids and teens can help end bullying.

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If you or someone you know is being bullied, there are things you can do to keep yourself and others safe from bullying.

If you or someone you know is involved in cyberbullying, it is important to document and report the behavior.

If you have done everything you can to resolve the situation and nothing has worked, or someone is in immediate danger, there are ways to get help.

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If you have done everything you can to resolve the situation and nothing has worked, or someone is in immediate danger, there are ways to get help. Find out more at StopBullying.gov.

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Jr. Scholastic: The Global Problem of Cyberbullying

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Jr. Scholastic: The Global Problem of Cyberbullying

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Jr. Scholastic, December 10, 2018

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Being threatened or picked on via social media or text message is an issue for teens around the world, according to new data. This graph shows the percentage of parents in select nations who say their child has been cyberbullied so far this year. How does the United States compare with other countries? Does anything about the data surprise you?

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Being threatened or picked on via social media or text message is an issue for teens around the world, according to new data. This graph shows the percentage of parents in select nations who say their child has been cyberbullied so far this year. How does the United States compare with other countries?

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Teens and Technology - Promoting Positive Use While Preventing Misuse - Cyberbullying Research Center

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Presentation for the Palm Beach County School Health Advisory Council

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See article links after the featured article (bottom of page).

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When most people think about the stereotypical bully, they often imagine a loner that lashes out because of poor self-esteem. Or maybe they picture a big, mean kid who uses physical force, makes threats or calls people names to get his way. Although these descriptions are accurate, they paint an incomplete picture of the typical middle school bully. In fact, research shows that the most popular and influential kids also bully others.

Trends in Middle School and Early Teen Bullying

Although bullying can start as early as preschool, by the time kids reach middle school, it has often become an accepted part of the school. In fact, bullying increases around fifth and sixth grade and continues to get worse until around ninth grade.

Bullying occurs more often in the middle school and early teen years because kids are transitioning from being a child to an adolescent. They have a strong desire to be accepted, to make friends and to be part of a group. As a result, they experience peer pressure and want to look and act like their peers.​

This desire for acceptance leads to bullying because kids are intensely aware of what it takes to fit in. As a result, they easily spot others who do not fit the accepted norm and zero in on that. Kids tend to bully others who look, act, talk or dress differently.﻿

Bullying also is a way to fit into a clique or the cool crowd. Kids who are not popular or do not have a high social status may bully others as a way to gain power and social acceptance. They may also bully others to counter the bullying that is directed towards them.

Still, this figure may not reflect the complete picture. Researchers have found that about half of all bullying incidents go unreported.

Bullying victims often suffer academically. Their grades may drop and they may miss school with health problems like headaches, stomachaches, and difficulty sleeping. When bullying occurs over a long period of time, this leads to lowered self-esteem, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and even suicidal thoughts. What's more, depression and self-esteem issues caused by bullying can last into adulthood.

Meanwhile, kids who witness bullying struggle with anxiety and may fear that they will become the next target. They also feel guilty for not stepping in and helping the person being bullied. As a result, these feelings distract them from schoolwork and lead to poor academic performance.﻿﻿﻿﻿

Even bullies are affected. They are more likely to display antisocial behavior and violence later in life. They also are prone to alcohol and drug abuse. And research shows that bullies are more likely to commit criminal acts. In fact, research shows that bullies are four times more likely than non-bullies to be convicted of crimes by age 24. And 60% of bullies will have at least one criminal conviction in their lifetime.﻿﻿﻿﻿

When it comes to addressing middle school bullying, parents and teachers must think long-term. Short-term solutions like punishment, conflict resolution and counseling will not solve the problem. Instead, educators must foster a school climate that discourages bullying. They also need to provide students with a variety of ways to report bullying. Comprehensive bullying prevention programs are the best place to start.

When bullying does occur, school administrators need to respond quickly, consistently and firmly. The idea is to deter bullying by having steep consequences for the behavior. Students will continue to bully others if nothing significant happens. Additionally, bullying escalates over time if it is not addressed.

Meanwhile, parents of bullies need to focus on spending quality time with their children. They also must set firm limits, institute consequences and support school discipline when bullying occurs. And parents of bullying victims should help their children report incidents and ensure that the issue is resolved. Counseling also might be needed to help the victim regain self-confidence.

Remember, children cannot handle bullying on their own. They need help from school staff, their parents and sometimes even the community. Be sure you understand the issue and are doing your part.

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How Middle School Bullying Can Be Stopped

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When most people think about the stereotypical bully, they often imagine a loner that lashes out because of poor self-esteem. Or maybe they picture a big, mean kid who uses physical force, makes threats or calls people names to get his way. Although these descriptions are accurate, they paint an incomplete picture of the typical middle school bully.

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There are many different types of bullying that can be experienced by children and adults alike, some are obvious to spot while others can be more subtle. The different types of bullying that we look at below are some of the ways that bullying could be happening.

Physical bullying

Physical bullying includes hitting, kicking, tripping, pinching and pushing or damaging property. Physical bullying causes both short term and long term damage.

Verbal bullying

Verbal bulling includes name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, homophobic or racist remarks, or verbal abuse. While verbal bullying can start off harmless, it can escalate to levels which start affecting the individual target.

Social bullying

Social bullying, sometimes referred to as covert bullying, is often harder to recognise and can be carried out behind the bullied person's back. It is designed to harm someone's social reputation and / or cause humiliation.

Social bullying can include:

lying and spreading rumours

negative facial or physical gestures, menacing or contemptuous looks

playing nasty jokes to embarrass and humiliate

mimicking unkindly

encouraging others to social exclude someone

damaging someone's social reputation or social acceptance.

Cyber bullying

The Cyber Bullying Research Centre defines cyber bullying as: Intentional and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, phones, and other electronic devices.

Cyber bullying can be overt or covert bullying behaviours using digital technologies including hardware such as computers and smartphones, and software such as social media, instant messaging, texts, websites and other online platforms.

Cyber bullying can happen at any time. It can be in public or in private and sometimes only known to the target and the person bullying.

Cyber bullying can include:

abusive or hurtful texts, emails or posts, images or videos

deliberately excluding others online

nasty gossip or rumours

imitating others online or using their log-in.

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Types of bullying - National Center Against Bullying

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There are many different types of bullying that can be experienced by children and adults alike, some are obvious to spot while others can be more subtle. The different types of bullying that we look at below are some of the ways that bullying could be happening.

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Starter Set: Many of these links are dead. Check the date of each source.

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Starter Set: Many of these links are dead. Check the date of each source.

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Nine stories made by and about young people making a difference

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Teen producers find and tell stories of young people making a difference in their communities for this special PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs feature.

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So You Want to Be an Activist? 8 Ways to Get Involved in Causes You Care About

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Do you think that to be an activist you have do extreme things to demonstrate your protest? Think again, here are some tips on how anyone can be an activist for the cause they care about.

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Teenagers get a lot of bad rap for being lazy, self-centred and making poor decisions.

Sure there are some teens like that, but there are also a lot of adults who could be described the same way.

And there are some young people who have done remarkable things before the age of 20, which many of us would be proud to have achieved in a lifetime.

These young people are seeing the problems in the world and doing something to change them.

They are inventing, campaigning and challenging what's around them to make a brighter future.

Here are six incredible people under 20 who have already helped change the world.

Malala Yousafzai, 18

You should of heard of Malala Yousafzai by now, but her remarkable story is worth telling again.

Born in Pakistan, Malala inherited her father's love of education. Like him, she became a campaigner against the Taliban's efforts to stop girls going to school.

In 2009, she started writing for the BBC Urdu service about her concerns in the area.

She began to get death threats as she received international recognition for her efforts to promote education in the region.

Malala was shot in the head on her way home from school by members of the Taliban in 2013.

She survived the attack, which received worldwide condemnation and sparked protests across Pakistan. In the aftermath, millions signed a right to education petition which led to Pakistan's first Right To Free and Compulsory Education Bill.

She became the youngest recipient of Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 and still campaigns for girls' right to education around the world with the Malala Fund.

MORE : Malala Yousafzai becomes the youngest person ever to accept a Nobel Peace Prize

Easton LaChapelle, 17

Easton LaChappelle made his first robotic hand at the age of 14, using LEGO and fishing wire.

Later, he was further inspired when he met a seven-year-old girl at a science fair. She had a prosthetic hand that only opened and closed, but still cost $80,000 (around £52,000).

He made it his mission to help people like that little girl and decided to create a functional prosthetic limb that cost under $1,000 (around £650).

Using 3D printing technology he's already developed an affordable and functional prototype.

So impressive is his work in the field, that NASA asked him to work on their Robonaut team.

That's right, he's 17 and has already worked for NASA.

He's also a really nice guy because, instead of keeping the tech under wraps and making a load of money, he's shared it with the world so everyone can share, use and build on the design to help make it better.

You can find out more in his Ted Talk.

Jazz Jennings, 15

Jazz Jennings was assigned male at birth, but for as long as she can remember has known she was a girl.

With a supportive family behind her, Jazz has been able to live as the girl she always knew she was.

Which would be a wonderful story in itself, but Jazz has also been an active LGBT campaigner, talking about her experience as a trans child.

And she now has her own reality show, I am Jazz, detailing her life as a trans teen, giving hope and inspiring trans teens all over the world.

She also thinks outside her own experience and has set up the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation, which helps give emotional and financial support to transgender youth, many of whom are homeless.

MORE : This Tumblr post perfectly sums up why it should be easy to accept transgender people

Mary Grace Henry, 18

When Mary Grace Henry was just 12-years-old she decided to change the life of an underprivileged girl by funding her education.

