Perera, Cheryl

When Cheryl Perera was a 10th grader in Toronto, she read Free the Children, a book by Giraffe Craig Kielburger. His stories of children working as slaves so distressed Perera that she immediately volunteered at Kielburger’s nonprofit, Free the Children.

Quickly rising from her offer to “sweep the floors—anything,” she founded her local high school’s chapter, was elected co-director of the group’s Toronto-area chapter and was soon speaking all over Canada, inspiring young people to take action. She journeyed to Nicaragua and Ecuador to learn about the lives of children in those countries.

When she was 17, she began investigating forced child prostitution in Sri Lanka, the country where her parents were born. Armed with information she’d assembled there, she called the office of that country’s President and asked to meet with her. The president’s assistants hung up on Cheryl repeatedly, but Perera kept calling and managed to get a meeting with the President’s advisor on social infrastructure. The advisor began talking to Cheryl as if she were a silly kid, but got serious when she saw the data and reports Cheryl had assembled.

There are 40,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka, and an international trade in selling them to tourists. Perera had interviewed dozens of children who were being sold to sex-tourists arriving from all over the world. Her knowledge of the trade included first-hand participation in a sting operation that led to the arrest of a middle-aged man trying to buy Perera as a child prostitute. The police officers who worked with her were amazed by the young Canadian’s courage.

Back in Toronto, she founded OneChild, a non-profit that focuses young people on stopping the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

A film the group made has been shown on planes leaving Canada; it makes the point that buying a child prostitute abroad is punishable as a crime when the perpetrator returns to Canada. It’s been seen by over seven million travelers.

OneChild partnered with a human rights organization based in the Philippines to build a safe house and recovery center for children who have been rescued from sexual exploitation in that country. Young volunteers for OneChild speak at schools and service clubs making people aware of the 1.2 million children trapped in the global sex trade worldwide.

When she isn’t speaking to audiences, enlisting their support in her cause, or managing the work of other One Child volunteers, Cheryl Perera is studying ethics, society and law and political science at the University of Toronto.