Do you wear makeup on a day to day basis?
Do you enjoy the way makeup makes you feel?
Do you think about makeup when you use it ?
Have you ever stopped and read the ingredients that
are used to make your precious makeup?
Does your makeup contain Mica?
Do you know what or how Mica is collected?
Lets go to where it all starts, under the ground in Madagascar
Well Mica is the name applied to a group of minerals that form in
layers at once flexible and strong. Mica has been used in the cosmetics
industry for a long time to add sparkle to makeup and paints.
And it's being mined by an underground army of child labourers
in Madagascar. Children as young as four years old are working
long hours in often dangerous conditions to collect a mineral
that will be worth nearly 500 times more when it leaves Madagascar's
shores.
They use children to mine Mica as they have a smaller body
proportion to that of an adult so it makes it easy for them to fit
down into the mines and grab out the Mica.
At least 10,000 children are forced to work in the mica industry,
according to UNICEF researchers. Many of them only eat at night and
suffer from adult injuries such as back pain from hunching over for
long periods of time, as well as headaches from the heat and lack of
water or oxygen inside the mines. All this work for about $2 a day,
all this work for our beautiful makeup products.
To prevent child labor, UNICEF works to break the cycle
of poverty and provide children and families with alternative
options. For example, a UNICEF-supported cash transfer program
helps vulnerable families in Madagascar pay for basics such as
food and clothing, so they can continue paying their children's
school fees
UNICEF have been pivotal in helping families avoid
taking such extreme measures to survive. UNICEF promotes
increased access to high-quality education and provides
a variety of social services to keep children safe and
with their families so that they are not forced to put
themselves in dangerous situations in order to help their
families.
Help UNICEF deliver services to vulnerable children
and families. With your support, we can break the cycle
of poverty that leads to child labor and other forms of
exploitation and abuse.
Support UNICEF by donating some money or
even some of your time to help vulnerable children
in Madagascar and around the world.
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