This site informs working teenagers about their rights and safety responsibilities on the job, hazards they should watch out for, and the laws that protect them from doing dangerous work. It provides additional information such as working hours for teens and a list of places to go if they need help.

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?

This is a teaching unit that leads middle and high school students through the process of critically examining photographs (by Lewis Hine) as historical evidence.

In this lesson, students will learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They will learn what life was like for a child worker: how much the workers made, how many hours they worked each day, what their homes were like and what they did for fun. Students will then write an investigative news report exposing the practice of child labor in the mills, using quotations from oral histories with former child mill workers and photographs of child laborers taken by social reform photographer Lewis Hine.

In this lesson, students will read two primary source documents from Documenting the American South, a digital library collection sponsored by the University Library at UNC. One document is Child Labor in the Carolinas, a pamphlet published in 1909 by the National Child Labor Committee exposing the use of child labor in the cotton mills of North Carolina. The other document is Mill News, a weekly newsletter about the Southern cotton industry which was paid for and published by the mill companies themselves. Students will also listen to oral history excerpts from mill workers to gain a third perspective. In a critical analysis, students will identify the audiences for both documents and the motivations and intent of its authors, as well as examine the historical importance of each document.

In this video segment from Wide Angle, meet Nanavi, a young girl in Benin who has a rare opportunity to go to school.

In this video from Wide Angle, visit a makeshift night school in rural India designed to allow child laborers who work during the day to obtain an education.

The textile industry spread like wildfire across the South in the years following Reconstruction. Dozens of mills across North and South Carolina drew workers from rural and mountain farms, who traded in farm life for life in the mill village. There, workers lived in homes rented out by the mill, shopped in stores run by the mill, and went to church and school in structures built by the mill. The mill owners often tried to cultivate a sense of family in the mill village. This "family" included the children of the village, who very often left school to work in the cotton mills alongside their parents and siblings.

In this lesson, students learn about and respond to the plight of child workers in Guatemala in the face of increased free trade through the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

In this lesson, students will first learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of North and South Carolina from the 1880’s through the 1920’s by listening to oral histories from former child mill workers. They will also research the use of child labor in today’s world. Students will then brainstorm and implement actions to stop child labor around the world, such as educating themselves and others about the issue, letter writing campaigns to governments and companies, and donating to organizations that work to stop child labor.

This unit explores aspects of work, including child labor and its relationship to citizenship for those teaching this subject in secondary schools.