16 April, International Day against Child Slavery. No Longer Slaves, but Brothers and Sisters

What is there behind a label that says "dress for 9€" or "unbeatable prices"? What is there behind a toy, or a pair of shoes, or a mobile phone, or an ad for cosmetics, or behind certain brands…? Let’s have a look behind these labels, these prices, this publicity... They hide the sweat and blood of the slaves of the 21st century. Child slaves are present in every sector of the economy, where the human being itself is regarded as a throw-away commodity.

Murdered on 16th April 1995, in Pakistan, 

when he was 12. [1983-1995]

Testimony of true activist and solidarity trade-unionism.

On 16 April, it was the anniversary of IQBAL MASIH’s murder (1995-2015), a Christian non-violent militant for Justice in the fight against Child Slavery in the world. 

In commemoration of his death, the 16th April is the INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST CHILD SLAVERY, and rallies, different events, street actions and solidarity marches against child slavery were held in Spain and Latin America

On 16 April 1995, a child slave, Iqbal Masih, was murdered in Pakistan because he fought against child slavery. 

Every day we can find products made by enslaved children, in our homes, in our streets, in shopping malls, in our consumption. At present, millions of children breath the smoke of rubbish landfills, they risk their lives as pearl divers, they work in the mines to get the minerals for our cosmetics or for new technologies, they are kidnapped to become child soldiers, they live amidst bullets and rapes in the streets, they are used for the trade in human organs, in brothels, in sweatshop... Children who have been deprived of their childhood and education. Children who are subjugated, enslaved, humiliated.

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi.

Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

                                              Nobel Lecture by Kailash Satyarthi

Some outstanding extract:

"We have utterly failed in imparting an education to our children. An education that gives the meaning and objective of life and a secure future. An education that builds a sense of global citizenship among the young people."

"Solutions are not found only in the deliberations in conferences and prescriptions from a distance. They lie in small groups and local organisations and individuals, who confront the problem every day, even if they remain unrecognised and unknown to the world."

"You may ask: what can one person do? Let me tell you a story I remember from my childhood: A terrible fire had broken out in the forest. All the animals were running away, including the lion, king of the forest. Suddenly, the lion saw a tiny bird rushing towards the fire. He asked the bird, "what are you doing?” To the lion's surprise, the bird replied "I am on my way to extinguish the fire.” He laughed and said, "how can you kill the fire with just one drop of water, in your beak?” The bird was adamant, and said, "But I am doing my bit.”

Malala Yousafzai Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Nobel Lecture

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norweigan Nobel Committee,

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me.

I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth- which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam.  And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.

Kailash Satyarthi’s Nobel Peace Prize: Decades of Fighting Child Slavery in India

Kailash Satyarthi: “The people from everywhere in the world should feel, number one, that slavery’s bad, that exploitation of children is bad, it has to go, and, secondly, they should have a belief that it is possible, it is happening, it is not that it is very pessimistic and say: oh they are poor, they are poor countries and that thing could happen. It is not true. Poor people, poor countries can bring about change, and it is happening here. So, they should have a belief that the change is possible, that we can make a better world to live in, and that will happen.”

Article from The New York Times

Oct. 10, 2014

NEW DELHI — Many years have passed, but a police chief named Amitabh Thakur can remember the precise moment when he first set eyes on Kailash Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Mr. Satyarthi was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head, while a group of men converged on him with bats and iron rods. They worked for the Great Roman Circus, which was illegally employing teenagers trafficked from Nepal as dancing girls. Mr. Satyarthi, a Gandhian activist in a simple white cotton tunic, had come to free them.

As he approached the scene, the chief realized he was interrupting a savage beating.

“I remember that when I reached this man, he was rather composed,” Mr. Thakur said. “I was very impressed, for the simple reason that a man was putting his life in danger for a noble cause.”

Mr. Satyarthi is not an international celebrity like 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, with whom he is sharing the prize. Instead, he has labored for three decades to shave away at the numbingly huge problem of child slavery in India, using undercover operatives and camera crews to find the airless workrooms and mine shafts where children were being kept.

The circus raid was a reminder of the factors that converge in favor of employers using bonded labor in India: caste differences, religious differences, political and economic leverage. About 28 million children ages 6 to 14 are working in India, according to Unicef. Mr. Satyarthi’s organization, called Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, is credited with freeing some 70,000 of them. In 1994, he started Rugmark, now GoodWeave International, in which rugs are certified to have been made without child slavery.

Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Prize Speech

Malala Yousafzai

Born: 12 July 1997, Mingora, Pakistan
Residence at the time of the award:United Kingdom
Prize motivation: "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education"

17-year-old Malala Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work promoting young people's rights. Here she is, accepting the prrize. 

