Free The Children. Craig Kielburger

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СКАЧАТЬ around and thinking: It’s amazing that with such a small group we can do all this. We had grown an incredible amount in the space of a few months—and in the months to come, we could only grow bigger.

      We were ready to take our campaign on the road. I drew up a letter in which I spoke about Free The Children and how we wanted to reach out and talk about the issue of child labour with young people. I gave it to my principal, and he arranged for it to be distributed to all the schools within our school district. The response was slow. It made us think that not many adults believed a group of twelve-year-olds could hold a class’s attention for more than ten minutes.

      Our first request came from a neighbouring school. With a date in place, we set to work preparing for our visit. We decided the best approach would be to tell stories of the children, the same stories that had affected us so deeply when we first heard them.

      When the day came, we crowded aboard my family’s minivan. At the school we piled out, clutching our posters and information sheets. We walked nervously and almost in single file, towards the first classroom. Each of us was going over in our minds what we would say.

      The teacher was very friendly. She explained to the students who we were and why we had come. We stood there—Ashley Stetts, Vance Ciara-mella and I—lined across the room in front of the blackboard, almost as if we were facing a firing squad. We all took a deep breath.

      Vance spoke about Iqbal. Ashley told the story of a young girl named Easwaris who worked in a fireworks factory. Her job was loading the sulphur and charcoal into the fireworks tubes. There had been an explosion in which Easwaris’s eight-year-old sister had been killed, and she herself now had scars lining her back and arms.

      “According to the International Labour Organization, there are more than 250 million working children,” I told the students. “That’s equal to the entire population of the United States!”

      By the end of the presentation, the students were just as shocked as we had been when we first heard about child labour. We left them with a challenge to take their first action and write a letter. It could be to a company, asking them to ensure that their products were child labour-free, or to a world leader, challenging them to put more money into education and the protection of children, or to the Pakistani government, demanding that Iqbal’s killers be brought to justice.

      We went from class to class, giving the same speech. And each time we had the same response. The students were eager to get involved. They wanted to help. In fact, by the time we finished the fourth class, the teacher brought us back to the first and the students presented us with a pile of letters.

      These were the first of thousands of such letters we would receive from children in the years that followed.

      Slowly but surely, our campaign began to grow. Speaking at one school led to an invitation to speak at another, and then at another. We began to receive invitations from parent-teacher associations, local churches, and service groups. More and more letters filled our office files, and more and more information covered our walls.

      We began to get a reputation as an organization that provided good speakers who were able to hold the attention of a crowd. In late May we received a request to speak to a world issues class at a high school, Brebeuf College. The presentation would be to a class of Grade 13 students, most of them six or seven years older than we were. It was certainly a big jump from speaking to those first Grade 5 and 6 classes.

      The session took place in a portable classroom on a hot spring day. Despite every window being open, the place was stifling. The thirty students, in their white shirts and loosened ties, filled the room. It looked like a mini-United Nations; there were students from a dozen different ethnic backgrounds. One student was twirling a pencil, moving it from finger to finger and back again.

      Marilyn Davis, Adam Fazzari and I gave the presentation. Despite the age of our audience, we felt confident about what we had to say. After all, we had given the same presentation many times before. We each knew just where the other was going to stop, and where each of us would begin. We each took turns speaking, one perfectly synchronized with the other. When we wrapped up, we asked for questions.

      “Well, don’t all leap at us at once,” I said to break the ice.

      The first question was easy. A student asked if Iqbal’s killers were ever brought to justice. I told the class that in fact someone had been arrested, but that it was widely suspected he did not commit the crime.

      Then, a student piped up. “If you eliminate child labour, won’t you send local currencies plummeting, causing unemployment and economic chaos amongst the countries?”

      Marilyn looked at me. I stared back at her. She glanced at Adam, then said, “Craig, you take this one.”

      An answer stumbled out. “I’m not really sure if that’s the case. I can honestly say I don’t really have an answer . . . .”

      Another student asked, “What gives you the right to go to these countries and tell them what to do? Aren’t you simply white imperialists coming from a rich country, telling these people in the Third World how to raise their children?”

      The questions came fast and furious. “What do you suppose happens to those children after they are taken out of child labour?”

      “Wouldn’t the World Trade Organization stop any chance of a boycott of products made by child labour on the grounds that it would affect international treaties?”

      Marilyn, Adam and I stood there and looked at each other after each and every question. Some of them we were able to answer, but most of our responses were simply lame and unconvincing. Often we had to say that we honestly didn’t have an answer.

      Through it all, I found the room unbelievably warm. At times I thought I was going to faint. The three of us felt as if we were under attack, and shrinking more and more as the questions piled up.

      I brought it all to an end and thanked the class. We walked outside for some fresh air. The teacher followed, asking if I was all right because I was sweating and had turned pale.

      When the teacher had gone back inside, Marilyn turned to me and said, “That was torture.”

      Adam added, “I wouldn’t want to have to go through that again.”

      We sat on the steps of the portable, out of view of the students, although with the windows open we could hear that they were already on their next topic: global trade. We sat there, holding our posters with the pictures of the child workers, thinking to ourselves that maybe we were getting in over our heads. If we were going to get seriously involved in this issue, then we would have to know what we were talking about.

      Later that day, after soaking in a long bath and watching some TV, I went into the office and began looking through our information. I wrote down every question that had stumped us, and I went looking for the answers. I called Alam Rahman and asked if he would go to the University of Toronto library and search out material for me on the issue. Our group did a systematic review of all the literature. Day by day, the answers began to build up.

      I put together a three-page letter addressed to the class we had spoken to at Brebeuf College. It began: “Thank you very much for your challenging questions. We have undertaken research on the issues you raised and have found answers. If you have more questions, we will be more than happy to respond to them.”

      And a few weeks later another invitation arrived from Brebeuf College, this time to speak to a class of Grade 12 students. And this time, СКАЧАТЬ