The young child in the photograph sits on a walkway in Jakarta, Indonesia, a victim of trafficking for the purpose of begging. Trafficking of women and girls for prostitution has been a well-known phenomenon in Southeast Asia, but trafficking for begging on the streets is a more recent trend. Children of poor, often rural, families are being captured at the borders, or parents are deceived into thinking their children will receive opportunities in the cities.

Children caught begging illegally by police in Bangkok, Thailand, are returned to Cambodia, some to waiting parents, others to charities or local government agencies. Others find their way back to urban streets. In the worst cases, children are mutilated so as to elicit sympathy. Officials note that children trafficked to a foreign country are even more vulnerable due to language and customs differences, as well as increased discrimination. They are even less likely than indigenous children to know how to seek help.

The chart reveals International Labour Organization (ILO), International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), and UNICEF data for the year 2000 on trafficking of over a million children annually, and some 250,000 for the Asia Pacific region. Efforts to combat child trafficking include improving law enforcement and border controls, but perhaps the most effective work is at the community level.

The object in the photograph is a gope, or spirit board (also called kwoi or hohao). This example is from Papua New Guinea near the Wapo Creek on the Gulf of Papua. Carved from an old canoe, this art form derives from the protective splashboard of the outrigger canoe, which was carved with a human face and was believed to have protective qualities. Human faces represent ancestors, and carving the boards was thought to provide a home for the protective spirit. Most gope boards have symmetrical, curved, linear designs, with recognizable faces and very stylized body parts. Gopes were made in different sizes, the largest being owned by the clan and stored out of sight in the men's longhouses. Smaller gope boards guarded entrances to clan sections of communal houses. Young, uninitiated men owned a third type of small gope. These were hung on the walls where young boys slept, believing it would protect them and help them to grow strong.

The girl in the photograph, Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro, reads from the Torah as part of her bat mitzvah, a rite of passage ceremony, at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. Prior to this day, she attended classes in Jewish history and tradition, Hebrew, and recitation at the Reform synagogue, where girls now participate in a rite formerly reserved for boys, the bar mitzvah. Following the service, the family and guests, including several girls who were adopted by American families from the same orphanage in China, celebrated at an elaborate party.

At age 12 or 13, a Jewish girl becomes a "bat mitzvah" which literally means "daughter of the commandment." Bat mitzvah marks the time when a Jewish child is old enough to perform the mitzvot (commandments) and is considered an adult in the religious community. Neither the bar mitzvah for boys, nor the bat mitzvah for girls are formal religious ceremonies. The bat mitzvah observance is not carried out in Orthodox and Chasidic synagogues where women are not allowed to lead prayers.

Learning about Jewish history, customs, and holidays is a way that modern Jewish communities seek to transmit tradition and law to a new generation. The spirit of the bat mitzvah also includes choosing service to the community, representing engagement with the larger world beyond the family and living according to the values of their faith.

The three boys in the photograph belong to a group of Israeli boys who came together at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2008 for a mass bar mitzvah celebration. The orthodox social service organization Colel Chabad arranged the celebration for orphans and needy families. Several prominent Israeli rabbis participated in the celebration of this important Jewish rite of passage to adulthood.

"Bar Mitzvah" literally means "son of the commandment." This rite of passage marks the time, at the age of 13 for boys, when children are obligated to observe the commandments of Jewish law. Technically, no ceremony is needed, because a boy automatically passes this milestone upon becoming 13 years old. In recent times, the bar mitzvah has become popular and widespread as an individual and family observance. During Shabbat (congregational prayer) services on a Saturday shortly after the child's 13th birthday, the celebrant is called up to the Torah to recite a blessing over the weekly reading. In preparation for this day, the young boy spends time learning the Torah portion and prayers. Community service is often a part of this preparatory period before the bar mitzvah. A speech before the congregation occasion traditionally begins with the phrase, "Today I am a man. . ." The father also recites a blessing.

Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the eighth incarnation, or avatar, of the god Vishnu. He is a very popular deity, a divine hero who personifies superhuman powers as well as human hopes and failings. According to the narrative, he comes into the world as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki to destroy the foes of human beings and is threatened by many tyrants and monsters, beginning with the cruel King Kans, who tried to kill him based on an omen. Krishna's mother and father were thus imprisoned, but my miraculous intervention Krishna was saved, carried across the river Yamuna and placed with foster-parents, Nand and Yashoda. Stories of Krishna's childhood with his loving foster-mother Yashoda are much beloved in this village of cow-herders. Representations have been illustrated in courtly artistic paintings and sculptures and in contemporary popular media, such as calendars, posters, and statuettes. A combination of super-human powers and child-like behavior endears Krishna to the characters in the narrative, and are what makes him an especially popular figure. One of Krishna's most famous pranks as a child was to find any possible way to steal sweet butter and curds from the storage jars that were suspended from the ceiling with ropes. Lighting his way in the dark room by the jewels he wore, climbing on mortars or on the backs of his playmates, or enlisting the help of agile monkeys, he gave vent to the irresistible urge to eat the butter and feed it to his partners in crime.

The holiday of Krishna's birthday is called Janmashtami in northern India and is celebrated as Sri Krishnajanmashtami, Janmashtami or Gokulashtami in southern India. In celebration, devotees fast, bathe, perform prayers and rites, and re-enact parts of the story of Krishna's birth and rescue from King Kansa. In this photograph, a young child is adorned with jewelry, eye-liner and a headdress, and prompted to re-enact the prank of stealing butter. Sweets made with butter, honey, and other delicacies are also part of the celebration, which falls in late summer or early autumn.