‘UBUNTU’: “I am because we are”

An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first would win the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: ”UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are”.

 "Ubuntu is nothing more or less than compassion brought into colourful practice."

"Ubuntu is a concept that is present here in Africa but I also believe it is present in every human being if it is allowed to thrive and prosper."

Converting a Public Park into a Night School and Teaching Impoverished Children for the Last 25 Years for Free

At individual level, we often think that a single person can’t do any good for society, particularly at large scale level – that too with no external moral and physical support, inspiration and funding. However, there are people in this world who achieve the glory that hundreds of others can’t reach together.

Master Ayub, one of those extraordinary examples, has been teaching un-privileged and poor children of Islamabad, Pakistan for last 25 years without receiving a single penny.

Converting a Public Park in Islamabad into a Night School, he has been able to teach these young children who will one day be the backbone of Pakistan.

“If Master Ayub leaves, no one will ever teach us again. He gets us books, stationary and teaches us everything,” Shahzeb, a seven-year-old student, said.

Many of these children are forced to work. Yet, every evening more than 100  children gather in a park to learn, to get education.

Master Ayub has his own levels for grades. Syllabus of this school may not equalize the outer world’s standards, but graduates of his school can easily read, write, do complex calculations, even they can speak foreign languages (such as English).

Students are taught special courses, for instance Mathematics, Social Sciences, to meet professional requirements and real life implications of studies.

Some of the children he has taught are now working in government institutions like the Capital Development Authority (CDA) while others are running their own private businesses.

Each student praised Master Ayub and said if it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t even know how to spell their names.

The Difference A Teacher Can Make

100 years ago in French Algeria, on November 7th of 1913, author Albert Camus was born. The second son of Lucien and Catherine Camus, he was just 11-months-old when his father was killed in action during The Battle of the Marne; his mother, partially deaf and illiterate, then raised her boys in extreme poverty with the help of his heavy-handed grandmother.

It was in school that Camus shone, due in no small part to the encouragement offered by his beloved teacher, Louis Germain, a man who fostered the potential he saw and steered young Camus on a path that would eventually see him write some hugely respected, award-winning novels and essays.

Soon after winning the Nobel Prize, Camus used the occasion to write a touching note of gratitude to this hero in his life…

19 November 1957

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

We Can’t Forget Malala… We Can’t Forget Iqbal… We Can’t Forget There Are 400 Million Child Slaves Who Don’t Receive Education

The assassination attempt on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai has put her situation in the spotlight. But she’s not the first, writes Dr Ekaterina Yahyaoui.

 

Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for the right to an education.

Dr Ekaterina Yahyaoui writes: DO YOU KNOW who Iqbal Masih is? And do you know who Malala Yousafzai is? I believe the majority of you would say no to the first question and wonder why they should know this name. The majority of readers will know the story about Malala, a 14-year-old girl from Pakistan shot by the Taliban last week for her activism for girls’ right to education.

However, both cases are very similar in many regards. Iqbal, like Malala, comes from Pakistan. Iqbal’s name became known in western countries when he was a ten-year-old boy. You know about Malala because she started talking about girls’ rights to education and her diary was published on the BBC Urdu blog when she was eleven.  The attempt was made to assassinate Malala when she was fourteen. An attempt to assassinate Iqbal was made when he was twelve.

And this attempt was successful. Iqbal died at the age of twelve. We all hope that Malala will survive, but why did I recall Iqbal when I heard about Malala’s case?

Iqbal had not had a chance to go to a school. He came from a very poor family which sold him into the carpet industry when he was four.  Together with other children, he spent days working very fine looms on hand-made carpets in slave-like conditions. For instance, children were undernourished so that they would not grow and have small fine fingers required for making good quality fine carpets. Once Iqbal managed to escape he was able to mobilise public opinion not only in Pakistan, but most importantly in the West, including the USA. Malala’s activism also goes beyond Pakistani borders and reportedly she made appeals to the West and the USA.

Donkey Mobile Libraries

The Donkey Mobile Library is the brainchild of Ato Yohannes Gebregeorgis and was designed to address the urgent need of supplying books to children in rural areas. Ato Yohannes discovered that donkeys were plentiful in these rural areas and that books were not. Similar in concept to bookmobiles in the United States, Donkey Mobile Libraries run a circuit from school to school and from village to village bringing books to eager children. The first Donkey Mobile Library was put into operation in 2005 and five more have followed with a further commitment of more in the immediate future.

The donkey cart is designed to exacting specifications. It must hold a treasure trove of books, have space to hold stools for seating, and contain a special compartment for food for the donkey. The Donkey Mobile Library is parked underneath a large tree, the thirty or so stools placed in the shade with space for as many as 200 children to sit in the grass or dirt nearby. A trained librarian or library assistant distributes the books to the children and the children take turns reading to themselves or reading to ach other under the guidance of the librarian. When the session is over, the books and stools are packed up and the Donkey Mobile Library is off to the next reading site.

