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.

Yellamma Gangadhar is a young woman who relies on a wheelchair for mobility. Her film tells the story of abandonment by her parents at a bus station in Bangalore, India, subsequent help from the Leonard Cheshire home in the city, and the college education she acquired with great difficulty. The struggle featured in the film is access discrimination. She describes the necessity of climbing 25 stairs with paralyzed legs every day for three years to gain access to higher education because classes were held only on the second floor of the building.

Yellamma is a filmmaker in the Young Voices project of the Leonard Cheshire Disability Global Alliance. The Alliance was founded after World War II by a highly decorated British bomber pilot who devoted his later life to charity. Young Voices uses mass media to raise awareness of the needs of disabled persons globally and to encourage member nations to adopt, ratify, and implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Young Voices stories include children and youth with many forms of disability in rural and urban settings around the world. The first-person accounts relate problems of social exclusion, lack of knowledge, and access discrimination in transportation, public buildings, education, and employment.

The video still shows The Moonbeam Youth Training Centre in Mavoko, Nairobi. The Centre is a project of UN-HABITAT built with support from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuk. The purpose of the center is to improve housing in urban slums by training young people in low cost, alternative construction technologies. Trainees gain employable skills, leadership skills, and self-help skills that help them transform informal housing to sustainable, permanent construction. Young people who complete the training receive certification and apprenticeships in carpentry, roofing, brick manufacture and bricklaying as well as other vocations.

With investment from local organizations and businesses, young men and women can significantly improve standards of living, including sanitation and security, for their communities while training for future employment. In addition to hands-on construction training, the program includes training in entrepreneurship and business management skills, with the objective that graduates can start and sustain viable enterprises that increase capacity in underserved communities, and enable future businesses to hire others. The project is an example of a multi-purpose, dynamic development initiative that involves youth as active rather than passive participants in achieving its goals. The trainees' work creates the project's own infrastructure, since the facility that the trainees are building actually serves as a training center when it is complete. The collaboration will eventually include youth from the informal settlements of Kibera, Mavoko, Githongoro and Thikain in Kenya.

The 2009 United Nations Arab Human Development Report describes a "youth bulge" as a high proportion of 15-29 year olds relative to the adult population. Young people are the fastest growing segment in Arab countries, with youth under 25 years of age comprising about 60% of the current population. The median age of the total Arab population is 22 years, compared with the global average of 28.

The youth bulge is viewed in the research literature both negatively and positively. According to the 2009 report, the region will require 51 million new jobs by 2020 to employ youth entering the labor market. The challenge will affect women more than men, whose current unemployment rates are 31.2% compared with 25% for men. Female youth employment was as high as 59% in Jordan with male youth unemployment at 35%. Unemployment, alongside increasing urbanization, are often tied to rising extremism, causing concern for the region.

The youth bulge, however, can also be viewed as an opportunity, a chance to empower youth and harness their energy to help build neighborhoods and countries. With sufficient forethought and investment, a youthful labor force is an opportunity for economic growth and stability. Over the next 30 years, the hazards and opportunities presented by the youth bulge in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will be important tests for governments in the region and for the global development community.

[Download pdf file of chart here].

Soviet propaganda posters presented positive images of healthy, active people engaged in useful service to the state, including children. This Soviet poster from 1953 was typical of this image. Its slogan, "Pioneers and Students, Get Interested in Modeling!", coupled with the image of a happy child in the open air on a bright, sunny day, suggested the positive results of state-approved actions. The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union was a Soviet youth organization that encouraged students to be physically active and take an interest in occupations appropriate for Soviet adults. Here the students are encouraged to develop an interest in aeronautics. Other Pioneer activities included traveling to the countryside to help with the spring planting or daily exercise in the form of military-styled calisthenics. Propaganda such as this poster was one method for the Soviet regime to create an image of the positive future, an important strategy to help avoid the reality of massive shortages of food and material goods following World War II.

One of Mikhail Gorbachev's most famous reform movements was 'glasnost' (openness), which allowed partial freedom of the press to address social problems and corruption within the Soviet Union. Among the issues raised during the 'glasnost' era were previously forbidden subjects such as the high rate of divorce. An example of this is the following poster, with its plaintive cry from the child in the foreground: "And what about me?" The father in the background seems to have some sort of illness, possibly as a result of alcoholism or one of the many other difficulties associated with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The mother seems to have a large bruise on her face, suggesting spousal abuse. While these parents have an unhappy marriage, the poster reminds the viewer the greater damage is done to children with divorced parents. With this focus on the human cost of divorce for children, the Soviet government could publicly address genuine social problems without attacking the state or the Communist Party.