She asked for a sewing machine for her birthday and taught herself how to make reversible headbands to sell at school.

Soon, she made enough to put one girl through education. But she didn't stop there.

Since then she has made thousands of hair accessories and has sent 66 girls in Kenya, Uganda, Paraguay and Haiti to school with her programme, Reverse The Course.

When she won a World of Children award, she said: 'Educating a girl can reverse the course of her life, change the course of a community...and a country.'

Yash Gupta, 19

When Yash Gupta broke his glasses one day in a Taekwondo class, he realised how much he relied them on.

With his glasses repaired, he read online that more than 12 million children do not have the corrective eyewear they need.

Having struggled for a short while without them, he couldn't comprehend how some kids went through their whole childhood without seeing properly.

He decided to help bring that number down and, at the age of just 14, he set up Sight Learning.

The organisation collects used glasses and donates them to children who need them.

They've now given more than $1 million worth of glasses to children around the world in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, and India.

Anoyara Khatun, 18

Anoyara Khatun was forced to do domestic work when her father died, when she was just five-years-old.

At the age of 12 she was sold to a tout and trafficked to do domestic labour for other families.

But Anoyara's spirit was not broken and, after returning back to her home in West Bengal at 13-years-old, she campaigned against child labour and trafficking with a local organisation.

Her efforts have helped hundreds of trafficked children from the region return to their families.

She has also helped stop 35 cases of early marriage by negotiation and pressure on the local government.

Her remarkable work has now been internationally recognised and she has gone on to talk to the UN about the horrific circumstances children like her face every day.

MORE : 'World's most random good samaritan' leaves kind gift for fellow driver

MORE : These women bled onto their white trousers to campaign against tampon tax

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Six people under 20 who've already helped change the world

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There are some young people who have done remarkable things before the age of 20, which many of us would be proud to have achieved in a lifetime, here are six of them.

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Our country has a long history of youth-led movements that brought about significant social change. Young people have advocated for child labor laws, voting rights, civil rights, school desegregation, immigration reform and LGBTQ rights. Through their actions, the world has changed. Because young people often have the desire, energy and idealism to do something about the injustice they see in the world, they are powerful agents for change.

Our work in education helps students examine implicit and overt forms of bias and discrimination and as a result, educators often feel a responsibility to provide students with the structure, opportunity and tools to do something about the injustice they see in the world. Transforming students' feelings of anger, sadness and hopelessness into concrete actions that can make the world more equitable is a vital teaching opportunity. Voting is one way to get your voice heard but there are a myriad of ways young people can make difference.

Below are ideas for bringing social activism into the classroom and outside of the school walls. These are lifelong skills and attitudes that teach students about citizenship and that there is something you can do when faced with injustice. The strategies can be acted upon individually, organized together as a group and young people can join with a larger effort that is taking place locally or nationally. The tactics also bring opportunities for students to read, write, research, think critically and talk with each other.

1. Educate others

As students learn about an issue they care about, their natural instinct is to share their new knowledge and insight with others. Encourage this by providing live and online opportunities for them to teach others, including their classmates, younger students and adults in their lives. This can include school assemblies, community forums, teach-ins, peer-to-peer programs and social media forums. Include opportunities to share the information in interesting ways (written, art, theatre, etc.) and they should also give other students the chance to explore their own thoughts and feelings about the topics. Youth who want to know more may be more likely to learn from another young person.

2. Advocate for legislation

Change comes about in a variety of ways and one of these is through legislative change. For example, the primary advocates for the DREAM Act have been young people known as the DREAMers, who have a personal investment in the issue. With your students, provide opportunities for them to learn about the history and impact of legislative change like the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Help them analyze proposed legislation in relation to their goals and assess the extent to which it will have an impact. They can study research that examines the extent to which legislation impacted injustice. Have students push for legislation by working with other groups with similar goals, building coalitions and writing letters to their legislators to advocate for specific local, state and federal laws.

3. Run for office

Student government provides a chance for students to have a positive impact in their school and learn about how government works on a small scale. It gives youth the experience to reflect on and consolidate their own positions on important school issues, learn how to communicate those positions, build relationships with others and become a good listener in understanding constituent (i.e. other students) needs. It is also good practice for the future in getting involved in politics. Elected positions are not the only way to get involved; students can also become involved in groups like the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), peer training or other task forces that are working to improve their school.

4. Protest

Marching in the streets enables students to express themselves and publicly convey what's happening while meeting and connecting with other people who feel passionate about the same issues. Demonstrations and protests can be uplifting and empowering and can help students feel like they are part of a larger movement. In preparing to attend a protest, have students consider what their goals are in attending the event and think through what message they want to convey. They can create posters, prepare songs or chants and practice symbolism that conveys their thoughts and feelings. They should consider whether they want to do individually or organize a group of students from their school to go together, make transportation arrangements and ensure that safety concerns are addressed.

5. Create a public awareness campaign that includes social media

There are many ways to develop or participate in a public awareness campaign Educating people about an issue in order to inspire change can take place in school, in the community and online. Creating signs and posters using art and photography can be very effective as can videos and live speeches; these are all useful skills that young people can learn. In recent years, the use of social media to raise public awareness has been largely driven by young people and is a useful vehicle for raising issues and effecting change. The use of blogs, social media sites like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, videos, memes and online petitions are just a few examples of how words travel fast online and can incite quick and effective action.

6. Do a survey about the issue and share the results

Understanding what people think and why is helpful in bringing about social change. Students can learn more about public opinions on issues by participating in surveys themselves and also reading about them. They can also create their own surveys. Using paper surveys or online surveys, students can gain insight into how other students in their school or the larger community feel about an issue. This is useful in organizing others and addressing their concerns and needs; at the same time it builds math, critical thinking and interpersonal skills.

7. Raise money

Raising money is a concrete way for students to contribute to community or national efforts to address injustice. From organizing a bake sale around a local issue to fundraising on a larger scale for a national concern like racial disparities in the criminal justice system, raising money helps students feel like they are part of something bigger and backs the cause. Fundraisers can include selling items, auctions, entertainment, sponsoring events and more.

8. Write a letter to a company

Students can reach out to companies or organizations that they feel have done something unfair or biased. This is something do-able that can make a difference. For example, if students want to change the ways toy companies use gender role stereotypes to package and sell their toys or games, have them write letters to toy or video game companies and explain why they think their practices are biased. In crafting a well-written letter with evidence and a clear statement of what needs to change, students learn useful skills in persuasion and at the same time, it has a made a difference.

9. Engage in community service

In addition to organizing and advocating on a large scale, students should be encouraged to engage in community service on issues they care about. For example, if they are concerned about the stereotypes and violence directed at homeless people, in addition to advocating for legislation or attending a demonstration, students can also donate their time to help out in a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. Serving the people who are directly impacted gives young people firsthand knowledge of the situation, deepens their understanding and builds empathy.

10. Get the press involved

Help students understand that bringing publicity to their issue amplifies the message, gets more people concerned and potentially has a greater impact. They can write a press release, do an interview, write an op-ed in their local paper or invite a reporter to see what they are doing and write something about it. This sharpens their own message and serves to bring that message to a larger group of people.

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Our country has a long history of youth-led movements that brought about significant social change. Young people have advocated for child labor laws, voting rights, civil rights, school desegregation, immigration reform and LGBTQ rights. Through their actions, the world has changed.

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You would be forgiven for thinking we live inside a huge, literal steaming pile of garbage. The American political landscape continues to grow increasingly frightening each day, as the world is forced to respond to an ever-increasing series of threats. From raging wildfires on the California coast to Europe recording its worst flooding in decades, environmental crises continue to rampage across the globe. And with police brutality and systemic racism across smultiple communities adding to this chaotic climate, times are extremely tough. So it would be easy to resign yourself to these discouraging realities, especially if you're young. After all, young people are made fun of for every aspect of how we live. How could anyone really take us seriously if we tried to stand up for what we believe in?

But today's young people are no longer taking the guff from anyone-let alone the dinosaurs responsible for how they are living. While those dumpster fires rage on, the indomitable spirit of Gen-Z and younger millennials have made everyone take these matters seriously. Complex is excited to highlight these young voices who are advocating, fighting, and actively taking on the powers that be to stand up for what we all should believe in.

All it takes is one idea and the right mix of determination and willpower to effect change at the local level. Start with one thing you're passionate about then find small, local ways to organize and find solutions to the problem. That's what the 32 people on this list did-some starting at 6 years old. They're here to prove that no matter the obstacle, and no matter your age, you can work hard to leave behind a world that is just a little better than when you found it.

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32 Young Activists Who Are Changing the World

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You would be forgiven for thinking we live inside a huge, literal steaming pile of garbage. The American political landscape continues to grow increasingly frightening each day, as the world is forced to respond to an ever-increasing series of threats.

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Starter Set: Many of these links are dead. Check the date of each source.

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Starter Set: Many of these links are dead. Check the date of each source.

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Melissa L. Kauffman, Group Editorial Director Catster/Dogster

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Meet the Teen Animal Activist Who Took Two Shelter Dogs to Prom - Dogster

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Dogster is a publication where dog lovers come together to get the latest expert advice about dog behavior, health, news and entertainment.

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Short Documentary on Animal Welfare | Abandoned | MITID Films

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More than a Pet Charity: Connecting People & Pets | PetSmart Charities

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PetSmart Charities is a nonprofit organization supporting pets and those who love them. Over 90 cents of every dollar supports change-making organizations in communities near you.