The Quest to Understand Consciousness

Every morning we wake up and regain consciousness — that is a marvelous fact — but what exactly is it that we regain? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses this simple question to give us a glimpse into how our brains create our sense of self.

This TED talk is by Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist who is most well known for his book, Descartes Error, and his research on the importance of emotions to cognition.  In the talk, Damasio describes consciousness as the combination of your mind, which is a flow of mental images, and the self, i.e. your “you.”  Consciousness occurs when “self comes to mind” (see screenshot from the talk below), which just happens to be the name of his most recent book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain.

Every Child is a Unique Human Being

This video reminds us that each child is a unique human being.  It is inspired by the poem “Animal School”, originally written by George Reavis in 1939. 

It is so easy to get caught up in a curriculum-driven agenda, particularly in the current climate of educational “accountability” and drive for standardized testing. Standardized (but often overstuffed) programs are designed around what society at large, and particular interest groups argue, that all people need to know. 

“Many people have a hard time understanding the concepts of independence vs. interdependence, inclusion, multiple intelligences and cooperative learning. I thought a revision of The Animal School by George Reavis might explain it all.” Mary E. Ulrich

Indian Man Offers Underprivileged Children Free Education under a Bridge

A torn rug to sit on, a metro bridge for a roof, a patch of wall painted black for a blackboard and a shopkeeper for a teacher. This may look like a scene out of a Hindi movie but is the everyday reality of 39 children from villages near the Yamuna bank.

"Our teacher has told us that when poverty strikes, you should open your mind, and that can be done only through education," Abhishek, 15, a student of Sharma's now attending a government school, told the Indian Express. He aspires to be an engineer when he grows up.

Rajesh Kumar Sharma, 40, offers a free education to New Delhi's slum children under a metro bridge.

Over 30 local Indian children have been attending his open-air, dirt-floor school since it opened three years ago.

A Vocation for Teaching

Children attend class at the Dongzhong (literally means in cave) primary school at a Miao village in Ziyun county, southwest China's Guizhou province. The school is built in a huge, aircraft hanger-sized natural cave, carved out of a mountain over thousands of years by wind, water and seismic shifts.

The Dangerous Way to School

Children in Indonesia have been filmed risking their lives by crossing a collapsed suspension bridge to get to school.

Three bridges in the district of Lebak have given way recently due to flooding.

When the 162m-long bridge that connected Ciwaru village to Sibagi village broke, school children were left with few alternatives for getting to lessons on time.

Kids travel to school via a precarious, high-altitude zipline of 1,300ft, carrying their younger sibs in hemp sacks and slowing their descent with a wooden fork.

Muhammad Ikhwan, a 10-year-old student, said he felt forced to choose crossing the collapsed bridge rather than walking 5km. "It's far if we don't use the bridge. Yes, it's about 5km to walk," he said.

It's exam season in Guinea, ranked 160th out of 177 countries on the United Nations' development index, and schoolchildren flock to the airport every night because it's among the few places where they'll always find the lights on.

Groups of elementary and high school students begin heading to the airport at dusk, hoping to reserve a coveted spot under the oval light cast by one of a dozen lampposts in the parking lot. Some come from over an hour's walk away.

Assembly-line Teaching Approach

The traditional school structure emerged as a parallel to the factory model: a division of labour, mechanical routines and large-scale production as the most efficient way to make things. The products could be automobiles or productive citizens.

Considering students have different classes a day of about 50 or 60 minutes each, in rooms where they are sitting in orderly rows, writing down notes and completing repetitive exercises in preparation for exams. This is an efficient method of material production, but it's no way to educate human beings.

The "products" these industrial-era schools release into our communities cannot be agents of change and often lack the ability to collaborate with others and engage in the critical analysis necessary to make this world a better place. 

Schools in Finnland

Education counsellor Reijo Laukkanen says:

“Finnland is a society based on equity.. .Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies - if you're not better than your neighbor, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, outperforming your neighbor isn't very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high."

Eeva Penttila, Head of International Relations Helsinki Education Department:

“The State wants the citizens to be happy, to have a high quality of education and also to have a very good self-esteem, those are our main goals…”

  

“In kindergarten, they have a curriculum but it’s based on play, not on academic learning…Kindergarten and pre-school (6 year olds) are not compulsory.”

“The teachers’ profession here is valued in our country…We value education because we value those who are teaching us… (Teachers have autonomy to decide how their classrooms are run) …when you have autonomy, you have a huge responsibility.”

(There’s no students’ national assessment) “We only have one national test… at the age of 18.” (There are no standardized tests) “There’s ongoing self-assessment…The school board decides a self-assessment plan for their students.”