During the modern Imperial period (1868-1945), daughters of poor Japanese families worked as komori taking care of their own siblings or working as indentured servants for other poor families. The state's efforts to foster Japanese citizenship and feminize the komori led to programs aimed at making them more maternal.

The first song is one that was sung by a teacher who taught komori girls in the town of Matsumoto around the turn of the century. This song was part of the broader educational curriculum designed to replace the songs of the komori that were deemed "coarse" and "vulgar" by teachers and other adults who represented the interests of the modern state.

The second counting song, typical of others by the komori, described exploitative working conditions and grave injustices. Based on peasant songs, those songs sung by the komori (of which there are many versions) enabled workers to express resistance to those who exploited them as well as those who sought to feminize them. Some songs mocked their mistresses and masters; other focused on the foods they were not allowed to eat as well as the inadequacies of their rations. The lyrics of others expressed hostility toward their charges: "What can we do with a naughty child?/Let's put him on the drum/and hit him with green bamboo sticks." The third song included here is representative of those that expressed the emotional pain of the komori and their need for their mothers. Not only did the komori sing about love but also lust, their bodies, sexual desire, and intercourse.

These songs and others that describe their daily lives (working, playing, trysting, venting) are useful sources of information that shed light on the everyday experiences of the komori and the lyrical cultural practices that expressed their alienation and resistance. In what ways are the komori similar to and different from babysitters in other cultures and at different times?

This image found on a wall around the University of Vienna and the Austrian Parliament, in 2008, is a graffiti stencil of Pippi Longstocking, the eponymous fictional character created by the Swedish children's book author, Astrid Lindgren, in 1945. Since then, Pippi Långstrump (in Swedish) has been translated into 90 languages and made into movies and TV series. The image here is based on the portrayal of Pippi by Inger Nilsson, the 9-year-old actress who starred in a 1968 Swedish TV series. Dubbed versions were shown on German TV in 1971 and in the U.S. by 1973 where they became enormously popular.

Though she is known by other names around the world ("Harisnyás Pippi" in Hungarian), Pippi is an iconic figure whose gravity defying red braids, oversized shoes, mismatched socks, home-made clothing, and freckled face represent her playful and plucky world view.

Pippi is an independent, unconventional, anti-authoritarian 9-year-old rebel who lives alone in a villa she shares with her monkey and horse. Although she is a perpetual outsider, Pippi is an advocate for the rights of children, generous with her wealth (though unmaterialistic), and a critic of unquestioned adult authority. She is enormously strong (lifting a horse and flinging policemen) and has a great sense of humor. The self-educated Pippi challenges the status quo by contesting language, logic, and principles as expressed here with her creative answer to the math problem: "2 x 3 = 4."

Illegally stenciled onto a wall in a public space, this graffitied image of Pippi expresses the subversive principles and practices of young adults who have made this "anti-Shirley Temple" into a poster child of the counter culture. As the quintessential gender bender, Pippi is especially beloved by girls and women. But not all: some see her as a poor role model for children.

Pippi's world-wide reach provides unique opportunities for in-depth and cross cultural analyses of Pippi's meanings to children and youth. The enormous variety of sources available (e.g., books, movies, dolls as well as children's drawings and handmade costumes, etc.) make it possible to utilize textual, visual, and material culture methods of research.

In this painting of a kuttab, or primary school, boys sit on a mat or carpet huddled close together with their writing boards. Boys, and sometimes girls, learned to recite the Qur'an at an early age, as well as the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic in schools called kuttabs. It might be held in a mosque, a building especially for the purpose, or an open courtyard, as in West Africa. This type of school was common in urban and rural settings throughout Muslim lands. The image by 13th century illustrator al-Wasiti (fl. 1237) is from the Maqamat (Assemblies) of al-Hariri (1054-1122 CE), an important figure in Arabic literature. The work is a collection of anecdotes about a picaresque hero, shown in the red robe, who perhaps having just said something outrageous, is shown disputing with the teacher. An interesting feature in several illustrations of kuttabs is the fan suspended from the ceiling, with one of the boys pulling a rope to swing it. Perhaps the boy chosen for this task was the one least proficient in his lessons.