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12 Alarming Facts About Pet Homelessness

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Despite how much we love dogs and cats, there is still a huge pet homelessness problem in the U.S. Cruelty and neglect aside, this is perhaps the biggest issue in the companion animal world that can actually be solved.

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home page content is mostly found under appearance > widgets.

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YEA Camp: A Social Justice Leadership Camp for Teen Activists

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Teen runs her own animal rescue out of her family's basement

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How many pets are in the United States? How many animals are in shelters?

Facts about U.S. Animal Shelters:

The terms "humane society" and "SPCA" are generic; shelters using those names are not part of the ASPCA or The Humane Society of the United States. Currently, no government institution or animal organization is responsible for tabulating national statistics for the animal protection movement. These are national estimates; the figures may vary from state to state.

Approximately 6.3 million companion animals enter U.S. animal shelters nationwide every year. Of those, approximately 3.1 million are dogs and 3.2 million are cats. We estimate that the number of dogs and cats entering U.S. shelters annually has declined from approximately 7.2 million in 2011. The biggest decline was in dogs (from 3.9 million to 3.1 million).

Each year, approximately 920,000 shelter animals are euthanized (390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats). The number of dogs and cats euthanized in U.S. shelters annually has declined from approximately 2.6 million in 2011. This decline can be partially explained by an increase in the percentage of animals adopted and an increase in the number of stray animals successfully returned to their owners.

Approximately 4.1 million shelter animals are adopted each year (2 million dogs and 2.1 million cats).

About 810,000 animals who enter shelters as strays are returned to their owners. Of those, 710,000 are dogs and 100,000 are cats.

*These estimates are based in part on Shelter Animals Count data and other known and estimated sources, 2019. These are national estimates based on data obtained from shelters and rescues; the figures may vary from state to state.
Facts about Pet Ownership in the U.S.:

It's estimated that 78 million dogs and 85.8 million cats are owned in the United States. Approximately 44% of all households in the United States have a dog, and 35% have a cat. (Source: American Pet Products Association 2015-2016 (APPA))

Approximately 40% of dog owners and 46% of cat owners learned about their pet through word of mouth. (Source: APPA)

According to the APPA, these are the most common sources from which primary methods cats and dogs are obtained as pets (Note: this information was based on a multiple response question, which results in the total % exceeding 100% individually for cats and dogs. In addition, the 'other' category includes all source categories that were reported by <10% of both dog and cat owners):

APPA reports that 34% of dogs are purchased from breeders, while 23% of dogs and 31% of cats are obtained from an animal shelter or humane society.

Around 27% of cats are acquired as strays, down from 35% in 2012. (Source: APPA)

According to the ASPCA's National Rehoming Survey, pet problems are the most common reason that owners rehome their pet, accounting for 47% of rehomed dogs and 42% of rehomed cats. Pet problems were defined as problematic behaviors, aggressive behaviors, grew larger than expected, or health problems owner couldn't handle.

The preceding data are ASPCA estimates unless otherwise indicated.
You may also wish to visit:

American Pet Products Association
https://www.americanpetproducts.org/

The National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy (NCPPSP)
https://theaawa.org/page/nationalcouncil

The American Veterinary Medical Association
https://www.avma.org/ (see U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics)

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How many pets are in the United States? How many animals are in shelters? Get the answers to these and other questions about pet statistics.

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Consider this parable about "no-kill" policies: You're walking next to a river and you see a kitten floating past. You jump in and save the kitten. Then another one floats by, so you save that one, too. Then another and another and another float by, and you soon realize that you can't save them all. So you run upstream to see who's throwing kittens into the water-and you stop that person.

Thousands of unwanted, abandoned, neglected, and stray animals pour into animal shelters across the country every day-far outnumbering the good homes available to take them in. But instead of "going upstream," i.e., instead of working to address the source of the problem, which is the runaway animal birth rate, people are being pressured into focusing on the symptoms. We can end the cycle of animal births, homelessness, and deaths, but we must address the root cause instead of flailing in the water, pulling out one kitten at a time while so many others float by, and screaming that others in the water with us aren't saving enough kittens.

IS 'RESCUE' WORK FIXING THE HOMELESS-ANIMAL CRISIS?

Finding homes for needy dogs and cats is gratifying, but to use another apt analogy, it's like bailing out a sinking ship with a teaspoon: The boat will still go down unless we fix the gaping hole in the bottom. Finding a home for one dog may save one life, but sterilizing one dog will save hundreds, if not thousands, of dogs' lives by preventing generations of potentially homeless puppies from being born. Getting a spay/neuter law passed saves even more lives. Stopping the problem at its source is where our time, energy, and funds are needed most. That is how we can drastically reduce-and hopefully end-the homeless-animal crisis and the need for euthanasia.

Many groups striving to go "no-kill" use limited resources to provide temporary care; ship dogs and cats across the country (even though every state struggles with the same crisis); close their doors to the neediest animals-those who are in danger of abuse or are injured, sick, elderly, or aggressive; and even attack open-admission shelters that must euthanize animals.

"No-kill" rhetoric lets the real culprits of the overpopulation crisis-greedy breeders and the "pet" trade-off the hook and keeps them laughing all the way to the bank. We must place and support ads that tell the truth: that breeders and pet shops are the ones that kill ... shelter dogs' chances of finding a home.

THE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF 'NO-KILL' POLICIES

It's appalling to contemplate, but when shelters give in to pressure to go "no-kill" before they have overcome the breeding and selling of animals in their communities and before establishing sufficient spaying and neutering services, the results are often far worse for animals than a peaceful death through euthanasia. Here's what happens:

Animals are turned away at the shelter door, but they don't magically vanish. "No-kill" shelters are usually at capacity, so they stop taking in animals, including those in emergency or abusive situations. As just one example, someone turning three dogs in to an open-admission shelter in Mississippi told a reporter, "It was either that or shoot them."

Animals still die-but in pain. Instead of a peaceful death in a caring person's arms, animals die slowly and in agony on the streets, in backyards, under sheds, on chains, and at the hands of abusive people. In San Antonio, Texas-which is striving to be a "no-kill" city-the bodies of nearly 16,000 dogs and nearly 12,000 cats were scraped off the streets and properties in just one year. One animal control officer termed it "euthanasia by proxy." It is also becoming common for shelters that boast high "save rates" to have a sky-high rate of unassisted deaths in cages and kennels from illness or injuries.

Animals spend months or years in cages. Experts agree that after as little as two weeks in a traditional shelter, animals can begin to deteriorate psychologically and become withdrawn, depressed, anxious, or aggressive. If adopted, animals who have been confined for extended periods are often repeatedly returned because of behavioral issues-a traumatic yo-yo experience that makes them even less adoptable.

Animals are cast out and keep on reproducing. To increase "save" rates, some shelters promote animal abandonment. One big sanctuary recently issued a news release urging Good Samaritans to leave homeless kittens on the streets, rather than taking them to a shelter. That's madness: Not only are abandoned kittens in danger of infection, disease, starvation, and being hit by cars, attacked by dogs and wildlife, and abused by cruel people, the surviving ones will also eventually go on to reproduce, resulting in even more homeless animals.

Animals are handed over to abusers and hoarders. When numbers become the priority, animals are no longer viewed as individuals deserving of consideration and respect but instead as inventory that must be moved, causing shelters to toss aside even basic safeguards. Homeless animals are increasingly being found tortured and killed by adopters who weren't screened or, even more commonly, caged in hoarders' filthy basements, garages, sheds, and barns. Every day, headlines appear about raids on self-described "rescuers" and the animals-both sick and dead-who were removed from the cruel and disgusting conditions in the homes of the "rescuers." When one hoarding facility masquerading as a "rescue" in San Jose, California, caught fire, nearly 100 cats burned to death inside carriers, unable to flee while the plastic melted down on top of them.

COMPANION-ANIMAL HOMELESSNESS: WE CAN END IT

Profiteers that breed and trade animals for a buck are succeeding because the powerful voice of the animal rights movement is being diluted and because good activists are being misled into attacking one another rather than those who are making money off the backs of animals: pet shops, breeders, and phony "rescues." We can wipe out animal homelessness by working together to strike at the root cause, including by lobbying for laws that have been proved effective in reducing unplanned births and shelter intakes in communities that enforce them and by developing low-cost or free sterilization programs for dogs and cats in every community. In other words, by stopping animal homelessness before it starts.

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The Deadly Consequences of 'No-Kill' Policies | PETA

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"No-kill" policies often do more harm than good in ending the cycle of companion-animal homelessness. Find out how we can truly help end this crisis by getting to the root of the problem.

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It's been 20 years since San Francisco helped start a revolution: It became the first U.S. community to guarantee a home to every adoptable dog and cat.

Since then, the no-kill movement, as it's called, has been credited with greatly reducing the number of dogs and cats that are euthanized, from some 20 million down to about 3 million each year.

But like any movement, this one has had its disagreements - including what the term "no-kill" actually means. While some shelters indeed put no animals down, shelters are allowed to euthanize a percentage of their animals and still keep the no-kill designation. And some animal advocates say trying to place every animal in a home isn't advisable.

"At some point, you begin to adopt out animals that have serious health issues or serious temperament issues that you should not."

There are an estimated 14,000 shelters and pet rescue groups in the U.S., taking in nearly 8 million animals each year. Most are small groups, like Paws 4 You, founded 7 years ago in Miami by Carol Caridad. At any given time, she says, the shelter has between 80 and 95 dogs.

Paws 4 You works to find homes for dogs the group pulls from Miami-Dade Animal Services, the county-run shelter. And some dogs are easier to place than others. Caridad points out two, Charlene and Cisco, who have been with her for more than 3 years.

