Blog # 7 Dont Give that Child a Dollar
By: Mark McDonald for the New York Times

In Southeast Asia especially Siem Reap, Cambodian children's groups and aid workers are worried about children dressed in tattered clothing and with sad faces begging tourist for money but children's groups and aid workers are against tourist handouts because they believe they keep children out of school and enable child predators and perpetuate familial cycles of poverty. When crops or businesses fail, impoverished families send their children to tourit spots o beg for money. Parents begin to see this money as income and don't make an effort to find work and begging is seen as work and children don't go to school. A popular scam is calle the Baby Milk Scam. It is where children hang around convience stores and kids come around carrying dirty faced babies ( rumor has it that some of the babies may be drugged to seem lethargic) and the child begs for infant formula and tourist by it for 12 dollars and the child turns around and sells it back for 12 dollars. The U.N and aid groups introduced a campaign in Cambodia last year called "Think Twice" with the motto "Let Parents earn and children learn". Special attention needs to be placed on why crops and businesses fail and parents feel that their only means of support is their children begging. It is not fair to say that parents just don't want to find jobs. What if they are just not there? The governement should try to create more services for these families so they want resort to begging tourist for money.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/dont-give-that-child-a-dollar/