Free The Children. Craig Kielburger

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СКАЧАТЬ night before the competition, I had a coughing attack. My mother stayed up with me, feeding me hot tea and cough syrup. In the morning, my mother said that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for me to participate in the competition.

      “No,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I want to go.”

      I spent the morning sitting up in bed learning my speech. But I still wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t seem to remember the words.

      “Just do your best,” my mother said to me. “That’s all that matters.”

      When my name was called, I stood up and walked to the podium at the front of the room. I could feel the butterflies in my stomach. I looked at all the eyes staring at me. Suddenly I couldn’t remember a word of what I had practised. And, unlike the other speakers, I didn’t have any cue cards to refer to.

      So I began to speak from my heart about the things I had learned about “winning.” I spoke about sports coaches who scream at children and make them cry when they make a mistake. I told them about a note my mother had written to me when I lost a science fair competition, which said I was still a winner to her. The more I talked, the more my confidence rose. I found my voice getting stronger and my hands come alive. I concluded by stressing the importance of fighting for the things we believe in, even when there are obstacles put in our way. That was what winning was all about.

      I could hardly believe the applause as I returned to my seat. My mother gave me a hug. The previous year’s provincial winner spoke next. She was poised and articulate. You could tell she had a lot of experience. I thought she was clearly the best speaker of the group.

      The judges returned half an hour later. They reminded the speakers that we were all winners, making reference to what I had said in my speech. They began by announcing the third-place winner. Then in second place they named the girl who had won the provincial competition the year before. I was completely stunned. I had won the gold medal!

      I learned something very important the day of my first public speech. There was no doubt that the girl who placed second gave a more articulate speech. I had won because I had spoken not from words on a piece of paper, but from my heart. It was a lesson I would never forget.

      I had an entire week to practise my speech before the next competition. Over the following two months, I won first place at the next four levels and ended up second in the province. That fall I represented my school at regional and school board-wide competitions and again won the gold medal for our school. My brother started to kid me that public speaking was in my blood.

      I was now twelve years old and in Grade 7. Boy Scouts remained a major part of my life, but I had also taken up tae kwon do. I continued my extracurricular activities at school, including teaching soccer to some of the younger students. On Sundays I went to church, and played floor hockey with the neighbourhood kids in the afternoon. I still found time now and then to read a good book.

      One day, I heard from a friend that the local library was being closed down, because the city councillors had decided it was too expensive to run. There was a meeting called to discuss the matter, so a few of my friends and I decided to attend. We sat at the back and listened to the adults make their comments. When it came time for questions, again it was only adults speaking.

      I raised my hand. I stood up and talked about the importance of the library to young people, how they depended on it for their research papers and science projects. I talked about how far away the other library would be—a twenty-five-minute bike ride, one way. When I was finished, other children stood up and began to speak.

      One of the organizers of the fight to save the library phoned me a few days later, wondering if I would attend a second meeting. Eventually I was asked to speak on behalf of elementary school students to a large gathering that included the mayor and our city councillor.

      It was the first time I had become involved in an issue that was bigger than myself. In the end, we lost the fight to save the library, but I had learned a lot from the experience. I learned that children’s opinions are seldom considered, even when it’s an issue that affects them directly. I learned that many adults don’t think of us as having a role to play in issues of social justice, assuming that we have little to contribute. But I also learned that, with enough determination, young people could be heard. And that what it required, first and foremost, was a sound understanding of an issue and the confidence to speak openly about it. Only then would we establish our credibility.

      When Free The Children travelled to downtown Toronto for the youth fair that Saturday morning in April 1995, we hardly knew what to expect.

      We proudly set up our makeshift information board on a table and sat on the floor in a circle, where we stapled our information sheets together. As we did so, we couldn’t help noticing the other organizations’ impressive displays, their large, glossy panels, their professional brochures, their neat arrangements of videos and books. But the one thing the other groups didn’t have was elementary school children. A few high school students took part, but mostly there were adults who spoke at the fair about what their organizations were doing “for” children. We were the only children speaking for themselves.

      People flocked around our table to hear what we had to say. Twelve-year-old children working for other children? Children speaking for themselves about human rights? We were an oddity. That day the second goal of our group began to emerge: putting more power in the hands of young people. Children needed to have a voice and had to be able to participate in issues that affect them. Who best to understand children than other children? We realized that not only did children like Iqbal need to be freed from physical enslavement, but children like us needed to be freed from the misconception that we were not smart enough, old enough or capable enough to contribute to social issues.

      Over the next two months, we came to feel that our group had built a solid foundation. We had a name, we had definite goals, and soon we were to have an office.

      My house seemed to be the ideal location. It had always been open to kids. Marc’s friends and my friends had always used our house as a place to get together for fun, school projects or parties. There were young people constantly coming and going.

      Even better, there weren’t a lot of doors separating one room from the next. One member of Free The Children (or FTC for short) could be working in the living room, stapling together information sheets; others could be in the dining room, discussing strategy; another could be at the kitchen table, writing letters. As wonderful as this idea sounded, and as much as we all felt it would work, my parents weren’t so thrilled.

      “How about the den?” my mother suggested. “I think that’s a more reasonable possibility.”

      The den had once been a garage and, as my mother pointed out, had the great advantage of being close to the front door, so that people could come and go without much disturbance. We checked it out and, much to my parents’ delight, decided it would be perfect. We retrieved an old filing cabinet from the basement, added a table and a bookcase, and we were in business.

      Soon the filing cabinet started to fill with print material from the numerous organizations to whom we had sent letters requesting information. We cut out articles and compiled press clippings on the issue of child labour and filled our shelves with books, videotapes and any other information we could find. We covered the walls with posters and moved in the family computer, which was soon in constant use. Before long, we were putting together basic kits for distribution to schools and anyone else who might contact us for information about our organization and the issue of child labour.

      One night my dad brought me into the room to remind me that I had left the lights on (something СКАЧАТЬ