"They may react and get loud when they first see someone new," she says, "but they are all extremely loving."

If the dogs had not been taken from the county shelter, they likely would have been euthanized years ago.

Paws 4 You, like most pet rescue groups, operates a no-kill shelter. But the term means different things to different people. Caridad saves all her dogs - including one or two that aren't that friendly and may never be adopted.

But shelters can euthanize up to 10 percent of their animals for reasons of health and temperament, and still be considered "no-kill."

"The no-kill concept will be a constantly debated question among a lot of animal lovers, as to whether we are there or whether we are still working on getting to the goal," says Richard Avanzino, former head of San Francisco SPCA, which kick-started the no-kill movement in 1994.

Avanzino is now president of Maddie's Fund, a group that works to promote the no-kill movement. He says about 700,000 of the 3 million dogs killed each year are, as he calls it, "legitimate euthanizations" - animals that are unadoptable because of health or behavior.

But not all dog lovers embrace the no-kill philosophy. Patti Strand, director of the National Animal Interest Alliance, an organization that represents the American Kennel Club and other dog breeders, says "the word 'no-kill' has become, really, a marketing term."

Like just about all in the dog world, Strand supports shelters and adoptions. But she says the phrase no-kill is misleading. Unlike government-run, "open-access" shelters that take all the animals that come in, most no-kill shelters limit the number and types of dogs and cats they accept. For open-access shelters, Strand says the goal of adopting out 90 percent of the dogs taken in may not be practical - or safe.

Of particular concern, she says, are shelters in rural areas and the South, which take in large numbers of strays and unwanted dogs. "At some point, you begin to adopt out animals that have serious health issues or serious temperament issues that you should not," she says.

Strand says that in Portland, Ore., where she works with the American Kennel Club chapter, most of the calls to the group's help line come from people who have adopted dogs that turn out to have unexpected problems.

The no-kill movement has taken hold strongest in Northern states, from New England to the West Coast. In other states, like Florida, the supply of unwanted dogs still outstrips the demand - and euthanizations are still very much a fact of life.

In Miami, the county-run animal shelter takes in more than 15,000 dogs and 13,000 cats each year. In 2012, the county adopted a resolution that its shelter, the largest in Florida, would become a no-kill facility.

Alex Munoz, director of the Animal Services Department, says they're making progress toward that goal.

"Over the past few years we've increased our overall save rate from less than 50 percent to over 80 percent for both dogs and cats," he says.

But that still means Miami's animal shelter, while embracing the no-kill philosophy, euthanizes thousands of dogs and cats each year. It's a fact that upsets many rescue groups, some of whom have been critical of the county agency.

But Munoz says it all comes down to numbers. "The shelter is not an infinite space. There are 222 cages, and on any given day, there's more than 300 dogs."

Munoz says the agency is stepping up its spay and neuter program and holding more adoption events in the community, and hopes to get Miami close to the 90 percent no-kill goal within the next year.

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No-Kill Shelters Save Millions Of Unwanted Pets - But Not All Of Them

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It's been 20 years since San Francisco helped start a revolution: It became the first U.S. community to guarantee a home to every adoptable dog and cat. Since then, the no-kill movement, as it's called, has been credited with greatly reducing the number of dogs and cats that are euthanized, from some 20 million down to about 3 million each year.

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"No-kill" tends to have different meanings to different shelters. The no-kill movement was founded by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Some shelters save all animals while others euthanize up to 10 percent. Both are considered "no-kill" because the general consensus of no-kill shelters is that 90 percent of animals will be adopted. An advantage of these shelters is that they strive to keep animals alive and provide them a home. Those in favor of no-kill support these types of shelters because they do not euthanize old or unadopted animals. They also do not euthanize animals when the shelter is full. Euthanization is reserved for those that are deemed dangerous and/or terminally ill. The animals in no-kill shelters are often healthier and more energetic because they are usually young when they are dropped off, giving more incentive for people to adopt. In 2015, the San Francisco SPCA had a live release rate of 93 percent , meaning that 93 percent of animals in their program were adopted, transferred to another no-kill shelter, or returned to their owners after being lost.

No-kill shelters have limited space, however, and have to turn away animals. No-kill shelters only accept animals on a conditional basis, based on the animal's health or temperament, or the availability of space at the shelter. Animals that are turned away may not have a home to go to, which can lead to them being abandoned on the street. Of the animals that are accepted, many remain caged for long periods of time and sometimes are never adopted, resulting in the animals living the rest of their lives in a shelter. Another disadvantage is that many of the no-kill shelters typically do not provide the necessary services of spaying/neutering, shots and other medical procedures. In addition, the goal of adopting out 90 percent of animals may not be safe for new pet owners. Shelters may be to let people adopt animals with serious health or temperament problems in order to achieve their goal.

Traditional shelters are alternatives to no-kill shelters. A traditional shelter is an agency that must accept any and all companion animals regardless of health and temperament, depending on space availability. Because of this, they often partner with foster programs and pet stores in an attempt to increase adoptions for their animals. Also, animals do not spend months and years in cages waiting to be adopted. If they are not adopted in a given amount of time, they are euthanized. Depending on the layout of the shelter, the longer an animal stays isolated in a cage the more it harms its mental health. A traditional shelter is considered humane because they euthanize animals that have been in their shelter for a long time and that are likely to be in poor mental states. Using data from a 1997 survey of traditional shelters by the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy , American Humane estimated that 56 percent of dogs and 71 percent of cats were euthanized after entering shelters.

To decrease the mortality rate, some traditional shelters turn away animals brought in. As these animals are rejected from the shelters they are likely to reproduce, resulting in more homeless animals. In addition, accepting all animals leads to overcrowding and poor living conditions. The control of infectious diseases is another conflict in these shelters because new animals welcomed to the shelter may carry multiple forms of . The more crowded the shelters, the more vulnerable the rest of the animals are.

There is no definite solution for animal shelters, but many animal rescue groups have come up with different programs to help and protect these furry creatures. Oregon's Lane County Animal Services (LCAS) is a program that helps animals find a home. Although they do not work directly with animal shelters, they have contract with the local humane society to place animals in available shelters. They also provide spaying and neutering services. Although these kinds of programs do not solve all the problems surrounding both no-kill and traditional shelters, they do help many animals that are put onto the streets.

What do you think? Which kind of shelter is the best for humanely managing the pet population? Or is there a better solution?

More Resources

Website: The Humane Society of the United States
Pets by the Numbers
View data on U.S. households with pets and where people acquire their pets.

Article: NPR
Could 'No Kill' For Shelter Cats And Dogs Be Policy By 2025?
Read commentary about no-kill shelters' goals of saving 90 percent of animals, and if lessening the quantity of animals euthanized also means raising the quality of their lives.

Find best practices for using Do Now, using Twitter for teaching, and using other digital tools.

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Do No-Kill Shelters Really Benefit Animals? | KQED

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Every year, about 6.5 million dogs and cats enter U.S. shelters--1.5 million of those are euthanized. Traditional animal shelters will euthanize animals depending on circumstances, while no-kill shelters attempt to keep all animals alive. But which type of shelter is actually the most beneficial?

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Before a cosmetic product lands in your shower or makeup bag, there are a lot of steps in that journey. From the idea inception to product development to packaging design to marketing mock-ups, a lot happens along the way. And sometimes that includes animal testing. Studies have proven that animal testing correctly predicts human reaction to cosmetics only 40 to 60% of the time, while alternatives are accurate 80% of the time. Not only is animal testing inefficient, it's also expensive. Yet, 80% of countries around the world still do not have laws against animal testing in cosmetics. The Body Shop is aiming to change that with their Forever Against Animal Testing campaign. Launched last June, they have since collected 4.1 million signatures, making it the biggest campaign for the cause in history. Once they reach their goal of 8 million, along with their campaign partner, Cruelty Free International, the leading nonprofit working to end animal experiments, they will present the petition to the United Nations to request an international convention to ban animal testing. "A couple of years ago we interviewed customers in six different countries around the world and asked them which issues meant the most to them and against animal testing came up as the most popular subject that our customers really cared about, which makes sense because we were the first brand to campaign against this issue," says Jessie Macneil-Brown, Head of Global Campaigns, The Body Shop. "But we felt there was a real disconnect between what we were seeing in the consumer trends around cruelty-free, vegan, and vegetarian demand for beauty products and then seeing that 80% of governments still have no bans on animal testing in cosmetics. As a campaigner that's where you think we can do something. We had our last campaign in 2013 against animal testing when the European Union brought in their ban. It's really proven that one of the biggest cosmetic markets in the world is able to go cruelty-free and still continue to innovate, thrive and grow without animal testing."

To raise awareness and support of Forever Against Animal Testing, The Body Shop and Cruelty Free International lead the world's first animal protest outside of the United Nations headquarters in New York City this week, on January 23 rd. The protest included eight dogs of different breeds and sizes, along with protest signs and banners. They were joined by influencer and pet photographer Elias Friedman of @TheDogist, who has previously lent his support to the campaign in the US and in Canada, as well as dog influencer @louboutinanyc, aka NYC's hugging Golden Retriever. "Dogs are animals that we love dearly and many of us live with them in our homes," says Friedman. "It's probably easier for most people to relate to dogs than laboratory rats or other animals, so by using dogs the message becomes more relatable and therefore impactful. We're helping give animals the voices they don't have. The Forever Against Animal Testing campaign is about something important and simple-there's no need to use animals to test cosmetic products. There are humane alternatives that cosmetics companies should be using instead."

