“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, a Canadian humanitarian.
My father’s ancestry is German. His father arrived in Canada during the Great Depression, when he was just nineteen. My grandfather was a big man, and from the many stories he’s told me, I know he earned money fighting boxers in Toronto, for what was considered suicide pay. Eventually he and my grandmother saved enough money to open a small grocery store close to the area of downtown Toronto known as Cabbagetown. His family worked in that store day and night. They closed the store only one day in twenty-three years, to take a trip to visit Niagara Falls.
My father worked in the store after school and on the weekends. He thought there was no chance for university, and never even discussed the possibility until his last year of high school. He was amazed when my grandparents told him they not only consented to the idea, but had saved up enough money to make it possible, with the understanding that he would still help out in the store.
My mother, the second youngest of four children, was born in Windsor, Ontario, just across the border from Detroit. She was only nine when her father passed away, and my grandmother was left to provide for the children. The family went through some difficult times, including one summer when their only shelter was a tent. Sometimes the family had to go without proper food. Often the simplest things, such as a bologna sandwich, became a treat. But my grandmother was a strong and determined woman, and with only a Grade 8 education she worked her way up from cleaning other people’s homes to an office job at the Chrysler Corporation, where, eventually, she became head of her department. She instilled in her children the belief that they could do anything they wanted in life, and, working together as a team, their family life soon improved.
When my mother was ten years old, she began to work weekends with her older sister in a neighbourhood store, sorting pop bottles, waiting on customers, and delivering groceries. The whole family worked very hard, and in the years that followed, they could look with pride on the fact that every one of the children went on to university. My mother was always able to add a perspective on the issue of child labour from her own experience.
It was my parents’ strong work ethic and belief that we must face challenges in life to achieve our goals that most influenced my brother and me. We grew up with the mottoes “Go for it!” and “The only failure in life is not trying.”
My brother, Marc, is six years older than I am. He became, in many ways, my role model. Marc was good in everything—school, sports, public speaking—and I wanted to be just like him. He was a swimmer and football player. Rugby was one of his favourite sports, and sometimes, horsing around in the backyard, he would tackle me. Just to toughen me up, he said!
When he was thirteen, Marc became interested in environmental issues. For a Grade 8 science project he set up a series of experiments to test the effects of various commercial home cleaning products on the environment. He was able to prove that these cleansers had serious negative effects, including the pollution of the water system. The following year he took the project one step further: using combinations of everyday kitchen items such as lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda, and water, he concocted recipes to