Child Labour

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has launched an 18-month investigation of the 21st century’s social issues. More than a century ago, the foundation’s namesake, Joseph Rowntree used his wealth “to search out the underlying causes of weakness or evil in the community, rather than remedying their more superficial manifestations.” Instead of funding a soup kitchen, he desired to find out why soup kitchens were needed. He wanted to use his resources to identify the causes of social problems rather than their symptoms. In 1904 he identified the foundational evil influences of war, slavery, poverty, excessive drinking, gambling and the drug trade. Over one hundred years later, his foundation has decided it is time to reexamine the roots of the 21st century society’s evils in order to effectively identify solutions to their symptoms.
Vision attended the launch of the project at the Royal Society of Arts where JRF Director, Julia Unwin suggested that underlying today’s problems are our growing affluence, avarice, alienation and anger.
Society’s increased affluence has resulted in environmental degradation, increased appetites and addictions, alienation between generations, tensions in diverse communities and a greater divide between today’s rich and poor. Our market economy has bred “the view that some human beings are of less value than others.” Unwin suggested that we need to learn to live together and share the benefits of our affluence, creating a “society in which all are valued and none are expendable.”
Unwin defined avarice as “the greed that subordinates the needs of others to the gratification of ourselves.” Two hundred years after the slave trade was abolished, slavery is still alive and well in new forms of human trafficking, often involving women and children. Migrant workers and refugees are treated with contempt as we fear sharing our wealth with others. Rather than welcoming refugees and asylum seekers, “so clearly a statement of fundamental human... [continues]

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