Hardships of Life Against a Child!

“I do love school, but I have to work because my father is sick. I need to provide money for my family,” Abdo Ahmed – aged 15.

Yemen has a young and rapidly growing population in which there is widespread poverty. Countless number of parents do not earn sufficient money to support their families. Others are just very sick and not able to work at all, resulting a growing problem of a child’s labor.

Tragic what is happening to this poor family! A child – at the age of 15 – was eager to continue studying at school, wishing to become a doctor one day, but the difficult circumstances and hardships of life have forced him to stop fulfilling his dreams and to work instead so that he can provide enough money for his most in need family.

The 15-year-old “Abdo Ahmed Naji” lives in extreme poverty with his parents and little siblings “2 sisters and 1 brother” in Ash Shamayatayn district of Taizz Governorate. His father “Ahmed” is severely sick. Abdo keeps struggling to find a job that can afford the very basic needs to feed at least his little siblings, but unfortunately his age couldn’t help him most of the time.

“I wish I could put the smile back to my youngest siblings, give them everything they dreamed of, but thank God we are still together, and death never took us apart,” Abdo Ahmed soliloquized. Indeed, this afflicted family is greatly suffering to the point where they have only one meal a day. A child who has sacrificed everything just to keep his poor family alive! Why does it have to be like this in the war-torn country? Why indeed?