Collection 6: "Craig Kielburger Reflects on Working Toward Peace" by Craig Kielburger

According to the article, he had been sold into bondage as a weaver and forced to work twelve hours a day tying tiny knots to make carpets.

Over the past four years, in my travels for Free the Children, I have had the opportunity to meet many children around the world—children like Jeffrey, who spends his days in a Manila garbage dump, alongside rats and maggots, where he sifts through decaying food and trash, trying to salvage a few valuable items to help his family survive.

Over the past four years, in my travels for Free the Children, I have had the opportunity to meet many children around the world—children like Jeffrey, who spends his days in a Manila garbage dump, alongside rats and maggots, where he sifts through decaying food and trash, trying to salvage a few valuable items to help his family survive.

I have met children like eight-year-old Muniannal, in India, with a pretty ribbon in her hair, but no shoes or gloves, who squats on the floor every day separating used syringes gathered from hospitals and the streets for their plastics.

I have met children in the sugarcane fields of Brazil who wield huge machetes close to their small limbs.

I have met children in the sugarcane fields of Brazil who wield huge machetes close to their small limbs.

But he had nothing—no home, no food, no toys, no possessions.

Turning my way, the host inquired whether I, too, was gifted. Never having been tested for the gifted program, I answered that I was not.

When I returned home my mother asked me, “Are you certain you aren’t gifted?” I realized that I had given the wrong answer. I was gifted, and the more I reflected, the more I concluded that I had never met a person who was not special or talented in some way.

Some people are gifted with their hands and can produce marvelous creations in their capacity as carpenters, artists, or builders.

Collectively, we have all it takes to create a just and peaceful world, but we must work together and share our talents.

I realize, now, that each of us has the power to be Superman and to help rid the world of its worst evils—poverty, loneliness, and exploitation.