Child Slavery

"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”-United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

I came across two books that disturbed me deeply -- both deal with childhood slavery in South Asia, India and Pakistan. It's sad that in this day in age, such a things exists. There's a lot of work to be done...

The first, is BOYS WITHOUT NAMES, by Kashmira Seth. Set in contemporary Mumbai tells a harrowing story of child slavery. Indebted to ruthless moneylenders, 11-year-old Gopal’s family flees to Mumbai, where they hope to find work. On the way, Gopal’s father goes missing, and Gopal guides his mother and siblings to an uncle’s house, where they worry and wait for Baba to find them. Eager to help his family earn money, Gopal follows a local boy to what he thinks will be a day’s work at a factory. Instead, he is pulled into a sweatshop—a single room where five boys are held against their will and forced to produce decorative items with toxic materials. As Gopal dreams of escape, he builds tenuous friendships with his fellow workers. Those wary bonds form a dramatic counterpoint to the children’s daily misery, described in moving, palpable detail, and skillfully steer the story away from docu-novel territory to its hopeful conclusion.

The second book is Susan Kuklin's IQBAL MASIH AND THE CRUSADES AGAINST CHILD SLAVERY. She tells the story of Iqbal, Iqbal, a charismatic Pakistani boy sold into slavery at age four. He was freed six years later by a human rights group and became an activist speaker in Pakistan and Europe and came to the U.S. in 1994. On his return home, at age 12, he was murdered. Readers will relate to Kuklin's outrage about Iqbal and also about the suffering of bonded children everywhere and the global markets that benefit from family poverty and illiteracy. Dramatic black-and-white photos show the Iqbal speaking out in Pakistan and Boston; many pictures from several countries document small children doing forced labor, even chained to machines. A long final section describes what human rights groups and particular U.S. schools are doing to organize boycotts and protests.

An Evening with Greg Mortenson

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family -- Balti Proverb

This past weekend I attended the San Francisco Gala event of DIL – Developments in Literacy. DIL is dedicated to providing quality education to disadvantaged children, especially girls, by establishing and operating schools in the underdeveloped regions of Pakistan. It has a strong focus on gender equality and community participation. Since its inception in 1997, the organization now operates and manages 150 schools, with an enrollment of nearly 15,000 students.

The key note speaker was Dr. Adil Najam, a professor at Boston University and a senior fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Dr. Najam served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore. His talk focused on the urgency to uplift the millions of poor in Pakistan by allowing them a chance to improve their lives through education. As I’ve mentioned before, he stressed the critical importance of educating girls, for when you educate a girl you improve not only her life, but that of her children and the community.

The special guest of honor at the event was Greg Mortenson, whose NYT bestselling book, THREE CUPS OF TEA, illuminates the importance of overcoming cultural divides and stresses that education is the solution to poverty. Greg's book has had a tremendous impact on me and my husband, who uses Greg's example in his class. We were looking forward to hearing him speak, but unfortunately, Greg was out sick. In his place stepped in Professor Abdul Jabbar, Board Chairman of Greg’s organization, the Central Asia Institute.
Professor Jabbar spoke candidly about Greg’s amazing work in building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also shared a poem with us – a poem that was sent to Greg by an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan. In it, the solider, who’d just read THREE CUPS OF TEA, explains how he sits for hours behind a wall, listening to kids playing on the other side. As he marvels at their innocence, he ponders whether his gun is the answer to why he is there. He believes the only way to overcome ignorance is education. This soldier helped organize a fundraiser in Alabama to raise money for schools in Afghanistan.

It’s amazing how a book can spark so much change, little and large