 I studied the lives of children in a Bihari camp which is home to more than 4,000 members of the ethnic minority group who were displaced from their homeland during the partition of India and Pakistan in the 1940s and again during the independence of Bangladesh in the 1970s. In my research I found how poverty and structural vulnerabilities such as the group not having Bangladesh citizenship until 2008 impact children's lives. How these many forms of discrimination are played out in terms of everyday violence in the community and how symbolic and structural forms of violence intersect with the more physical and corporal violence that children are subjected to in the home, at school and at workplace. This research matters because the complexities and layers to children's lives don't always come out in popular conversation and it's important not to generalize children's experiences. For example, while there are justifiable calls to end child labor around the world, the reality for children in these groups is that they must work to survive. Education is essential but we must consider how to make this appropriate to families who rely on children's incomes and cannot afford for their children to finish a school. I first learned about the Open University through the University's English and Action Program to improve English language learning in Bangladesh. I learned more about and was intrigued by the OU and its faculty's reputation for childhood studies which few universities focus on. Doing my PhD at the OU was a liberating experience. I found the OU community uniquely vibrant, very intimate and we had a collegiate scholarly community. I also had the chance to work as a research assistant to an Amnesty International funded research project exploring children's understanding of their rights which led to the publication of an Amnesty International book with Angelina Jolie encouraging young people to learn about their rights and to speak out against injustice. I came back to Bangladesh the day after my bible and immediately started to look for rules that combined my research experience and background in international development. I found the perfect position with the Child Relief Agency in Thérythuson as country coordinator for Clarissa in Bangladesh. Clarissa is a multi-country consortium partnership program led by the ITS. It aims to generate innovative solutions for children to avoid hazardous exploitative labor in Bangladesh and Nepal.