Hey there. Here's a Toulmin essay I recently wrote for my English class. The topic is addressing the stigmas of anti-child labor laws and that the power of the people will lead to the outcome of amending these laws to work hand-in-hand with humanitarian organizations. I will continually update the content of my argument 'til July 2008.
Thanks in advance for your interest! 
(P.S. In case my Toulmin essay doc file link doesn't work, I'll post it here. Plus, I also need to convert my Toulmin outline and Works Cited files to doc files.)
The Chance for Freedom: Priceless
Hopes. Dreams. Ideas. People can aspire to change the world, but will their good intentions matter in the end? In an October edition of “Salon” magazine in 1997, a woman named Chitra Divakaruni wrote an article entitled “Live Free and Starve” to articulate her ambivalence of whether or not anti-child labor laws have benefits that outweigh the setbacks. Retorting to a U.S. bill prohibiting imports from businesses that exploit child laborers, Divakaruni criticizes the Legislature for exacerbating problems, especially since those laws do not go “hand in hand with [recreational] programs” (Divakaruni 506). To further support her grounds, she delineates the countless number of starving children in her home country, and the desperate means of indentured labor for the price of food; eventually, Divakaruni brings in poignant questions for readers to ponder: “where. . . [are child workers] to be educated? Where is the money to buy them food and clothing and medication . . . ?” (Divakaruni 504). In rebuttal to her claims, anti-child labor laws must be established regardless of resulting stigmas because over time, the power of the people will eventually prevail to bring about change.
As a beacon to the aphorism “when there’s a will, there’s a way”, Kailash Satyarthi adamantly fights to decimate child labor as a ‘one-man army’. In his early years, he was a promising engineering student who later pursued this career path in his mid-twenties, but later, he became devoted to freeing children from dangerous working conditions and cruel treatments. Throughout his personal missions, he freed thousands of children from raiding armed factories. In 1998, Satyarthi established the Global March Against Child Labour to raise awareness and founded the Rugmark Foundation, which brands its insignia on product labels to indicate that the items have not been made by child workers. In addition, his training center provided children programs for developing leadership skills and proficiencies in certain trades. With each step he takes for his cause, he is getting closer and closer to his goals of “[eliminating] child labor, [educating] everyone, and [alleviating] problems”, and truly exemplifies that one person can change the world (O’Meara). This sole activist has allured millions of people to participate in two of the world’s most significant organizations and ensured that he provided programs to protect children from future capture into indentured services.
Another inspirational story comes from a little boy named Iqbal Masih, a former child laborer and young activist from Pakistan. In 1996, Iqbal visited a class in Broad Meadows Middle School to raise awareness of other forms of slavery imposed on children that still exist today. The students had a conceived notion that all slavery practices had been eradicated along with the famous emancipation in the U.S., but, of course, this assumption was far from reality. As a consequence for speaking against this certain issue, he was murdered in Pakistan and television broadcasts plastered the news of his death everywhere in the media. This event touched the hearts of many Americans nationwide, particularly Broad Meadows and other schools who’ve joined them in their crusade. Students chose a Pakistani NGO (non-government organization), SUDHAAR, to build a school for Iqbal, or rather in memory of him; to this day, thousands of kids in Pakistan attend the school in hopes for educational opportunities. Also, ODW-USA’s (Operation Day’s Work-USA) involvement united 18 US schools for their contributions and sustained schools and orphanages in Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. In the words of a 13-year-old sympathizer, Amanda Loos, “[t]he bullet that killed Iqbal. . . can’t kill a dream” (Adams). Iqbal’s tragic story evoked the good will of a nation and united everyone towards a common goal: to save these children from a dreadful fate.
To address Divakaruni’s grievances and other implicit reprehension, countless organizations dedicate themselves to provide children with many necessities as well as taking steps to improve the economy of developing countries, hopefully to resolve the uneven distribution of wealth. Filipino partners to ILO (International Labour Organization), now known as IPEC, collaborated on a comprehensive bill to eradicate all forms of child labor. This bill, later labeled as ‘Republic Act No. 7610’, was sponsored by Filipino Senator Loren Legarda for reviews in the bicameral legislature. Unexpectedly, both houses created a bill amending R.A. 7610 and sent it to the President of Philippines for approval, eventually, promulgating ‘Republic Act No. 9231’ to protect and prevent children from future slavery in addition to the original Republic Act (Oco). Particularly, these children must have access to education and training as well as “immediate legal, medical and psycho-social services” (Republic 3). Furthermore, the UN’s Development Programme and Millennium Project ventured into a major undertaking to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care by “working with [166 countries] on their own solutions to global and national development challenges”(About 1). Both the Philippine government and the United Nations share the need to resolve their own individual situations of child labor; each entities work assiduously to protect children from forced labor and aim to mitigate the root of the problems, respectively.
In conclusion, all that matters is the innumerable amount of people working towards the same goals. Through the power of the people, anti-child laws will eventually be amended to integrate with these organizational activities. Considering the context and setting of “Live Free and Starve”, these organizations took an active role in this cause after 1997 and involved either non-Western associations or international leagues; nevertheless, eradicating child laboring practices requires patient and sedulous dedication for a long-term process. Thus, no one can truly assess or judge events within their own era to predict an exact outcome. The incompetency of certain leaders is inevitable, but are these efforts a slow progress towards a better world?
Works Cited:
"About UNDP: A world of development experience." United Nations Development Programme. 26 Feb. 2008 .
Adams, Ron. "A School for Iqbal." Ed. Elizabeth C. Carpentiere. Faces: People, Places, and Cultures Mar.-Apr. 2006: 24-26.
Divakaruni, Chitra. "Live Free and Starve." The Bedford Reader: Seventh Edition. Ed. Dorothy M. Kennedy and Jane E. Aaron. Comp. X. J. Kennedy. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 504-506.
O'Meara, Donna. "Only in. . . Child Labor." Ed. Elizabeth C. Carpentiere. Faces: People, Places, and Cultures Mar.-Apr. 2006: 6-7.
Oco, Tricia. "Anti Child Law Labor Enacted." Institute for Labor Studies. Aug. 2004. Atty. of ATENEO Center. 20 Feb. 2008.
"Republic Act No. 9231." Republic of Philippine: Office of the Press Secretary Online. 14 Oct. 2003. 24 Feb. 2008 .
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