The Body Shop and Cruelty Free International are inviting all companies who are against cosmetic animal testing to give their support to the campaign. Both organizations met with UN officials last week. "Our passionate team has made real progress around the globe for the many animals suffering in cruel tests for cosmetics, yet there is still so much to do," says Michelle Thew, CEO of Cruelty Free International. "We relentlessly lobby politicians and governments to ban the use of animals in cosmetics testing, convince regulators to accept non-animal tests, and encourage companies to go cruelty-free with our Leaping Bunny certification. In a global market, it is important for all countries to ban animal testing for cosmetics to avoid testing simply moving around the world to countries with no effective laws. That's why we launched our global campaign-to call on all governments around the world to step up and ban animal testing for cosmetics."

So, what can you do to help? First, sign the global petition at foreveragainstanimaltesting.com, and be sure to share it with your circle. If you believe in cruelty-free products, then only support the brands who make them. And there are plenty who do, from the indie to the global behemoths. Physicians Formula has always been a cruelty-free brand, dedicated to working with third-party vendors who share that philosophy, and the same goes for global brand IsaDora, which was recently introduced to the US. Urban Decay has been cruelty-free since its launch in 1996, and was the first brand to offer luxe makeup brushes that were completely synthetic. In 2006, they became the first prestige brand to have an online vegan shopping section. They teamed up with PETA to make their first all vegan eyeshadow palette to commemorate their 25 th anniversary, have raised funds for the Humane Society of the United States, and have sponsored the Genesis Awards, which recognizes media for coverage that promotes animal welfare. Last year Urban Decay hosted a dog luncheon on National Dog Day at The London West Hollywood last year to celebrate being cruelty-free, complete with puppy massages, gourmet doggie treats, professional pooch portraits and swag like custom Urban Decay branded leashes, tennis balls, and bandanas. They also just launched their first influencer collaboration with Kristen Leanne, an advocate who only supports cruelty-free brands on her Instagram. Then there's Lush, who has been committed to fighting animal testing across the entire industry for over thirty years, which they communicate in their stores and on their shopping bags. They host the Lush Prize, a global award ceremony in which the company's founders award funds to researchers working on finding alternatives to animal testing; they've given nearly $2 million in prize money since 2012.

Many organic and natural beauty brands have long been dedicated to the cause, as its part of their ethos. There's Yes To, Alba Botanica, JĀSÖN, Avalon Organics, S.W. Basics, The Seaweed Bath Co., and One Love Organics, to name a few. "Animal testing is completely unnecessary," Suzanne LeRoux, founder of One Love Organics. "Like individual food allergies, we can all have different reactions to topicals as well. And a product that has been tested on an animal is not going to have the same result on a person. The practice is outdated and does not guarantee safety. We prefer to use ingredients and products tested on human volunteers, so animal lives and quality of lives can be spared and the products will have a more accurate safety result when used by people. It's a win-win for humans and animals to stop animal testing. Choosing to buy only cruelty-free products can make a huge impact. Voting with your dollar is ultimately what causes larger companies to institute change."

A few beauty companies dedicated to the cause have raised funds and awareness through their products. In addition to all Kat Von D Beauty being vegan and cruelty-free, vegan Kat Von D supports animal rights through her volunteer work at organizations like Farm Sanctuary, an animal protection organization that was America's first shelter for farm animals. The brand launched four special-edition shades of their best-selling Everlasting Liquid Lipsticks to benefit Farm Sanctuary, each named after real animals there. Too Faced is also cruelty-free and donated $250,000 to the Best Friend's Animal Society in October 2017, and will release two limited edition products a year and give the proceeds to charity. They kicked off with the Clover Eye Shadow Palette, which benefited Best Friends Animal Society.

Thanks to these efforts, the industry is starting to evolve. "We've seen a lot of momentum from other governments now; Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Korea and Australia are implementing laws against animal testing," Macneil-Brown says. "We're seeing countries all over the world standing to move in this direction, so the momentum is there. If an animal is tested on, it doesn't walk out of that lab and it's completely unnecessary. It's more expensive, it's less accurate, and it's not as efficient. There's really no need for animal testing and we just need to get everyone to move with the times with the new technology so that we're getting cheaper, faster and more accurate testing done." Technological advancements have brought alternative to animal testing, including computer-based analysis, patch testing on humans, or laboratory-produced skin. "There are more and more alternative tests out there that mean that products will still be safe and that companies can still innovate, and we want to make sure that this development continues and that regulators everywhere have access to these tests," Thew says. "And we know it's what consumers want. All over the world, consumers are opting for cruelty free choices and telling decision-makers to put a stop to testing on animals. We're seeing more and more countries start to move, so now is the time for everyone to work together to end this once and for all."

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How You Can Help End Animal Testing In Cosmetics

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Despite that animal testing in cosmetics has proven to be inaccurate and inefficient, 80 percent of countries still have no laws against it-but you can help change that. The Body Shop's Forever Against Animal Testing campaign aims to bring the practice to an end by petitioning the United Nations.

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Published by Alanna Ramsier.

Every year in the U.S, more than 6 million dogs and cats end up in shelters, and many of them are there because their families abandoned them. Here are some of the lame excuses that people give for turning their backs on their own animals.

"I had to move."

Moving is stressful, I'll grant you that. But I bet you found a way to take your children and all your valuables, so you sure could have found a way to take your animal companion. Adopting an animal doesn't mean adding to your possessions-it means adding a member to your family. And as the Disney character Lilo says, "Family means nobody gets left behind."

"He got too big."

It's really not that hard to Google how big a dog of a certain breed is likely to get or just to ask the animal shelter staff for guidance on that. Did you choose a puppy and expect the little tyke to stay that size forever? You don't need a fortune teller to reveal to you that living beings are going to grow as they mature, so don't act so surprised.

"She's expensive."

You're right-companion animals cost money. They need food, water, shelter, and medical care just like us. That's why it's so important to consider this before bringing one into your life. But once you have an animal companion and expenses do come up, they need to take priority over less important items, like vacation trips and cigarettes and pedicures.

"He's not cute anymore."

Are you kidding me? Did you only adopt an animal companion so that you could take cute Instagram pictures? Animals aren't pieces of artwork that you acquire to make your home more aesthetically pleasing. They're living, feeling, breathing beings who depend on us.

"Caring for her takes too much time and effort."
Caring for a companion animal DOES take time and effort. While it's good to recognize your limitations, the time to have done that was before you adopted one, not after. An animal companion is a lifelong commitment and it's a give-and-take relationship. Don't be selfish. Give your animal companions what they need.
"He's too old now."

A lot of the excuses people give are lame, but this one is so mean. From the minute you bring them into your home, your animal companions will love you with every ounce of their being. You are their protector. How is it OK for you to give them up because they got too old? We all age, and you're going to get old, too, one day, so think about how you'll want to be treated. I bet it doesn't include being abandoned.

"My new boyfriend/girlfriend doesn't like her."

OK, so if your new boyfriend or girlfriend didn't like one of your family members, would you get rid of them, too? Probably not. Boyfriends and girlfriends who love us care about everything that's important to us, including our animals. Any partner who can't accept that probably isn't the best person to be with. And regardless, you made a promise to your animal companion-it's your job to keep it, no matter who else comes into your life.

Adopting an animal companion is a compassionate choice that can bring much joy. It's also an important, serious decision that warrants time and reflection. Before saying yes to a new animal companion, please make sure that you're prepared for this great responsibility. Your animal friend will be devoted to you for life, and you should return the favor.

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The WORST Excuses People Give for Abandoning Animals | PETA

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Published by Alanna Ramsier. Every year in the U.S, more than 6 million dogs and cats end up in shelters, and many of them are there because their families abandoned them. Here are some of the lame excuses that people give for turning their backs on their own animals.

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Young people have the power to shape a more compassionate future and it is crucial that animals are included in their realm of social concern. Thankfully, many famous kids and teens are leading the way for animal rights-promoting a message of compassion to their thousands of fans and followers. These seven allstar activists are using their talent and fame to create a better world for animals.
Noah Cyrus
Noah Cyrus is an actress and singer who uses her fame to spread awareness about animal exploitation. Following her vegan older sister Miley's example, Noah started advocating for animals at an early age and began utelizing her recognition to speak out against dissection in schools, marine animal captivity, and the cruelty of horse-drawn carriages. The 17-year old star frequently urges her fans to consider the unecessary suffering of animals. Speaking about the plight of captive orcas at Seaworld Noah said:
"To think that any animal would be trapped would be so sad. It would be like living in your bedroom your entire life and never being able to go outside." Aidan Gallagher
Aidan Gallagher rose to fame through Disney Channel show Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn. He uses his celebrity status to speak up for animals and promote animal advocacy through social media. An ambassador for numerous animal protection issues, including the preservation of marinelife and the plight of animals raised for food, 14-year old Gallagher is an effective activist who never fails to take a bold stance for animal rights.
Just do the best you can. Be vegan once a week to start. Pick one day, like Meatless Monday, and then go to Tuesdays as well, but just decide you're strong enough to never eat meat on those days again. Any start is a start. Do it for your future, if not for the animals." Sadie Sink
Sadie Sink is the newest star of the Netflix sensation, Stranger Things. The 15-year old recently started following a vegan diet, inspired by actor Woody Harrelson. After educating herself through viewing Blackfish and several other documentaries, Sink became a passionate animal activist. She regards going vegan as one of the best decisions she ever made and promotes the ease and convenience of finding animal-free replacements for all of her favorite meals.
"I'm a passionate vegan. I actually was a vegetarian for about a year and when I was working with Woody Harrelson, he and his family inspired me to become vegan." Alabama Barker
Rising musician and daughter of Blink-182 bandmember Travis Barker, Alabama Barker not only takes after her father's musical inclinations, she also shares the vegan drummer's love for animals. For most of her life, 11-year old Alabama has been a vegetarian, and as her fame grows she increasingly uses her popularity to promote respect for animals. She has participated in animal rights campaigns with her father to encourage people to live a compassionate lifestyle, and cares for multiple companion animals, including an adorable pig named Chad.
"It's not fair; farm animals need the same help that your animals do. It wouldn't be nice if you lost your family, it doesn't make it right that they lose theirs." Thomas Ponce
Founder of Lobby for Animals, which advocates for the protection of animals and animal activists, 16-year old Thomas Ponce has been passionate about animal rights since the age of four. He has received multiple awards, including the Young Animal Activist Award and a $1,000 grant from The Pollination Project. His group, Lobby for Animals, provides tools and resources to assist animal advocates in lobbying efforts and taking action for animal rights issues.
"We have to remember, we are speaking up for those who can't speak up for themselves; we are the voice of the voiceless and we need to be heard!" Genesis Butler
Genesis Butler went vegan at just six years old and has been a passionate animal advocate ever since. She promotes compassion for all animals through her popular social media accounts under the title, A Vegan Childs Journey. Ten-year old Butler frequently speaks at VegFests and even delivered a TEDx speech about the environmental impact of meat consumption.
"It's time people stop eating meat made from animals! It's killing animals, the planet and people. We can survive without eating animals, so why not make the switch? Please think about going vegan! The animals and mother earth will thank you for it!" Kat Graham
Kat Graham is a 14-year old artist from California who uses her talent to help stop the use of beagles in animal research. After Kat's family rescued a beagle, she became aware of the cruelty that many beagles are subjected to in laboratories around the world. Now, she sells her paintings to benefit organizations committed to saving beagles from cruel experimentation.

