Free the Children : A Young Man's Personal Crusade Aginst Child Labour

In April 1995, 12-year-old Craig Keilburger read an article about a Pakistani child who, at the age of four, was sold into slavery by his parents.

For the next six years, he was shackled to a carpet loom, tying thousands upon thousands of tiny knots, twelve hours a day, six days a week.

For this he was paid three cents a day. Amazingly, his will was never broken; he escaped and began efforts to reveal the horrors of child labour.

But when he began to gain international attention, and Pakistani carpet manufacturers began to lose orders, he was shot and killed. Craig Keilburger contacted human rights organizations around the world, and with a small band of his friends from school he formed Free the Children.

To see firsthand the working conditions of South Asian children Craig journeyed through the world of slums, sweatshops, and back alleys where so many of the children of South Asia live in servitude, often performing the most menial and dangerous of jobs.

This is the chronicle of the continuing work of one young activist and the human rights organization he founded at the age of 12, to bring attention to the worldwide abuse of children's rights.