We’re eating barbecued chicken breasts from a meat stand off the main tourist strip in Moalboal, Cebu, Philippines when a young girl about the age of my students walks up to us, carrying a basket of keychains, bracelets and headbands. “Souvenirs?” she asks politely, placing her merchandise at the edge of our table. She waits patiently, but without much eagerness. “No thank you, but, shouldn’t you be in bed?” my friend finally says gently. “You must go to school, right?” She did.  And a project due for a class the next day. She’s one of the lucky ones.

I’ve had this experience now quite a few times when traveling to third world countries and the thing about it is that buying souvenirs from kids doesn’t seem like a big deal on the surface. These kids normally are helping their families out and 18 year old me traveling in Cusco, Peru might have equated this scenario to a kid attending the local farmer’s market on Saturday morning to help his parents sell vegetables. But in a third world country, not only is selling souvenirs more laborious then a weekend gig, but it actually can be detrimental towards children being properly educated.

Kids who make enough money selling souvenirs for their families, are less likely to attend school simply because they’re cuteness might be the key to the biggest money intake the families has.

I’ve heard in the past, what you should do is instead of buying souvenirs from the kids, that you should buy the kids something he or she can eat or use, something personal. This way you know where you’re money is going. But I believe this doesn’t actually help to solve the main issue, which is that these kids aren’t having a proper childhood, or a proper education.

Instead, here’s what you can do- teach them something.

Later that same night in the Philippines, we’re sitting at a tourist heavy cocktail bar on the pier. We’re trying to make it through overpriced, over syruped drinks when a different child comes over with a basket. This time as he puts down his basket, we retort his question with a different question. “Would you like to play a game?” We ask. His yes doesn’t skip a beat.

We teach him how to play a popular Korean finger game. In this game, members of the group all position their hands with thumbs in the ready position to be stick up. You count how many thumbs there are total, which for us this number was 8. One person starts by guessing a number, 0-8. At the same time, every member of the group must decide whether to stick up 0, 1, or 2 thumbs into the air. If the number that is guessed out-loud is the same as the number of thumbs in the air, that player wins! He or she then gets to slap together the hands of all the other players in victory.

It wasn’t long after raising this young boy to be a thumb game champion, that the same young girl from earlier in the night ventured by our table. “Hey! my friend yells, “come over here! Play this game with us!” She seems shy, but there’s a hint of eagerness in her eyes. We have the boy teach the game to his friend and pretty soon the five of us are playing together, guessing numbers between 0-10, laughing, and gently hitting each others hands in victory.

I have no reason to believe these particular kids won’t grow up to have happy, healthy, educated lives, as within 30 minutes an adult did come to retrieve them so they could head home. However one thing I do know for sure is that the curiosity, eagerness, and joy they had when playing this game far surpassed that of when they were working their souvenirs gig. Now, these kids have that game to hold onto forever. But not just that, they have something they can teach to others, passing along skills, and passing along that happiness.