"I love to paint and it's fun to paint beagles. Most importantly, it's nice to know I'm helping end laboratory testing on these wonderful dogs."

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7 Young Stars Leading the Way for Animal Rights

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Young people have the power to shape a more compassionate future and it is crucial that animals are included in their realm of social concern. Thankfully, many famous kids and teens are leading the way for animal rights-promoting a message of compassion to their thousands of fans and followers.

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No Kill Rescue: A "no-kill" rescue is an animal shelter that does not kill healthy or treatable animals even when the shelter is full, reserving euthanasia for terminally ill animals or those considered dangerous to public safety.

Traditional/Open Admission Shelter: An agency that must accept, or chooses to accept, any and all companion animals regardless of health, temperament, or space available, with no limitation.

Bridging the Gap Between No Kill vs Traditional

Thoughts from Amy Heinz

I have volunteered at both no-kill shelters and traditional shelters. In my experience, the no-kill shelters tend to put down the traditional shelters for euthanizing animals. Likewise, the traditional shelters have criticized no-kill shelters. One even went so far as to say that, "Until all shelters can be no-kill shelters, NO shelters should be no-kill shelters." Likewise, I've heard some no-kill shelters readily accuse traditional shelters of "murdering" animals and having no heart or soul. This has to stop!

Like religion and politics, the world of animal rescue has it's extremes: those that are charged with the care of innocent animals and treat them horribly, and those that claim to value all furry lives, but really only accept the cutest, healthiest animals. I believe, just like religion and politics, there are far more moderates out there. People who are simply trying their best to do the right thing for these poor lost souls. There is definitely a gap between no-kill rescues and traditional shelters, but I don't think it is necessarily a large gap if we are all honest and realistic about it.

AHeinz57 Pet Rescue & Transport has a dream to bridge the gap between no-kill and traditional shelters. We all have common ground in that we are all in this business because we ALL care about animals. It's not fair that our rescue gets to boast that we do not euthanize animals when we have to turn animals away because we don't have room. The animals we don't have room for end up at the traditional shelters because they do NOT turn animals away. It's not fair that they are left to deal with the horrible reality that there are simply too many animals and not enough homes. It's not fair that they must make the horrific decision of who lives and who dies, while we sit back and pat ourselves on the back. But, what is most unfair, is that there are so many reasons why this debate even exists: overpopulation due to puppy mills and lack of spaying/neutering, owner surrenders, pets being dumped like trash, dog fighting, and laws that do nothing about this problem. These are the things we must all focus on, instead of focusing on who is doing a better job saving lives. We all must come together in a united effort to help these animals. We have to stop putting each other down and start joining hands.

A starting point to bridge this gap is the transportation networks we are involved in. By monitoring the traditional shelters and pulling as many as possible on their last day, we are alleviating the need to euthanize so many.

- Amy Heinz

The Debate Between No Kill vs Traditional

Did you know that approximately 600 dogs, puppies, cats and kittens are KILLED each HOUR in the U.S in overcrowded shelters, because there are not enough homes for them? We think that is horrible and unacceptable, but is there any way around it? That's been the subject of debate for years.

Being no-kill shelters, we pride ourselves on the fact that we do not euthanize animals to make room for new ones coming in. We are all dedicated to saving the lives of homeless animals, but what about the dogs and cats that we don't have room for? What about the dogs that are so aggressive or sick that they can't be helped? Are we really "no-kill?" Or does it really mean we do not euthanize due to space issues? Who's to blame for all this killing? Did you spay and/or neuter your pets? Did you train them and really provide a forever home? Or are you part of the problem?

Here's an interesting article and food for thought:

Answer to the Difficult Euthanasia Question

September 25, 2003

Every now and then I receive a letter asking why the LA/SPCA is still euthanizing animals and when are we going "no-kill." Many people are afraid to ask the question, so I thought I'd share the substance of my response with you.

Every city has the unfortunate task of collecting stray and unwanted animals. The LA/SPCA assumes that duty for New Orleans and receives up to 1,000 animals each month. Shelters like these are called "open admission" shelters. They accept animals regardless of injuries, pedigree, or reason for surrender; they provide refuge for all. "Limited admission" shelters are often called "no-kill" shelters because they do not euthanize. These shelters cannot accept any and all animals as they would be forced to euthanize because of the sheer number of animals that require housing. Consequently, limited admission shelters must ration their intake, which leaves hundreds more animals for another agency to accommodate.

Unfortunately the inflow of unwanted animals continues to be far greater than the number of available homes for those animals. What is the most humane way to address the needs of all these surplus creatures? Shelters across the country accept 6-8 million cats and dogs each year. If the LA/SPCA alone receives a thousand animals in a month, where would they stack the animals until new homes are found? Sadly, there are not enough homes and there is not enough sanctuary land to house 6-8 million pets each year. Imagine if the nation stopped euthanizing for 4 years. Over that period, the country would be housing 24 million homeless dogs and cats. Is that reasonable? Is warehousing in the best interest of the dogs and cats? This is the difficult debate caused by owners who have neglected or refused to have their pets sterilized.

The LA/SPCA believes that every animal deserves a high quality of life. Living in cages over the long term does not support this principle. Since an agency in New Orleans must take in these animals, the LA/SPCA accepts the responsibility. If an animal must be euthanized, the LA/SPCA compassionately puts them down via injection, a traumatic method for staff but the most sensitive and dignified for the animal.

Euthanasia and sheltering are not the solution, but a temporary necessity. Spaying, neutering and education are the only answers to the deep rooted problem of overpopulation which is why the LA/SPCA invests so heavily in sterilization programs. Until all dogs and cats are sterilized or the numbers of homeless animals are significantly reduced, our community will continue to euthanize.

The ultimate goal is to be a city where adoptable animals are no longer euthanized by any agency. Until then, someone will be required to perform the tough task.

- Laura Maloney

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No Kill vs Traditional Shelters - AHeinz57 Pet Rescue and Transport

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No Kill Rescue: A "no-kill" rescue is an animal shelter that does not kill healthy or treatable animals even when the shelter is full, reserving euthanasia for terminally ill animals or those considered dangerous to public safety. Traditional/Open Admission Shelter: An agency that must accept, or chooses to accept, any and all companion animals regardless of [...]

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Mr. Ward's wife basically runs this organization!

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Audience: Executive Leadership, Foster Caregivers, Public, Shelter/Rescue Staff & Volunteers, Veterinary Team

1. Boosts adoptions. Staff in adoption guarantee (no-kill) shelters hear it every day. "I came to your facility to adopt because you don't kill animals here." Just as a growing number of people buy only organic produce or cage free chicken, there is a growing segment of society that wants to express deeply held values and beliefs by focusing the search for a companion animal on adoption guarantee shelters only. Other people go only to adoption guarantee shelters because traditional shelters make them feel guilty and depressed. "It really troubles me to see all of those sad eyes and know that if I don't adop, the animal will probably die."

2. Attracts and retains more volunteers. In an impersonal world where people feel more and more isolated, there is a greater longing for connection. The love given to volunteers by shelter cats and dogs can provide that connection. But it's a devastating blow to fall in love with an animal only to find out he didn't make it to a loving home. Severing attachments is never easy and to voluntarily go through it over and over is not something most people are willing to do. adoption guarantee shelters are able to attract and retain a high volume of volunteers because people know that the animals they fall in love with will be adopted and cherished for life.

3. Improves staff morale. Imagine a working environment in which 50% of those around you die every day. In wartime, that may be inevitable. But an animal shelter isn't a war zone and animals aren't dying for a noble or just cause. Killing healthy and treatable animals is debilitating and demoralizing for the people who have to do it. The real irony is that people chose to work at shelters because they love animals and want to help them. To then have to kill them is devastating. Killing creates stressed out employees and high turnover among the rest of the staff as well.

