A child helps her parents work on a palm oil plantation in Sabah, Malaysia, in 2018. With little or no access to daycare, some young children in Indonesia and Malaysia follow their parents to the fields, where they are exposed to toxic pesticides and fertilizers.
Binsar Bakkara/Associated Press
They are two young girls from two very different worlds, linked by a global industry that exploits an army of children.
Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in Jonesborough, Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. On one of those plantations a continent away, 10-year-old Ima helped harvest the fruit that makes its way into a dizzying array of products sold by leading Western food and cosmetics brands.