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Football Boot designs

These boots were designed for the Adidas design a football boot competition, and featured on the Mark Thomas Comedy Product

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The life of an Indonesian worker

My name is Philli Lambreta and I am 14 years old. I grew up in a small village where my family were farm labourers. My dad said that I could find a better job in the city and provide for the family at the same time. He paid some money to an agent who told me about a factory in a city approximately 80 miles away, which is a days' bus ride. The pay and conditions sounded reasonable, so I packed and left within a week.

When I got there the city seemed very loud and polluted. The agent told me there was reasonable accommodation nearby and that the only catch was that I may have to share with someone, the reality was very different.

The accommodation was a group of small huts covered in bits of old plastic as protection from the rain. There wasn¹t much electricity, just a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. I had to share with 3 other females in total, but they all worked in the same factory as me, which was comforting.

The next day I was woken at 4:45am by a girl called Luchi. She warned me to hurry up or I¹d be late, and I didn¹t want to make the wrong impression. We all arrived together at the factory at 6:10am. It was big, grey and was surrounded by a tall iron fence with guards. Inside the factory was no better, there were rooms and rooms of noisy sewing machines, all full to the brim. The room I was working in was on the 2nd floor and I was split up from the people I came in with. I stood in front of a sewing machine looking around for someone to get help from but I couldn¹t see anyone. All of a sudden a man came up behind me and shouted, "Why aren¹t you doing any work?" I explained who I was and what I was doing here, he did a brief demonstration of what to do then gave me a pile of work saying, "your not going home until you finish this." I kept cutting my fingers on the needles and ended up getting home at 10:45pm because I lost my way home.

I was meant to finish at 3:45pm, that’s what the agent said.

Sarah Campbell

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Unfair Trade – a poem

Far away from my parent’s home
I’ve come to work very hard
I’m only 10 years old,
My responsibilities are very bold

Work is hard and pay is low
But that’s the way my life will go.
Making shoes for a living
To help my parents not only
On Thanksgiving.

I would rather be at any school
Education seems so cool
It would help me in the future
Maybe become someone’s tutor.

But that is not the way for me,
I’m hit screamed and shouted at.
That’s the way my bosses are.
Making children work so hard
In conditions like an animal farm.

by Sara Qureshi Year 9