This project focuses on bonded labor at brick kilns in district Toba Tek Singh Punjab, Pakistan.An ancient craft, the practice of making bricks at brick kilns has not seen any significant technological advances in Pakistan. Most brick kilns are situated in rural areas and employ the most vulnerable sections of the labor class, often "low caste" migrants and Christians, a large majority of who are women and children. Some of the workers like the "jalai-wala" (in charge of the fire) are salaried, but specifically those who make the bricks are paid on a piece-rate basis.

Bonded labor, in the context of this project, refers to workers who are tied to a single employer due to a debt taken by them which they cannot repay (also known as debt bondage). The bonded labor system is very elaborate and characterized by advances or "Peshgi", without which no employment is possible. The ILO (1998), through a survey confirms that 93% of the brick kiln workers received advances before they started working, thus becoming "bonded" to the kiln owner until the debt is paid. Because of the extremely low wages paid to the workers, the high interest rate charged on the loans, fraudulent accounting by the employers which cannot be detected by the illiterate workers and instances like weddings, illness or funerals requiring extra cash for which new loans need to be taken, these debts pile up and often become "eternal debts", inherited by generation after generation of workers.

The bonded laborers in these brick kilns become the slaves of the owner and are socially, economically and physically exploited. The work is back-breaking and the conditions are inhumane: the families work from dawn to dusk often in soaring temperatures, the whole family receiving money equivalent to one person's wage. As most of them live at the kilns, they are isolated from the communities outside, and do not have access to basic health, education or even proper sanitation facilities. If they try to run away, they are hunted down and brought back to the kiln.