The ceramic figurine of an infant in a cradle (also called a cradleboard) was created by the Nahua, or Aztec people of Mexico, between 1350 and 1521 CE. It shows how infants were kept bound in a cradle or carried on a cradleboard, a practice that was common among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The figurine also shows how the baby would have been bound or swaddled in the cradle. The drawing further illuminates the way in which the cradle was used, and may illustrate a ceremony of placing the child in the cradle that took place some days after the birth of the child. The illustration is from the work collected in the Nahua language by Bernardino de Sahagún (1500-1590 CE), a Church official sent by the Spanish to Mexico in 1529. Sahagún collected information about Aztec language, rituals, values, and childrearing from a select group of native informants. It is the only source of its kind of Aztec customs and modes of thought. Also compiled by Sahagún was a narrative and representations of the Spanish conquest. The work was sent to Spain where it was not published until 1829 or translated until 1831. It was called The Florentine Codex because the manuscript was found in that city; it had been suppressed in Spain after the death of Sahagún.

The photographs of a twelve-year-old Peruvian fruit market porter named Jonathan are from a video produced by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), a trade union organization affiliated with the International Labour Organization (ILO). The documentary describes Jonathan, who is one of a large group of similarly employed boys, who rise before dawn and spend their days pushing carts and carrying crates of fruit. Their pay is meager and not all clients are dependable. Jonathan is quite articulate in expressing his acceptance of the need to work and his willingness to contribute to his own support and to help his family. His wages are his own income, and also pay his school expenses. The trade union organizations in Peru, as in other countries, support efforts to end or ameliorate child labor that depresses wages and degrades working conditions by providing a weak and pliant alternative labor force of minors. According to ILO statistics, nearly one-third of Peruvian children engage in paid work, some of it dangerous, and much of it detrimental to their physical development and education. The documentary describes an association of four main Peruvian trade unions called "Warma Tarinakuy," which established a youth center where child laborers can get cheap meals, counseling and remedial classes if they have fallen behind in school. Anyone who wishes to participate must commit to staying in school. The math teacher featured in the documentary was a child worker himself. Association counselors work with children and their parents to maximize their chances of finishing school and limiting the damage to the development of youth by trying to reduce the families’ reliance on their labor. Jonathan’s progress as a student is discussed, including his award of a grant to study computer science. This effort by a combination of international and local organizations may be compared with other efforts in Asia and Africa to end child labor by bringing services to the places where children work and live.

The photographic print is a full-length, formal studio portrait of a woman and her daughter from the Pacific Island of Samoa. The photograph was taken by an unknown photographer between 1890 and 1920. The woman and her daughter clearly belong to a prominent family, but they may or may not be royalty. The woman is wearing ornaments and a ring that suggest she is married to a prominent person. The woman and the girl both carry fans made of dried, woven leaves, called ili aupolapola in the indigenous language. The traditional costumes worn by mother and daughter are very similar in design, with the indigenous woven skirt called titi, made of ti leaves. Both wear hair ornaments such as flowers and elaborate necklaces. Their blouses are made of traditional tapa cloth, called siap in Samoa. It is made by soaking and pounding the inner bark of a mulberry-type tree until it is very soft and pliable. The decorative painting on the blouses is nearly identical, as are the fringed necklines of the blouse and skirt. Other fabric was appliquéd to the hem in a zigzag design. The re-creation of a naturalistic backdrop for the photograph may be an indication of rapid change in the society and the focus on preserving the appearance of tradition. The traditional clothing, on the other hand, indicates the effort to assert ethnic identity and preserve traditional crafts at a time when imported Western clothing was becoming available and perhaps norms of women’s dress were changing.

This mask worn by boys during initiation rituals in Papua New Guinea is made of painted bark cloth and canvas stretched over a cane frame. The long fiber fringe adds movement to the mask, which is worn during dances and other secret rituals that that comprise boyhood initiation rites. These rituals often involve disguises, as initiates endure trials, receive food and drink from villagers, and accept the knowledge of elders. The mask form is also a reference to the spirits of ancestors who have come through these life stages and continued on. The long, oval masks are similar to the gope spirit boards that represent the ancestors at home, protecting its inhabitants. This mask is from the Wapo Creek or Era River area near the Gulf of Papua, though there are many other styles and forms of initiation masks as well as face and body paint used by the numerous tribes in the region.

This small, mask ( 9.5 cm high and 5 cm wide) carved from wood is called a "passport" mask because it was worn on the body, kept in a leather pouch, or sewn onto a piece of cloth to represent group or family affiliation. Passport masks are used by the Dan people, a group of several hundred thousand people in the western part of the Côte d’Ivoire and into Liberia. They live in a forested region bordering the savannah in the north, for whom farming cocoa, coffee, rice and manioc, and hunting game and fish provide rural livelihoods. Each village is governed by a chief and council of elders. Both boys and girls receive formal recognition of their adulthood and readiness for marriage by participating in initiation rituals. Specific teachings, a period of time in seclusion in the bush for boys, and circumcision rituals for both genders are included in the rites of passage. The masks are miniature copies of family masks which act as witnesses to initiation ceremonies and are believed to offer protection like amulets when their owner is away from home. 1