An estimated 11,000 children sew the balls, which also are used in Europe. There the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) is seeking the cooperation of FIFA, the international soccer governing body, to help end the practice.

The AFL-CIO has endorsed the Foul Ball campaign and the Union Label & Service Trades Dept. is working closely with the ILRF on the effort.

Kids Organize Against Child-Labor Imports

Shocked by news of the inhuman exploitation of child workers in many Third World countries, junior high and high-school age students in Canada, the United States and other Western countries are organizing to help try to end it.

Chief impetus for the young people’s movement appears to have been the murder on Easter Sunday 1995 of Iqbal Masih, 12, who was gunned down in his village in Pakistan as he rode his bicycle.

Until he escaped two years earlier, Iqbal had spent six years shackled to a rug loom, tying tiny knots 12 hours a day, making three cents a day. After escaping he had crusaded against the horrors of child slavery in his country.

Iqbal’s murder remains unsolved, but some believe carpet makers who had threatened him were responsible.

Craig Kielburger of Toronto, then also 12, read a newspaper story about Iqbal’s murder. "I basically looked at my life and then at his. The gap in between stood out so much," he told a reporter.

Craig contacted child-labor organizations, put together a small library of articles, was shocked by what he learned and with schoolmates founded Free the Children, to write letters, conduct petition drives and talk to whoever will listen.

In November 1995, Craig spoke to the convention of the Ontario Federation of Labor. Delegates were so moved they passed the hat and raised $150,000 for a center in India where freed child workers can rehabilitate their bodies and learn to read and write and study a trade.

Free The Children has grown to more than 300 children, with chapters in the United States and Europe as well as Canada.

One of the U.S. chapters was organized in May 1996 in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Va., by Shannon Goold, 13, and Adam, 15, and Elizabeth, 3 Carter.

When they took a petition door-to-door, some people slammed doors in their faces. When they went to congressional offices, some staffers belittled their efforts. When they tried to leaflet a soccer industry conference in Rosslyn, Va., the hotel kicked them out. Even his classmates made fun of him at first, Adam told the National Consumers League.

But after a school assembly on child labor, more than 100 students--grades six through nine--signed up for Free the Children U.S.A.

Last fall the three organized a nationwide petition drive for a congressionally mandated labeling system to inform consumers that products are "child labor free."

They also have been active in the Foul Ball campaign aimed at ending child labor in the production of soccer balls.

They have received inquiries from four other states about setting up chapters of Free the Children.

Meantime, children at the Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Mass., have raised $106,700 from schools in all 50 states and 12 foreign countries to build a grade school in Iqbal’s village.

The Broad Meadows students met Iqbal when he visited them in late 1994 while he was in the U.S. to receive the Youth in Action Human Rights Award, sponsored by the Reebok Foundation.

"He was so small," said one of the Broad Meadows students. "He looked like he was six."

The Board Meadows students said that they, too, are interested in forming a chapter of Free the Children.

Reprinted from the Label Letter.