4. Generates greater community support. Just as our society is no longer willing to abide by racial discrimination and gender inequality, we're also becoming far less tolerant of the mass killing of our best friends and family members. In many communities, there is a very real bias in support of life-saving programs and policies. This translates into greater political, corporate, philanthropic, business and volunteer support of no-kill programs.

5. Creates better alignment with charitable mission. In general, animal welfare organizations want to improve the health and well-being of companion animals. Articles are written on pet safety (keep the cat indoors), pet health (vaccinations and spay/neuter) and pet identification. Pet legislation is advocated, animal cruelty prosecuted. Efforts are made to save lives. But when humane societies and SPCA's kill healthy and treatable animals, there's a troubling disconnect between what the organizations want to do and what they actually do in practice. By saving all of the healthy and treatable cats and dogs, adoption guarantee shelters are able to fulfill their lifesaving mission. The next step is to reach out beyond their own facilities to help other community shelters save lives to create a no-kill community.

6. Enhances image. Remember the commercial that said, "Image is everything"? In the not-for-profit sector, there is a lot of truth to the statement. A positive image helps attract donations, volunteers and community support. A good image is not just built on the accomplishment of good works but on how well the accomplishment lines up with the charitable mission. Once again, by saving all of their healthy and treatable cats and dogs, adoption guarantee shelters are able to demonstrate to their communities that they are achieving their lifesaving mission and goals which then enhances the organization's reputation of worthiness and success.

7. Sharpens and increases management skills. When killing is not an option, creative solutions simply must be found to find a home for a 14-year-old canine or a shy kitty that hides when adopters come to see her. Solving these problems builds staff communication, camaraderie and cohesiveness since everyone from the executive director to shelter operations manager, the kennel attendant to the dog trainers must work together to find a way to get the animal a loving home.

8. Generates more funding. People who love animals want to donate their money to agencies that save animals. Those who can clearly articulate their mission, demonstrate they're saving lives, and effectively tell their story to the entire community will find a reservoir of caring individuals willing to commit financial resources to help.

9. More income = more organizational options. As donations increase, shelters have more options. They can add groomers and behaviorists to boost adoptions. They can add spay/neuter, adoption or public awareness outreach. The list goes on and on. And as more programs and services are added and more lives are saved, a track record of success is proven and revenue increases even more.

10. Creates more opportunities for a Maddie's Fund grant. Maddie's Fund primarily supports adoption guarantee shelters, those agencies that find homes for and provide comprehensive medial and behavioral care to all healthy and treatable animals in their care. Maddie's Fund grants are designed to help adoption guarantee organizations create a delivery system of programs and services that will eliminate the deaths of healthy and treatable cats and dogs community-wide, within ten years.

Click here to explore some of the communities in which Maddie's Fund is providing financial support to rescue groups working with local animal control shelters, traditional shelters, and private practice veterinarians to end the killing of healthy and treatable shelter dogs and cats.

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1. Boosts adoptions. Staff in adoption guarantee (no-kill) shelters hear it every day. "I came to your facility to adopt because you don't kill animals here." Just as a growing number of people buy only organic produce or cage free chicken, there is a growing segment of society that wants to express deeply held values and beliefs by focusing the search for a companion animal on adoption guarantee shelters only.

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Facts on Why Pets Are Abandoned - Petsecure

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Reasons for abandoning pets are generally just excuses. They are avoidable. Find out more.

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By: Ian Murnaghan BSc (hons), MSc - Updated: 11 Mar 2023 | *Discuss

There are many pros and cons to the practice of animal testing. Unfortunately, neither seem to fully tip the scale to a side that pleases everyone - including the general public, government and scientists.

Pros or Postives of Animal Testing

1. Helps researchers to find drugs and treatments:
The major pro for animal testing is that it aids researchers in finding drugs and treatments to improve health and medicine. Many medical treatments have been made possible by animal testing, including cancer and HIV drugs, insulin, antibiotics, vaccines and many more.

2. Improves human health:
It is for this reason that animal testing is considered vital for improving human health and it is also why the scientific community and many members of the public support its use. In fact, there are also individuals who are against animal testing for cosmetics but still support animal testing for medicine and the development of new drugs for disease.

3. Helps ensure safety of drugs:
Another important aspect to note is that animal testing helps to ensure the safety of drugs and many other substances humans use or are exposed to regularly. Drugs in particular can carry significant dangers with their use but animal testing allows researchers to initially gauge the safety of drugs prior to commencing trials on humans. This means that human harm is reduced and human lives are saved - not simply from avoidance of the dangers of drugs but because the drugs themselves save lives as well as improve the quality of human life.

4. Alternative methods of testing do not simulate humans in the same way
Scientists typically use animals for testing purposes because they are considered similar to humans. As such, researchers do recognise the limitations and differences but the testing is done on animals because they are thought to be the closest match and best one with regards to applying this data to humans.

Cons or Negatives of Animal Testing

1. Animals are killed or kept in captivity:
In animal testing, countless animals are experimented on and then killed after their use. Others are injured and will still live the remainder of their lives in captivity.

2. Some substances tested, may never be used for anything useful:
The unfortunate aspect is that many of these animals received tests for substances that will never actually see approval or public consumption and use. It is this aspect of animal testing that many view as a major negative against the practice, as it seems that the animal died in vain because no direct benefit to humans occurred.

3. It is very expensive:
Another con on the issue of animal testing is the price. Animal testing generally costs an enormous amount of money, as the animals must be fed, housed, cared for and treated with drugs or a similar experimental substance. On top of that, animal testing may occur more than once and over the course of months, which means that additional costs are incurred. The price of animals themselves must also be factored into the equation. There are companies who breed animals specifically for testing and animals can be purchased through them.

4. Animals and humans are never exactly the same:
There is also the argument that the reaction of a drug in an animal's body is quite different from the reaction in a human. The main criticism here is that some believe animal testing is unreliable. Following on that criticism is the premise that because animals are in an unnatural environment, they will be under stress. Therefore, they won't react to the drugs in the same way compared to their potential reaction in a natural environment. This argument further weakens the validity of animal experimentation.

Personal Choice

While there are numerous pros and cons of animal testing, the ethical aspect overshadows both of them, which means that emotion may be the ultimate determining factor in whether a person believes the benefits of animal testing outweigh the problems associated with the practice.

For more information about the ethics of animal testing on this site, read the following features:

1. The controversy of animal testing
2. Medical treatments that have been found as a result of animal testing
3. Medical trials on humans.

External Resources

Read around the subject at external sites - here are two very good resources:
The BBC education page on animal ethics The Government legislation relating to animal testing
You might also like...

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Using Animals for Testing: Pros Versus Cons

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By: Ian Murnaghan BSc (hons), MSc - Updated: 11 Mar 2023 | *Discuss There are many pros and cons to the practice of animal testing. Unfortunately, neither seem to fully tip the scale to a side that pleases everyone - including the general public, government and scientists.

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Masih's murder was called an accident but many still believe that he was shot by the agents of the carpet industry.

On April 16, 1995, a 12-year-old boy named Iqbal Masih was shot and killed while he was riding his bicycle with his friends in Muritke, near Lahore. He was punished for raising his voice against child labour. While he was in the US, he was asked why he wanted to return to Pakistan when he knew of the danger to his life. To that, he courageously responded saying his mission was more important than his life.

And it was with his life that he paid the price for standing up for his beliefs.

He was just 12-years-old.

Masih said,

"I want to do what Abraham Lincoln did."

He wanted to become a lawyer to liberate slaves in Pakistan.

Masih's story is a tragic one. He was sold into bondage for an amount less than seven dollars. This money was used for his mother's operation, for which five-year-old Masih lost his freedom, his childhood and his health.

Bonded labour means that Masih was to work as a carpet weaver for the factory owner till the loan was paid back. His freedom remained a dream because his family's financial burdens kept growing and they were unable to pay back the loan. Masih's torture continued without any respite and any hope of the loan ever being repaid.

Not only was Masih subjected to inhuman treatment and conditions, he was forced to work for more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week with only half-hour breaks. The wages for these gruelling hours of meticulous carpet weaving were a few cents only.

Child carpet weavers are subjected to treatment that would make you cringe, and to top it all, they are not even given appropriate nutrition by their 'masters'. The intention behind this callousness is to retain smaller fingers for intricate carpet weaving. Masih stood four-feet tall which is 12 inches shorter than the average boys of his age.

Masih was like any normal child, with aspirations and dreams of getting educated. But he was only getting well versed in torture and indignity.

This brave boy, however, never gave up hope. On one occasion, he managed to escape and reached the local police station. He told the police about how the factory owner had shackled him into slavery. But he was brought back by the custodians of law to the factory owner for a petty bribe.

This worsened Masih's predicament. The factory owners became more ruthless than ever because of his insubordination. He and the other children were chained to keep them from escaping.

Humanity should shudder at the thought of a child being subjected to such treatment.

One day, Masih learnt that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had banned child labour. Hope resurfaced, and he escaped again.

Masih joined the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF). His story reached the ears of Ehsan Ullah Khan, Chairman of BLLF, who directed his efforts towards freeing Masih from bondage, and mercifully succeeded.

Masih made it his mission to raise awareness about child slavery. He toured various cities of Pakistan where child slavery is known to exist. He also travelled internationally inviting masses to stand with him against child labour. He resumed his education and managed to complete four years of education in a two-year period.

He said,

"Children should have pens in their hands, not tools."

Masih's murder was called an accident but many still believe that he was shot by the agents of the carpet industry. They may have killed him but his mission will always stay alive. He remains to be an inspiration for numerous local and international organisations fighting against child labour.

