Free The Children. Craig Kielburger

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СКАЧАТЬ to hundreds of other calls and faxes around the world, all in a quest to get to the heart of the issue of child labour.

      Two things struck me right away. First of all, none of the organizations I talked to seemed to know much about child labour. But equally amazing: every person who tried to answer my questions was an adult. Without a single exception. Even though the issue was all about children, there were no young people involved in these organizations. I could hardly believe it. Shouldn’t other children be speaking out in defence of children?

      I’m always fascinated by coincidences, how one random event can come on the heels of another and together alter the whole direction of a person’s life. Early the following week, in the Life section of the Toronto Star, there was a full-page article in celebration of Youth Week. As part of the activities, an organization called Youth Action Network was sponsoring an event at a downtown convention centre that coming Friday. Youth organizations were invited to set up displays and distribute information.

      I’m not sure why, in the end, I decided to call the number in the article. I guess it was because I was tired of being able to speak only to organizations run by adults.

      By a stroke of good fortune, my call was directed to Alam Rahman. Alam, whose parents were from Bangladesh, was a recent university graduate. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Alam would become a very central figure in my life. I spoke to him for more than an hour about Iqbal and child labour. I tested the idea of getting some friends together and starting a children’s group to fight such cruelty.

      Alam didn’t hesitate. “It’s a great idea, Craig. You should try it!”

      That was all I needed. The following day I asked my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. Fedrigoni, if I could have a few minutes to speak to the students before class began. I’m sure he must have thought it was about some social function or a football game I was organizing during lunch break.

      As usual, we stood by our desks while the morning announcements came over the public-address system, followed faithfully by the national anthem. Then we sat down and quietly listened to Mr. Fedrigoni say how there had been a few problems with discipline the day before, but that he hoped this would be a better day. When he had finished, he simply said, “Craig has a few comments he would like to make to you.” He looked at me and nodded.

      I walked to the front and turned to face the thirty students in my class. The room was silent except for a couple of boys whispering in a back row. When I began, they too were quiet. But I was still nervous; I always found speaking in front of my peers a tough thing to do, and I still had no idea how they would react to what I would say.

      “I was wondering if anyone saw this article on the front page of last Wednesday’s Toronto Star,” I began.

      I had made photocopies of it, which I passed around the classroom. As I did so, I started to tell Iqbal’s story. I described his struggles and his dream, and how that dream had been cut short by an assassin’s bullet. I presented the alarming statistics on child labour. As I spoke, I could see that many of my classmates were just as shocked as I was by the story. Anger, sympathy, disbelief filled the room.

      “So this is the issue,” I said. “I don’t know a lot about it, but I want to learn more. Maybe some of us could start a group to look at it together.” And then came the fateful question, “Who wants to join?”

      About eleven hands shot up, and I very quickly jotted down their names. I thanked Mr. Fedrigoni and the class for the half-hour of their time I had taken.

      And through that simple action, it began.

      At lunchtime that day, some of us got together and talked about what we could do. I was amazed at how enthusiastic they all were. I told them about the youth fair on Friday.

      “Do you think we could put together a display?” I asked. “We haven’t got much time.”

      “Sure. Let’s do it.”

      “We can all meet at my house,” I said.

      That night, twelve of us got together. It was a very tight deadline, with just two days to prepare. We found an old science fair board, and we covered it with coloured paper, pasting on all the information I had found on child labour in the library, then drawing pictures to illustrate it.

      We had determined that our first objective should be to inform people of the plight of child labourers. Armed with such knowledge, they might be willing to help. We decided to draw up a petition to present to the government, and called on the expertise of a couple of human rights groups to refine the wording for us.

      But we were still without a name for our group. For more than an hour we struggled to come up with something suitable. We flipped through the newspaper clippings for inspiration. One of them reported on a demonstration in Delhi, India, where 250 children had marched through the streets with placards, chanting, “We want an education,” “We want freedom,” “Free The Children!”

      “That’s it!” someone shouted. “Free The Children!”

      “Perfect,” I said. “We’re using their words. Children speaking for children.”

      “Exactly.”

      We had found a name. Marilyn Davis, the best artist among us, had earlier drawn a picture of children chained to a carpet loom. Before pasting the picture onto our information board, across the top she had written slogans, including “Break the Chains” and “Save the Children.” Now we pasted a piece of paper over the word “SAVE” and wrote “FREE” in big letters.

      Free The Children was born. We hoisted our board like a giant placard, in solidarity with the children who had marched through the streets of Delhi.

      I remember lying awake that Thursday night, thinking about what we had gotten ourselves into. Here we were, just a group of friends, a ragtag lot compared to all the other organizations sure to be taking part in the youth fair. Yet we had worked hard, read all the information I had collected, and felt confident we could get our point across to anyone who was willing to listen.

      As I slowly drifted off to sleep, I could only think: ready or not, here we go. And the next morning, that’s exactly what happened—off we went, the start of something that would take over my life and catch the world’s attention to an extent that none of us could ever have imagined.

      I am often asked where I found the confidence to start Free The Children and take on the responsibility of being its spokesperson. Was there something in my family background that prompted me to grab on to this issue and get so deeply involved in it? Others are more blunt about it. What were your parents like? Were you a normal kid?

      “Normal” can mean a lot of things. If it means playing basketball, watching TV, listening to music, hanging out with my friends . . . sure, I did all those things. I still do. But to me it can also mean getting involved because you believe so deeply in a cause that you can’t see yourself just standing on the sidelines, waiting for other people to act.

      I can’t honestly say that I remember my parents ever becoming involved in any social issues when I was young. But they did instil in my brother and me a sense that people should take care of one another. And they grew up in the Sixties, so perhaps the idealism of young people then had some effect on them. They never talked much about those days. It was only recently I discovered that before they were married my mother ran a drop-in centre for street kids in Toronto, and my father worked at L’Arche, a home for mentally challenged adults in France that had been started by Jean Vanier, СКАЧАТЬ