Free the Children

Free the Children is an organization that I’ve supported since I discovered it; I even created the Timmins Branch while I was in grade seven. It was started by a young boy when he heard the story of a child slave who was killed for speaking out against child slavery. Knowing this was wrong, twelve year old Craig Kielburger founded the organization with some school friends and it only grew from there.

Kielburger’s organization began to achieve admiration from the public when they launched the campaign to abolish the sex-trade industry, something that used many children in third world countries. At sixteen, Kielburger travelled to Bangkok and witnessed for himself the horror of this industry. I worked on many campaigns in Timmins in support of this movement; including the attempting to change the legal sexual age of consent in Canada from fourteen to eighteen.

It was through the help of this organization that I was able to attract the attention of the local MPP’s in Timmins and actually sit down and have a talk with them in regards to this issue. Of course, following the issue all of the supporters that said they were going to vote for change in front of the camera voted to keep the age the same it was still a good learning experience.

I would definitely say that working through many activist organizations like Free the Children has helped me open my eyes to the world around me, and is even the root of my will to get into journalism in the first place. Even if you are not an activist, there is still a lot that you can learn about the world around us through organizations like this. Even if you don’t want to help, it’s a good idea just to look up the information that’s there.

Works Cited

Free the Children. Children helping children through education. 2009. Web. Nov. 23, 2009.