His sacrifice has not gone in vain, because today, you and I will talk about the harrowing facts of Pakistan's child labour industry.

Pakistan still has thethird largest child force in the world.

Twelve million children are forced into bonded labour in various forms. Don't let your eyes glaze over this as just another statistic. Take a moment to come to terms with the enormity of the injustice that we have strangled our youth with.

TWELVE MILLION CHILDREN.

The highest number of children (ages 10-14) are associated with different forms of agricultural labour that contribute to a quarter of the total GDP.

Provincial governments have failed to pass anylegislation for a minimum working age. The federal government has set the federal minimum age for hazardous work but it falls short of international standards. Trade unions seem to be the only force that forms the bulwark against child labour.

The government should prioritise the implementation of child labour laws with a clear establishment of the minimum working age. How many more young children have to die for this to command the attention of the entire nation?

Moreover, measures should be taken to provide education to the children who have been affected by forced labour. To this day, education remains to be the most ignored element in government agendas.

Nelson Mandela emphasised the importance of education in his famous words:

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

These words should be emblazoned on the minds of our policymakers.

Our society can no longer bear the moral burden of fostering this evil practice. All of us have to recognise our part in its continued existence. Our indifference has led us to this juncture in time. The millions of childhoods that have been traded in for industrial, agricultural and domestic tools need to be reclaimed.

Allow yourself to empathise with Iqbal Masih. Look at his smile. Look at the glint in his eye, and feel his excitement for life. Understand that there are certain agents out there who have extinguished his light for money, profit, greed.

Does your heart fall to the depths of your chest? Do your eyes sting with liquid anger? Have your hands clenched into mighty fists?

Good.

Don't let indifference swallow you up again. Think of Iqbal Masih, and do something.

The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.

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He was 12-years-old and wanted to liberate slaves in Pakistan. He is dead now | The Express Tribune

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Masih's murder was called an accident but many still believe that he was shot by the agents of the carpet industry. On April 16, 1995, a 12-year-old boy named Iqbal Masih was shot and killed while he was riding his bicycle with his friends in Muritke, near Lahore.

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The historical figure of importance, Iqbal Masih was a young Pakistani boy who was forced into bonded labor at age four. After being freed at age ten, Iqbal became an activist against bonded child labor. He became a martyr for his cause when he was murdered at age 12.

Overview of Iqbal Masih

Iqbal Masih was born in Muridke, a small, rural village outside of Lahore in Pakistan. Shortly after Iqbal's birth, his father, Saif Masih, abandoned the family. Iqbal's mother, Inayat, worked as a housecleaner but found it difficult to make enough money to feed all her children from her small income.

Iqbal, too young to understand his family's problems, spent his time playing in the fields near his two-room house. While his mom was away at work, his older sisters took care of him. His life changed drastically when he was just four years old.

In 1986, Iqbal's older brother was to be married and the family needed money to pay for a celebration. For a very poor family in Pakistan, the only way to borrow money is to ask a local employer. These employers specialize in this kind of barter, where the employer loans family money in exchange for the bonded labor of a small child.

To pay for the wedding, Iqbal's family borrowed 600 rupees (about $12) from a man who owned a carpet-weaving business. In return, Iqbal was required to work as a carpet weaver until the debt was paid off. Without being asked or consulted, Iqbal was sold into bondage by his family.

Workers Fighting for Survival

This system of peshgi (loans) is inherently inequitable; the employer has all the power. Iqbal was required to work an entire year without wages in order to learn the skills of a carpet weaver. During and after his apprenticeship, the cost of the food he ate and the tools he used were all added to the original loan. When and if he made mistakes, he was often fined, which also added to the loan.

In addition to these costs, the loan grew ever larger because the employer added interest. Over the years, Iqbal's family borrowed even more money from the employer, which was added to the amount of money Iqbal had to work off. The employer kept track of the loan total. It was not unusual for employers to pad the total, keeping the children in bondage for life. By the time Iqbal was ten years old, the loan had grown to 13,000 rupees (about $260).

The conditions in which Iqbal worked were horrendous. Iqbal and the other bonded children were required to squat on a wooden bench and bend forward to tie millions of knots into carpets. The children were required to follow a specific pattern, choosing each thread and tying each knot carefully. The children were not allowed to speak to each other. If the children started to daydream, a guard might hit them or they might cut their own hands with the sharp tools they used to cut the thread.

Iqbal worked six days a week, at least 14 hours a day. The room in which he worked was stifling hot because the windows could not be opened in order to protect the quality of the wool. Only two light bulbs dangled above the young children.

If the children talked back, ran away, were homesick, or were physically sick, they were punished. Punishment included severe beatings, being chained to their loom, extended periods of isolation in a dark closet, and being hung upside down. Iqbal often did these things and received numerous punishments. For all this, Iqbal was paid 60 rupees (about 20 cents) a day after his apprenticeship had ended.

The Bonded Labor Liberation Front

After working six years as a carpet weaver, Iqbal one day heard about a meeting of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF) which was working to help children like Iqbal. After work, Iqbal snuck away to attend the meeting. At the meeting, Iqbal learned that the Pakistani government had outlawed peshgi in 1992. In addition, the government canceled all outstanding loans to these employers.

Shocked, Iqbal knew he wanted to be free. He talked to Eshan Ullah Khan, president of the BLLF, who helped him get the paperwork he needed to show his employer that he should be free. Not content to just be free himself, Iqbal worked to also get his fellow workers free.

Once free, Iqbal was sent to a BLLF school in Lahore. Iqbal studied very hard, finishing four years of work in just two. At the school, Iqbal's natural leadership skills became increasingly apparent and he became involved in demonstrations and meetings that fought against bonded child labor. He once pretended to be one of a factory's workers so that he could question the children about their work conditions. This was a very dangerous expedition, but the information he gathered helped close down the factory and free hundreds of children.

Iqbal began speaking at BLLF meetings and then to international activists and journalists. He spoke about his own experiences as a bonded child laborer. He was not intimidated by crowds and spoke with such conviction that many took notice of him.

Iqbal's six years as a bonded child had affected him physically as well as mentally. The most noticeable thing about Iqbal was that he was an extremely small child, about half the size he should have been at his age. At age ten, he was less than four feet tall and weighed a mere 60 pounds. His body had stopped growing, which one doctor described as "psychological dwarfism." Iqbal also suffered from kidney problems, a curved spine, bronchial infections, and arthritis. Many say that he shuffled his feet when he walked because of pain.

In many ways, Iqbal was made into an adult when he was sent to work as a carpet weaver. But he was not really an adult. He lost his childhood, but not his youth. When he went to the U.S. to receive the Reebok Human Rights Award, Iqbal loved watching cartoons, especially Bugs Bunny. Once in a while, he also had a chance to play some computer games while in the U.S.

A Life Cut Short

Iqbal's growing popularity and influence caused him to receive numerous death threats. Focused on helping other children become free, Iqbal ignored the letters.

On Sunday, April 16, 1995, Iqbal spent the day visiting his family for Easter. After spending some time with his mother and siblings, he headed over to visit his uncle. Meeting up with two of his cousins, the three boys rode a bike to his uncle's field to bring his uncle some dinner. On the way, the boys stumbled upon someone who shot at them with a shotgun. Iqbal died immediately. One of his cousins was shot in the arm; the other wasn't hit.

How and why Iqbal was killed remains a mystery. The original story was that the boys stumbled upon a local farmer who was in a compromising position with a neighbor's donkey. Frightened and perhaps high on drugs, the man shot at the boys, not intending to specifically kill Iqbal. Most people do not believe this story. Rather, they believe that leaders of the carpet industry disliked the influence Iqbal was having and ordered him murdered. As of yet, there is no proof that this was the case.

On April 17, 1995, Iqbal was buried. There were approximately 800 mourners in attendance.

*The problem of bonded child labor continues today. Millions of children, especially in Pakistan and India, work in factories to make carpets, mud bricks, beedis (cigarettes), jewelry, and clothing, all with similar horrific conditions as Iqbal experienced.

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Iqbal Masih was a young Pakistani boy who became an activist against bonded child labor. He became a martyr for his cause when he was murdered at age 12.

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Stop Child Labor - The Child Labor Coalition - the Website of the Child Labor Coalition

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https://stopchildlabor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo.png 0 0 Reid Maki https://stopchildlabor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/logo.png 2023-02-02 19:51:23 2023-02-07 16:38:21 Do Children in America Ever Work in Deplorable, Dangerous, Dickensian Conditions? The Short Answer is "Yes" - The Child Labor Coalition's Top Ten U.S. Child Labor Developments in 2022

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Data/Statistics

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There are 168 million children worldwide trapped in child labor, accounting for almost 11 percent of the overall child population.

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Child laborers are not simply working an after-school job. They are children that have had their safety, education and childhoods taken from them. Many work full-time for little to no pay. Abuse is rampant.
Learn the true cost of child labor in this infographic and how you can help.
Many children in our sponsorship program live in communities that experience higher incidents of child rights violations. These violations include not only child labor but child prostitution, child trafficking, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect, early marriages and harmful cultural practices.

Your sponsorship of a vulnerable child provides protection, education, action planning and an immediate response to abuse when needed.

Stop child labor before it starts.
SPONSOR A VULNERABLE CHILD ››› UPDATE: Statistics in this infographic have been updated as of October 2016

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Child laborers are not simply working an after-school job. They are children that have had their safety, education and childhoods taken from them. Many work full-time for little to no pay. Abuse is rampant. Learn the true cost of child labor in this infographic and how you can help.