Child Labor in Sivakasi, India

Bread&Water operated from 1998 to 2005 as an independent not-for-profit organization focused on poverty alleviation. In 2004, Amanda Fornal traveled to southern India as part of a three-person team producing a short documentary in cooperation with one of the organizations Bread&Water supported: a school working to keep children out of child labor. The project documented child labor, poverty, and educational initiatives in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu.

Sivakasi has long been associated with the manufacture of matches, fireworks, and printed materials. Child labor in hazardous industries in the region had already become the subject of government, nonprofit, and international intervention by the time of the project.

The field team visited cottage-industry workplaces and communities affected by generational poverty. It also documented a school working to keep children in education. The school provided classroom instruction and a midday meal, helping to reduce some of the economic pressures that could lead families to send children to work.

The resulting film, Touch the Untouchables, was created to help Bread&Water communicate to donors the conditions affecting children in the region and the work of the educational project supported by the organization.