Multimedia

August 9, 2009

Brasilia, BRAZIL -- Child labor in Brasilia is becoming more common day by day. Children work mostly on the streets selling candies, flowers, stickers and other small items. Some perform services, such as watching over cars or washing them in public parking lots. Others shine shoes.

Brasília has 2 million inhabitants and is the city with highest per capita income in the country, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Research by the Federal Policy Department shows that about 7,512 children are now working on the streets.

Cluj Napoca, ROMANIA -- Social networking sites have become one of the most popular means of communication among young people in Romania. A group of 20 teenagers was interviewed to investigate how they use sites like hi5, MySpace and Facebook. While most of them said they enjoyed meeting people on these sites, they were also cautious about privacy issues and the amount of information they shared with people online. 

FERGHANA, Uzbekistan -- The Aral Sea borders two countries, Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. The government of Uzbekistan has taken steps to preserve the shrinking sea, including water management policies and conservation technologies. It is also participating in the International Fund for Saving Aral Sea, whose other members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan. 

And teenagers in the Ferghana region of Uzbekistan are pushing for better ways to irrigate crops and to conserve the use of water in their houses.

BRASILIA, Brazil -- The 49th anniversary of Brazil’s capital city, on April 21, filled the Ministries Esplanade with cultural attractions, outdoor activities, and more than 1 million celebrants. And the daylong celebration, which lasted well into the night, turned the expansive garden surrounded by government buildings into a massive rubbish heap.

Uttar Pradesh, INDIA -- The rapid growth of social networking sites in the last five years has made these sites a necessary part of many people's lives. Teenagers are the biggest users of these sites throughout the world. Google's Orkut.com, which was launched in January 2004 and named after its creator Orkut Büyükkökten, is quite famous and more widely used by youngsters in India than other sites like Facebook and MySpace. It is hard to find any teenager studying in a high school who doesn't have his or her profile on Orkut. 

British Columbia, CANADA, Brasilia, BRAZIL and New Jersey, US - In the year 2009, teenagers worldwide look to their leaders in hopes that their actions will benefit their generation a better than the actions of previous politicians. These politicians, who are responsible for the education of the mosaic generation (people born between 1984 and 2002), have their own ways of going about it. In Canada, Brazil and the United States, young people hope for a future of responsible education policies from their leaders. 

 FLORIDA, US and SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – It doesn't take a mile-long walk in Angela Thompson's shoes to learn who she is; simply looking at them will do. "It shows the story about my life," said Thompson, a high school sophomore from Orlando, Florida. "Basically who I like, stuff like that."

Thompson's sneakers, a faded pair of black Converse low-tops, have more than the typical signs of wear and tear. Scribbled in black ink are the names of her boyfriend and favorite bands. As personalized as Thompson’s shoes may be, they also represent a fashion trend among teenagers: expressing the soul on the soles of one's shoes.