Wherever I have travelled while working for World Vision, it always brings me a lot of pleasure to see kids playing. Soccer is often the game of choice - scavenged plastic bags are bound together to create a crude ball that is still handled with amazing skill. In other places I have seen children guiding a bike tyre rim with a stick, something not seen in Australia for many, many years.

Time to play is a childhood right, but for more than 120 million children trapped in exploitative labour, it is not a right they enjoy. Last Friday (12th June) was World Day Against Child Labour, a day for demanding action to protect a child's right to security, freedom, physical and mental health, education, personal development and play.

Walking around suburban Melbourne and watching parents with their children, it's almost impossible to imagine kids of the same age working. But it is happening. In April 167 children were rescued from factories in China. The youngest was just seven years old.

Numerous organisations, including World Vision, have been pressuring major chocolate manufacturers to ensure the cocoa in their chocolate products is free of child labour. In West Africa, where 60% of the world's cocoa is produced, this has been a major issue.

I went to Ghana and the Ivory Coast last year to examine the problem and came back keen to see some meaningful change. Coles supermarkets have shown leadership, stocking at least one Fairtrade chocolate option in every one of their Australian stores.
The Fairtrade brand guarantees fair prices have been paid to farmers for their products, and child labour has not been used in the making of the product. In England and Ireland, Cadbury have agreed to make their plain chocolate Fairtrade by the end of the year - a great start. Hopefully we will see a similar commitment from Cadburys in Australia.

If you're in Melbourne over the next month, World Vision has a photo exhibition on display at Queen Victoria market that shows some of the various forms of child labour around the world. The photos are very powerful and give a great insight into the scale of the problem, as well as the solutions. And just around the corner you can grab a Fairtrade coffee - every effort counts.