“Convince me that you would be safe.” Every night those words raced through my mind as I formed my plan. When my father set a second condition for going, that I would have to raise half the plane fare myself, I knew I was winning them over.
UNICEF in New York agreed to contact their offices in South Asia to see if they would help. PLAN International, a development agency formerly known in some countries as Foster Parents Plan, also went looking for contact people willing to take care of us. I faxed friends we had made over the past months in organizations throughout South Asia, hoping for offers of accommodation.
It was a very good start.
Of course, I was back at school, trying to concentrate on the work to be done there. And the day-to-day operations of FTC continued. Over the summer our members had drifted off with their own vacation plans. After the garage sale, we found it difficult to get together for meetings, and it seemed to me that the energy within FTC, which had been so high, had begun to subside.
I was worried that FTC would not regain its momentum. But after the first few days of September, it was clear there was no reason for concern. The phone started to ring, with kids checking in, anxious to discuss our plans for the fall, and offering their own ambitious ideas for new projects.
Free The Children was filling a gap in many kids’ lives. At an age when we were constantly being told by adults what to do, FTC was something we took on voluntarily. It had our names on it. And it was our reputations that were at stake. FTC was almost revolutionary in allowing kids large amounts of responsibility. It seems to me that one of the consequences of a consumer-driven society is that many kids are bored by life in the suburbs. How many video games do they want to play? How many times do they want to go to the shopping mall? Kids are longing for something more meaningful in their lives, something more challenging, and something that allows them to prove themselves. FTC answered that need, and the kids involved in it weren’t about to give it up.
For many of them it wasn’t an easy decision. Among our peer group they were being labelled by some as do-gooders and wimps. For the so-called “in crowd,” FTC just wasn’t cool enough. The mere fact that we were doing something out of the ordinary made us targets. We were unusual. We didn’t fit their mould.
Some of them taunted us. “Hey, man, like my shirt? Some kid made it. It’s the latest thing to have clothes made by kids.”
Many of their snide comments had to do with our stance against brand-name companies guilty of human rights abuses. Some of us spoke out against such companies, and began wearing clothes without brand names. The fact that we were taking on popular culture, criticizing companies that made running shoes or baseball caps—the very symbols of youth culture— made us different. And no kid wants to be seen as different.
But an interesting phenomenon was developing. FTC was attracting some of the most popular girls in school. These were girls who did well academically and were very involved in extracurricular activities such as sports and school clubs.
Where girls go, of course, guys follow. And soon we were attracting not just the type of guys who regularly volunteer for things, but jock types, too—guys who never volunteered for anything in their lives. In other words, Free The Children was becoming cool. The fact that a TV crew was making a documentary about our work gave us credibility.
Many of the reporters who came to interview us could not believe that a group of kids could ever have achieved what we did on our own. Adult support was important to the organization, but in our formative years, when FTC could have gone either way, kids were (and still are) the heart and soul of the organization. Free The Children would be nowhere today if it were not for the original group of young people, some as young as ten and eleven, who believed in what we were doing, who didn’t listen to the naysayers and the complainers, who resisted peer pressure and just said, “We want to get involved in this because we believe in it.”
Free The Children reached another milestone that fall. I was invited to speak before two thousand delegates at the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) convention in Toronto. It was the largest group I had ever addressed.
When I entered the convention hall and weaved past table after table of union members, all I could think was, My God, this is a lot of people!
I was led to a seat at the back of the stage. I looked out at the audience but could see nothing because of the massive bank of lights shining in my eyes. I shuffled through my notes. My heart was pounding.
An organizer asked me how long I planned to speak, and I said, “Ten or fifteen minutes—”
Someone to my left interrupted. “You’re booked for three minutes. You’d better cut down on that speech.”
I looked again at my notes. I hardly knew what to cut. The person was staring at me, with eyes that suggested I was not to take one extra second.
I looked out at the lights, thinking, if they seem bored, then I’ll cut it down.
Jane Armstrong, the person responsible for my being there, introduced me. It took all of forty-five seconds. Then she turned my way and said, “The stage is yours.”
I began the walk to the rostrum, but someone put out a hand to stop me. A person came running up the stairs to the stage with a two-step ladder and set it in place.
I took one step up the ladder, then another. My head appeared in full view over the rostrum. I could hear a trail of laughter from the conference delegates. I smiled into the glare of lights, trusting that somewhere beyond them was the audience.
I started the way I had started just about all my speeches, with the story of Iqbal. I was nervous, but before long my words were interrupted by loud applause. It gave me new confidence. My voice grew stronger and stronger. I pushed aside my notes. Even though I couldn’t see them, I could feel the energy of the audience. With each passing minute I took greater control of what I wanted to say.
Indeed, many minutes passed, several of them interrupted by applause. By the time I had finished, the audience was on its feet. I clasped my hands together and said, “Thank you very much.” Fifteen minutes had gone by quickly.
A leader of the union, Ken Signoretti, took hold of my hand and raised it in the air. The applause hadn’t stopped. He whispered in my ear that I was not to go anywhere.
“On behalf of the Ontario Federation of Labour and its steering committee,” he said, “the OFL wishes to pledge five thousand dollars to your cause!” He presented me with an OFL T-shirt and helped me put it on. Again my hand was raised in the air.
It started a chain reaction. The Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Autoworkers Union, the Steelworkers Union, one union after another walked up to the mike and matched what the OFL had given, and challenged others to do the same. Most moving of all were the individuals who stood up and pledged thirty or forty, and sometimes a hundred, dollars on behalf of their families and children.
T-shirt after T-shirt arrived on the stage, and before long I was wearing eight layers of them. In all the heat and the bright lights and the tally of money rising higher and higher, I leaned into the mike and said, “I think I’m going to faint!”
After an hour and forty-five minutes, I left the stage. I walked past table after table, shaking hands, accepting their hugs and acknowledging their applause. Needless to say, my fellow Free The Children members were all smiles when I finally reached them at the back of the room.
“This is unbelievable!” I shouted to them over the noise.
It was more than unbelievable. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been pledged, to be put in a separate bank account and used for projects that would directly help the exploited working children of the developing world. The donation was hundreds of times bigger than any FTC had ever received. Never in our wildest dreams could we have expected it.
Free The Children had truly taken flight. And for all of us gathered at