Giraffes have been sighted in Quincy MA
Someone
was coming to visit the sixth-graders at the Broad Meadows
Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts. It was 1994,
and the visitor was a boy named Iqbal Masih. He was
their age and he had come all the way from Pakistan
to talk to people in America about his life in his country.
The Broad Meadows students were excited. They’d
never had a guest from Pakistan before. When Iqbal arrived,
they were very surprised. He was so small, his feet
didn’t reach the floor when he sat in their chairs.
His small hands were as rough as an old man’s.
When he told them about his life, they understood why.
His family was very poor, he told them. They once borrowed
money to pay a bill. Then they couldn’t pay the
man who had loaned them the money. He threatened to
hurt them all. To pay him, the family sold Iqbal! A
man who made carpets paid them $12 for Iqbal, who was
then four years old. The carpet maker chained Iqbal
to a loom where he made carpets for 12 hours every day.
His small hands tied thousands of knots every day, making
the carpets. If he stopped, the carpet maker hit him.
Iqbal got so little food, he didn’t grow like
other children. When the Broad Meadows students heard
this story, they understood why Iqbal was so much smaller
than they were, and why his hands were so rough.
When Iqbal was 10, he found out that it was against
the law to make someone work for no money. Pakistan
has a law against slavery, and Iqbal was a slave. He
ran away and he began to tell people about being a slave.
He found out that 7 million children in his country
are slaves and that there millions more in other countries.
Many good people in Pakistan want to stop slavery there.
They helped Iqbal travel and tell people his story.
But, Iqbal told the kids, many bad people in Pakistan
wanted him to keep quiet about child slavery.
Iqbal told the Broad Meadows kids that they were very
lucky because they could go to school. He dreamed that
all children in his country could go to school one day.
The American kids were upset by this terrible story.
They promised Iqbal they would help in some way.
Very soon after Iqbal got back to Pakistan, someone
shot and killed him! The Broad Meadows students felt
terrible when they heard. Remembering Iqbal’s
dream of Pakistani kids going to school, they decided
to raise the money to build a school in his village.
Some people thought that was an awfully big job, but
the kids were sure they could do it and their teacher
said he would help them.
They wrote letters and e-mail messages to schools all
over the world, telling them they could help build “Iqbal’s
School.” They asked each person or class who got
the message to send $12 to help build the school. They
chose the number 12 because Iqbal was sold for $12,
and he was 12 years old when he died. Everytime they
got a donation, they wrote a thank you letter to the
giver.
At the same time that they were asking thousands of
people for money, the Broad Meadows kids were making
sure that people knew about child slavery. They told
the story to reporters for newspapers and television
stations. And they asked people who sell carpets in
this country to be sure they had not been made by child
slaves. Many store owners just laughed at them or told
them to mind their own business.
There
was so much work to do that for a whole year, everyone
in the class came to school early and stayed very
late. They worked on weekends and over holidays.
At the end of the school year, they had raised over
a hundred thousand dollars! They bought a building
in Iqbal’s village
and they hired teachers and a principal. They even found
50 families whose children were slaves and they bought
the children back from the people who “owned” them!
When the new school opened, 200 Pakistani children
came to learn. They were getting a chance at a better
life, all because some children in faraway Massachusetts
cared and worked very, very hard to make Iqbal’s
dream come true.