Editorial: Not for Sale Herald-World Vision campaign offers ray of hope to exploited girls

It's hard for most of us to imagine that slavery still exists. But that is the stark message which emerges from the stories in today's Not For Sale series, a joint project by the Herald and World Vision.

The series is tackling one of world's deepest problems - the exploitation of girls through forced labour, prostitution, sex trafficking and early marriage against their will.

The broad figures indicate the scale of the problem. There are 152 million children in work around the world.

Around 15 million girls under the age of 18 are married each year - one every two seconds - and 1.2 million children are trafficked every year.

The problem is particularly severe in several Asian countries, including India and Myanmar, where Newstalk ZB host Kerre McIvor and Herald visual journalist Mike Scott travelled with World Vision to investigate the issue.

There they talked to girls and their families and discovered what it feels like to struggle against these obstacles every day.

Their stories paint a picture which is often confronting, sometimes depressing but ultimately hopeful.

McIvor refers to a lightbulb moment in her interview with Sapna, a 14-year-old girl in Agra who works for 12 to 14 hours a day soldering clasps on to anklets.

Her father was a stone craftsman, who became too sick to work after years of breathing in fine dust while he made lucky elephants for tourists.

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