Timo Lankinen, Director General of the Finnish National Board of Education:  

“We have had big reforms…with vocation educational training…Finnish basic education…is based on giving high standards for all…we empower teaching profession and give high-quality teacher education…We also intervene early if there are children lagging behind. There’s an individual approach and we highlight active role of students a lot…If you look at learning environments in Finnish school, we have relatively small class sizes. So, there’s a possibility to individualize attention for each child. Also… relatively small school sizes.”

What is Finland's “Secret” to Success in Education?

For the last number of years, Finland has led the world in the performance of 15-year-old kids when it comes to literacy, numeracy, and science. In Finland, children are not required to attend formal schooling until the age of seven.

There are no private schools in Finland – all students receive a free education from the age of seven until they complete their university studies. Yes, you read that correctly: university education is completely state-funded. They also all receive free school meals, resources and materials, transport and support services.

Student excellence was never a particular priority–so when Finnish students topped the first ever PISA tests in 2001, it came as huge surprise to both the Finnish government and the international community.

Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility, about Finland’s success in education:

No Standardized Testing

Students do not have any mandatory exams until, as a high school senior, they are required to take an exam for entrance into university.

The Prestige of Teaching

In Finland, teaching is a prestigious career; as a childhood aspiration, it is mentioned in the same breath as any other career. "When we compare teachers to other professions in society, we compare them to lawyers or doctors or architects," Dr. Sahlberg said.

Teacher Autonomy

Novelist Chinua Achebe dies, aged 82

Nigerian author recognised for key role in developing African literature has died in Boston, where he was working as a professor.

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the father of African literature, has died at the age of 82.

In a statement, Achebe's family requested privacy, and paid tribute to "one of the great literary voices of all time. He was also a beloved husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an inspiration to all who knew him."

A novelist, poet and essayist, Achebe was perhaps best known for his first novel Things Fall Apart, which was published in 1958. The story of the Igbo warrior Okonkwo and the colonial era, it has sold more than 10m copies around the world and has been published in 50 languages. Achebe depicts an Igbo village as the white men arrive at the end of the 19th century, taking its title from the WB Yeats poem, which continues: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

The poet Jackie Kay hailed Achebe as "the grandfather of African fiction" who "lit up a path for many others", adding that she had reread Things Fall Apart "countless times". "It is a book that keeps changing with the times as he did," she said.

Achebe won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection Christmas in Biafra, was a finalist for the 1987 Booker prize for his novel Anthills of the Savannah, and in 2007 won the Man Booker international prize. Chair of the judges on that occasion, Elaine Showalter, said he had "inaugurated the modern African novel", while her fellow judge, the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, said his fiction was "an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence", and that Achebe was "a joy and an illumination to read".

The Ideal, by Julián Gómez del Castillo

THE IDEAL

By Julián Gómez del Castillo

In Spain, most young people of 15, 18 or 25 are doomed to unemployment when they finish their studies. 60% of young people under 25 are jobless. How do educators prepare the youth for this fact, or have they chosen to be teachers and given up their job as educators? Have young people been educated to fight against this problem through a liberating moral action or to serve economic imperialism by being resigned and unresisting? Are we aware that the educational task always entails political action? Have young people and educators considered that if 60% of the youth are unemployed and do not fight, this is the result of not having had educators? It is possible that if youngsters could find militant testimonies in their family or group of friends, they would be able to lay down their lives.

We are swindling this generation by concealing from them that the Ideal is above evasion, money, exploitation in its different forms, above the good life, consumption and stupidity.

All human beings fulfill themselves by cultivating the qualities in their being. These qualities include one upon which the others converge: Love. Love is pure disinterested gratuity of self, which in our times is called solidarity, defined through actions for the poor such as "communication of what is necessary to live", that is to say, even life itself.

In the 19^th century, when the poor in Europe bring this to people’s social life, they take history’s most important cultural action for the liberation of the oppressed. Since then, thousands and thousands of people have laid down their lives in solidarity with the impoverished. It is our turn to follow suit. We are not the first ones, others have laid down their lives before but we haven’t yet. We are inspired by their attitude, which encourages us to walk. The seeds of solidarity have already been sown along the paths our Solidarity Marches will walk; paths that have witnessed great efforts and sacrifices in the name of solidarity, including the toll of many human lives.

On 16^th April, 1995, Iqbal Masih was murdered in Pakistan for fighting against child slavery. He was a fighter for peace and there was no room for him in an imperialist world. Christian conscious, he laid down his life at the age of 12. Let us honor his memory on 16^th April. He is an example for the youth of the 21^st century; a century with unemployment, hunger and slavery renewed by economic imperialism.